October, 2008
Ethan slept for exactly four hours.
Not because he wanted to.
Because his brain refused to stop replaying what he'd seen.
Server racks. File structures. The phrase Anomalous Tech Monitoring – Domestic sitting quietly in a folder like it was the most normal thing in the world.
"…Yeah," he muttered, staring at the ceiling. "That's not ominous at all."
He rolled out of bed, rubbed his face, and looked at his hands.
"I am being watched by a shadow organization" he said out loud. "And my response is to build gadgets in my pajamas."
He paused.
"…Honestly, that tracks."
He didn't go to the office that day.
He sent an email saying he was working from home.
Which was technically true.
He just wasn't working on company projects.
He was working on himself.
Step one: control his own information.
He sat at his desk and opened his laptop.
Turned on the Sharingan.
And sighed.
"…God, this is unfair."
With his eyes active, the machine wasn't just a device anymore—it was a map. Data flows. Memory access. Background processes. He could see where information moved, where it stalled, where it leaked.
He didn't hack.
He restructured.
He rebuilt his OS from the inside out over the course of twelve hours.
Encrypted partitions that didn't announce themselves
Process trees that looked normal but weren't
Data paths that folded in on themselves like labyrinths
"…If someone tries to remotely peek into you," he told the laptop, "they're going to get lost in a funhouse mirror."
Step two: don't rely on public infrastructure.
He dug out a box from under his bed.
Inside: components he'd never used in Mercer products.
Too good.
Too custom.
Too him.
He laid them out.
Micro-cameras.
Signal amplifiers.
Custom boards he'd printed himself.
"…Okay," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's build something illegal."
Three days later, he had:
A wrist-mounted device that could sniff, record, and analyze local RF traffic
A coin-sized drone that looked like trash and flew like a mosquito
And a tablet that was absolutely not running any recognizable operating system
He never once connected any of it to the internet.
Ever.
"…You don't get to touch the outside world," he told the tablet. "The outside world is compromised."
He tested the drone in his apartment.
It bumped into a wall.
"…You're adorable," he said. "But we need work."
He turned on the Sharingan and watched its movement.
Adjusted control loops.
Adjusted balance.
Adjusted response time.
Tried again.
This time it flowed like it was part of him.
"…There we go."
Then he started the real work.
He went out at night.
Not in a costume.
Not in anything dramatic.
Just a man in a jacket and a hat.
He released the drone near his office building.
Let it drift.
And watched.
The wrist device started picking up patterns.
Encrypted radio chatter.
Short bursts.
Directional.
"…You're not just watching with eyeballs," he murmured. "You're coordinating."
He logged everything.
Didn't decode yet.
Just mapped.
He did this for a week.
Different nights.
Different locations.
Near the office.
Near the warehouse.
Near his apartment.
And slowly, a web formed.
"…You've got a perimeter," he said quietly. "That means you're not a single team."
Then he did something risky.
He took the tablet.
Sat in his apartment.
And tried to decode one of the captured signal bursts.
Not brute force.
Not hacking.
Pattern recognition.
With the Sharingan active, he could see the structure of the encryption. The rhythm. The logic behind it.
"…This is military-grade," he said slowly.
He frowned.
"…No. This is SHIELD-grade."
He leaned back.
"…Which means either SHIELD is watching me…"
He paused.
"…Or someone who likes pretending to be SHIELD is."
He cross-referenced frequencies.
Callsign formats.
Packet structure.
"…You're not FBI. Not CIA."
He typed one more comparison.
And then he froze.
"…You have got to be kidding me."
The formatting matched something he remembered.
Not from this world.
From the movies.
"…This is SHIELD's internal comm structure."
He stared at the screen.
"…Okay. That's a problem."
But then he noticed something else.
Some messages didn't fit.
Same network.
Different behavior.
Different encryption habits.
Different discipline.
"…You're sharing infrastructure," he whispered.
"And you're not the same people."
He created two folders.
Group A: SHIELD
Group B: ???
He stared at Group B.
"…And you," he said softly. "You move like HYDRA."
He didn't have proof.
Not yet.
But the paranoia was textbook.
Layered obfuscation.
Compartmentalization.
Unnecessary secrecy inside secrecy.
"…Yeah," he muttered. "That's you."
He sat back in his chair.
"So," he said to the empty room. "SHIELD is watching me because I'm weird."
"And HYDRA is watching me because I'm interesting."
He laughed once.
"…Fantastic."
Now he had names.
That changed things.
Not in how he acted.
In how careful he needed to be.
He upgraded again.
More drones
Passive sensors hidden near his office
A closed-loop tracking map that never touched GPS
"…If you're going to stalk me," he said, "I'm going to stalk you better."
He started tagging agents.
Not physically.
Digitally.
He watched patterns.
Who relieved who.
Who rotated.
Who never showed up at the same time.
"…You're running three teams," he whispered. "Two SHIELD. One HYDRA."
He never followed them home.
Never crossed the line.
Never let any of his devices be seen.
He stayed a ghost.
One night, he stood in his apartment, watching moving dots on his private map.
"…You don't know it," he said quietly.
"But I know exactly where you are."
He turned off the Sharingan and rubbed his eyes.
"…I wanted to build routers."
He looked at the city.
"And now I'm playing counterintelligence against SHIELD and HYDRA."
He paused.
"…I really need to stop underestimating my life choices."
But he was smiling.
Because for the first time since he'd realized he was being watched—
He wasn't blind anymore.
Somewhere, in a quiet SHIELD office, a report was filed:
Subject: Mercer Technologies – Status unchanged. Continue observation.
Somewhere else, much deeper in the dark, another file was updated:
Potential Asset. Continue evaluation.
And neither of them knew that the man they were watching had just built himself a private intelligence network in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens.