"Still playing the silent martyr? It’s boring, Hera. Truly."
Silas’s voice was a low, smooth vibration that seemed to echo inside my own skull. He didn't just speak; he owned the air between us. He stepped closer, the polished soles of his boots clicking against the sterile white floor, and suddenly he was right there. His hand shot out, fingers gripping my chin, forcing my head up.
His thumb pressed hard into the soft skin under my jaw, a reminder that he could snap my neck as easily as he’d rewritten my memories.
"Tell me what you remember from the Apex vault," he murmured. His breath smelled like mint and something metallic, like ozone after a storm. "Just a fragment. A name. A code. Give me something, and I might actually let you eat something other than nutrient paste today."
I spat toward his boots. "Go to hell."
Silas didn't flinch. He didn't even look down at the smudge on his shoe. Instead, he smiled—a slow, predatory curve of the lips that didn't reach his eyes. He shifted his grip, his palm sliding from my chin to the back of my neck, his fingers grazing the cold metal of the collar.
I shivered. Not from cold. From the way his touch felt like a brand.
"Hell is just a server I haven't built yet," he whispered. "But this? This is real. This is the only thing keeping your neural pathways from collapsing into a heap of static."
He stepped back, the sudden loss of his warmth leaving me feeling exposed. He walked toward a hovering holographic terminal, his movements fluid, arrogant. With a flick of his wrist, a shimmering gold contract bloomed in the air. It wasn't text. It was a series of pulsing biometric waves—my DNA, my heart rate, my very existence, laid bare in a digital web.
"You're an Apex agent. Or you were," Silas said, not looking at me. "You were designed to be the perfect weapon. High agility, zero empathy, and a brain that can process encrypted data faster than a mainframe. But the company tried to delete you. They scrubbed you clean. Now, you're a ghost in your own skin."
"I don't... I don't know you," I rasped. My throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper.
"You don't have to know me to serve me." He turned around, his eyes scanning me like I was a piece of hardware he was deciding whether to upgrade or scrap. "Here’s the deal. I don't care about your loyalty. I care about the Ghost Codes. They're glitches in the city's AI, remnants of the old world that are starting to eat my architecture from the inside out. You hunt them. You bring them to me. In exchange, I keep your brain from leaking out of your ears."
"And if I refuse?"
Silas laughed. It was a short, sharp sound. "Refuse? Hera, look at the collar."
I reached up, my fingers brushing the heavy band around my neck. A small, red light was blinking. Slow. Steady.
"That's a countdown," Silas explained, stepping back into my personal space. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off his chest. He leaned down, his lips almost touching my ear. "Every hour you spend disobeying me, the collar sends a micro-burst of electricity into your prefrontal cortex. It starts as a headache. Then a seizure. Then... well, let's just say you'll forget how to breathe."
I tried to shove him away, but he caught my wrists in one hand, pinning them against the wall behind me. The movement was so fast I didn't even see it coming. He slammed me back, the impact rattling my teeth, and pressed his body against mine.
He wasn't hugging me. He was pinning me. The power imbalance was a physical weight, crushing the air out of my lungs.
"You're not a person anymore, Hera. You're an asset," he whispered, his gaze dropping to my lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to my eyes. "My asset. Now, do we have an understanding, or do I turn up the voltage?"
I glared at him, my chest heaving. I could feel my pulse hammering against the skin of my wrists where he held me. "I hate you."
"Good," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "Hate is a powerful motivator. It keeps the heart beating. Now, sign."
He released my wrists and gestured to the holographic screen. There was a small, needle-like probe extending from the terminal.
"Blood data," Silas said. "The contract needs a biological anchor. Once you bleed into the sensor, the collar syncs with your nervous system. You'll be mine—legally, digitally, and physically. Try to run, and the collar will shut your legs down. Try to kill me, and it'll stop your heart."
I looked at the needle. Then at the man who looked at me like I was a prized pet. I didn't have a choice. I didn't even have a name that felt real.
I stepped forward and pressed my finger onto the probe.
*Sizzle.*
A sharp sting shot up my arm, and for a second, my vision flickered. A surge of white-hot electricity ripped through the collar, forcing a gasp from my lips. I lurched forward, my forehead hitting Silas's shoulder.
He didn't move. He didn't catch me. He just stood there, letting me lean on him, his hand coming up to slowly stroke the back of my hair. The gesture was almost tender, which made it a thousand times more terrifying.
"There," he whispered. "Now you belong to the Architect."
He pushed me away with a casual flick of his hand, as if I were nothing more than a piece of lint. He tapped the terminal, and the gold contract vanished, replaced by a stark, neon-blue map of the Orion Undercity.
"Your first target is already active," Silas said, his voice returning to that cold, professional tone. "A Ghost Code has manifested in the Sector 4 slums. It's mimicking a human. It's killing the locals to harvest their biometric data. You're going to go there, find it, and delete it."
He swiped his hand across the glass wall, and a high-resolution image flickered into existence. It was a surveillance shot—grainy, flickering, taken from a street cam.
I froze.
My breath hitched in my throat. I didn't recognize the city. I didn't recognize the clothes I was wearing. But I recognized that face.
It was a woman. She looked exhausted, her eyes sunken, her skin pale under the neon lights. But the structure of the jaw, the curve of the brow... it was a mirror.
"Who is that?" I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Silas leaned in, his eyes glinting with a sadistic kind of curiosity. "That's the target, Hera. The glitch. The ghost."
I stepped closer to the glass, my hand trembling as I reached out to touch the image.
"That's... that's me," I breathed.
Silas’s smile returned, wider this time. "Exactly. Now go kill yourself."