"Don't fight it, Hera. You'll only make the surge hurt more."
Silas’s voice was a low, smooth velvet that didn't match the violence of the situation. His hand was clamped firmly on the back of my neck, pinning me against the cold, brushed steel of the console. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the heat radiating off him, the smell of expensive sandalwood and ozone.
I tried to thrash, my boots scraping against the floor, but the collar around my neck tightened. A sharp, electric spike shot through my spine, locking my muscles in a sudden, agonizing spasm. I gasped, my lungs freezing, my forehead pressed hard against the metal.
"Let... go," I managed to choke out, the words barely a whisper.
"Now, why would I do that?" Silas leaned in. His breath brushed my ear, sending a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "You're the most expensive piece of hardware in Orion. I don't let my investments run wild."
He shifted his grip, his fingers sliding from my neck to my jaw, forcing my head up. He didn't just hold me; he owned the space I breathed in. I looked into his eyes—dark, calculating, and entirely too amused. He looked like a god who had just found a new toy to break.
"Who are you?" I spat, trying to pull away. "Where the hell am I?"
Silas chuckled, a dry sound that lacked any real warmth. "Memory wipe didn't take fully? Interesting. I'll have to tweak the settings. As for where you are... you're in my world now, Hera. And in my world, you do exactly what I say, or your brain turns into a very expensive piece of charcoal."
He stepped back just an inch, but the power imbalance remained. He reached into the pocket of his charcoal suit and pulled out a sleek, holographic tablet. With a flick of his thumb, a red warning icon flashed on the screen. Simultaneously, the collar around my neck pulsed a deep, threatening crimson.
"What is this?" I demanded, my voice shaking. "Get this thing off me!"
"It's a leash," he said simply. "A very sophisticated, very deadly leash. It's synced to your neural cortex. If I decide you're no longer useful, or if you try to leave this penthouse without my permission, it releases a localized EMP directly into your frontal lobe."
I stared at him, the reality sinking in. I didn't remember my parents, my home, or how I'd ended up in this neon-lit cage, but I knew one thing: this man was a monster.
"I'm not a dog," I snapped, my eyes narrowing. "I don't follow leashes."
Silas's expression didn't flicker. He stepped back into my personal space, his chest nearly touching mine. He was taller, broader, and he used every inch of that advantage to crowd me. He reached out, his thumb grazing the edge of the metal collar, the contact sending a jolt of static through my skin.
"You're not a dog, Hera. You're a hunter," he whispered. "The best the Apex Agency ever produced. Or at least, you were before they tried to discard you like yesterday's trash. I'm the one who picked you up. I'm the one who gave you a second chance."
"I didn't ask for a second chance from a freak like you."
He didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, dangerous smile spread across his lips. "Careful. Your attitude is charming, but it doesn't pay the bills. And right now, you owe me everything."
He suddenly shoved me away, not enough to hurt, but enough to make me stumble. He pointed toward the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, the city of Orion stretched out—a sprawling, suffocating nightmare of holographic billboards, floating highways, and smog-choked skyscrapers. The neon lights bled into the rain, turning the streets into a river of electric violet and acid green.
"Look at it," Silas commanded. "The city is glitching. Ghost Codes are tearing through the infrastructure, erasing people, deleting blocks of data. The AI is screaming, and nobody knows how to stop it."
I looked, but my mind was racing. I felt something inside me—not a memory, but a reflex. A hunger for a weapon. My hands instinctively curled into fists, my fingers twitching as if searching for a trigger.
"You can see them, can't you?" Silas asked, his voice closer now. He was behind me again, his presence a heavy weight. "The anomalies. The tears in the code. You're the only one with the neural architecture to track them. To kill them."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then we skip the part where you get your memories back," he said. He reached around me, his hand hovering just above the control panel of the collar. "And we go straight to the part where I see how much voltage your brain can take before it pops."
I turned around, my back hitting the glass. The cold of the window seeped through my clothes. I looked up at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. He was so close I could see the gold flecks in his dark irises. He looked at me not as a person, but as a puzzle he was eager to solve.
"You're insane," I whispered.
"I'm a visionary," he corrected. "And you're my instrument. Here's the deal: hunt the Ghost Codes. Bring me the core fragments of every anomaly you find. Do that, and I'll give you your identity back. One piece at a time."
I hated him. I hated the way he looked at me, the way he controlled my very breath. But the void in my head—the silence where my life should have been—was louder than my hatred. I needed to know who I was.
"Why me?" I asked. "There have to be other agents."
"There were," Silas said, his voice dropping an octave. "They're all dead. Or worse, they're just... empty. You're the only one who survived the wipe with your fire intact. I like fire, Hera. It's so much more fun to tame."
He stepped even closer, his body almost flush against mine. For a second, the tension shifted. It wasn't just about power; it was something sharper, something that made the air between us feel thick and electric. His gaze dropped to my lips for a fraction of a second before returning to my eyes.
"Do we have a deal?" he asked, his voice a low vibration I could feel in my own chest.
I opened my mouth to tell him to go to hell, but the collar suddenly flared.
It wasn't a spark this time. It was a roar.
Pain exploded in my skull, a white-hot needle driving straight through my consciousness. I screamed, my knees buckling, my hands flying up to claw at the metal band around my neck. It felt like my brain was being cooked from the inside out.
"Stop it!" I shrieked, my vision blurring into a kaleidoscope of neon static. "Stop it!"
Silas didn't move. He didn't even blink. He watched me collapse, his expression one of clinical curiosity. He looked like he was watching a bug under a microscope.
"The first Ghost Code has just appeared in the Sector 4 slums," he said, his voice perfectly calm amidst my agony. "The collar is synced to the anomaly's frequency. As long as that Code exists, the collar will continue to burn through your synapses. It's a very effective motivator."
I lay on the floor, gasping for air, my body shaking with aftershocks. Every second was a new wave of torture. I looked up at him, tears of pain blurring my sight, and saw him leaning over me, his hand reaching down to grip my chin, forcing me to look at him.
"You have one choice, Hera," he whispered, his thumb pressing firmly into my skin. "Go hunt that Code now—or let it burn your mind into a blank slate."
I glared at him, my teeth clenched, the pain still pulsing in my temples. With a shaking hand, I reached up, my fingers searching for the emergency release valve on the side of the collar, praying there was a way to kill the signal before it killed me.