April 23, 2021. 20:05. Burnaby. 7 days left till Italy.
We stare at Shock. A moment of silence prevails over the room, and I look back at Elias.
He freezes under my stare, chest heaving.
"You've got one chance," I warn coldly. "Don't try anything stupid."
Elias doesn't flinch. Instead, a crooked grin tugs at his mouth, his voice low and ragged. "You really think you understand what you've walked into? You don't have a clue. Not yet."
I pull the muzzle back, ready to shut him up, but Mister interrupts me.
"That's enough. Shock. Show us."
Shock is already beckoning from the hallway, her tone clipped. "Kay. Follow me."
We trail her down the stairs and into a side hall stacked with boxes and stripped-down machinery. Someone's cleared space here recently. Dust lines mark where crates were dragged aside. At the far wall, behind the debris, a door now hangs open.
"I'll tell the others to come inside," Mister mutters, pulling out his phone.
"The power grid tipped me off," Shock explains quickly, half proud, half rattled. "The building's mainline looked normal at first, but your girl traced the routing and… yeahhhh. I found this isolated network piggybacking off a panel while I was checking the security." She points to a new stairwell yawning below. "I don't exactly have Azure's know-how, but I know enough to follow wires! And they all end here."
The basement door gapes wide. A pale, unnatural glow seeps up the stairwell, washing the hall in a sickly light. The air feels colder already.
I glance at Shock. "So what's down there?"
She shakes her head. "I… didn't check. Figured we should all see it together."
Elias stiffens in Tetra's grip, eyes darting. He mutters something under his breath I don't catch, but the set of his jaw says plenty. His pulse ticks hard in his throat, not from fear but from the effort of keeping something contained. What the hell is he hiding down there?
The silence stretches. No hum of appliances. No dripping water. Just our breathing.
Then, footsteps return from the kitchen.
"Ayo, we're back," Remi calls, voice casual—until he spots Elias tied up. "Oh shit, you got the guy." He's grinning, but in his hands is something far stranger: a mechanical spine.
I raise an eyebrow at the sight.
Remi notices, holding it up for us to see. "Oh, this thing?" He taps the metal vertebrae. "Azure calls it a 'Sandy'."
The hell is a 'Sandy'?
Azure elbows him hard in the ribs. "Way to be subtle. And save it for later."
Shock shoots them both a look. "Not the time."
They sober fast as their eyes fall to the open stairwell. A glow bleeds against the floorboards, shifting faintly and unnaturally.
"The hell?" Remi frowns. "What—"
Mister's voice cuts through. "Everyone, downstairs. Now."
Elias exhales hard through his nose. "This is bigger than any of you think."
Remi snorts. "Yeah? Bigger than the psycho spine you've got lying around?"
Tetra tightens his grip on him. "C'mon man, keep talking."
But Mister doesn't press further yet. The rest of us descend in silence, the creaking steps the only sound.
I've seen enough media to know what a "madman's lair" looks like—grainy documentaries, crime dramas, police bodycam footage—but walking into one for real?
It doesn't feel the same. The air feels heavier, off. My skin prickles as though we're crossing into something we shouldn't.
At the bottom of the stairwell, the walls are plastered with paper. Old newsletters, clippings, sketches. Headlines about politics, science, disasters—each one carefully chosen, each one taped with intent.
But what stops me cold are the details: these aren't random. The newsletters highlight specific articles, certain phrases underlined, dates circled. Patterns only their author could understand.
The room opens into a sprawling basement. My eyes sweep across rows of benches stacked with half-assembled tools, crude weapons, and racks of chrome implants. Computers hum in the corner. Against the far wall, a bulletin board dominates—dozens of newspapers, overlapping sketches, a world map pinned with coloured threads.
We all freeze for a moment. Even I, who's seen plenty of shady setups, can't help but mutter: "Holy shit…"
Mister is the first to steady himself. He steps forward, voice even. "Elias. What is this?"
The man shifts under Tetra's grip. "Would you even understand?" There's a defiance in his voice, the kind that surfaces when death feels close.
"That wasn't the question." Mister's tone hardens. "You're in no position to refuse. Explain. Because this," he gestures to the walls, "isn't Militech engineering protocol. And in case it wasn't clear, none of us bought your earlier excuse."
He walks slowly, then stops at a mannequin tucked in the corner. Draped across it is a trench coat—the trench coat. The same one we've spotted in Richmond and Burnaby.
Mister rests his hand on the mannequin's shoulder. "So. Care to explain why you've been walking around Vancouver in this outfit? Always exactly where the chaos breaks out?"
Elias doesn't answer.
Shock has already set up at one of the terminals, her black box plugged in and eyes glowing as she breaches. Azure hovers over her shoulder, eyes darting across sketches of anatomy and implant schematics. "... This is insane."
Remi lets out a low whistle, eyes sweeping the walls. Tetra lowers Elias to the ground but keeps a boot planted near his leg. I stay close as well.
Mister's voice drops, flat and firm. "I won't ask again. Why are you doing this, Elias?"
The man chuckles dryly. "Why? Do you even want the answer?"
"Try me."
He exhales slowly, eyes still lit with conviction. "You want to know why I'm doing this? To prove a point. That society clings to tech like kids to candy. Every implant, every neural jack, every Corpo promise—they're just chains. And no one even sees them."
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, yeah, real poetic, man. Tech is progress and innovation. It's the reason any of us are still alive. It's one thing to enjoy it, and another to be controlled by it."
Elias doesn't blink. "Is it progress, or is it the reason you're hollow?" His stare pins me. "Look around you—implants, clothes, lifestyle. Have you ever considered living disconnected? Free of their metrics, their ads, their constant pull on your choices?"
For a split second, I actually picture it—no social feeds, no jobs from online boards, and no luxury products. No Artemis or Gina. My throat tightens. It goes against my entire life. I've never once considered it. And I don't want to entertain the idea either.
Snippets of my conversations with Wissen replay in my head. And my fists clench. "I fight to live. That's not hollow."
"You fight to maintain a gilded cage built around you," he fires back. "Spoiled by a system you say you're not controlled by. You'd collapse the moment it was stripped away."
"You don't know me."
Remi cuts in. "Ayo, my guy, the cards are already dealt. This is the world we live in. I don't know what to tell you."
Elias holds firm, a quiet confidence in his eyes. "And yet… no one has ever stopped you from trading the hand in for another. You just never tried."
Mister raises a hand, signalling he'll handle the talking. He leans forward, voice steady. "Because to 'trade in' means dragging humanity back into famine, disease, chaos—the very reasons technology accelerated in the first place. Progress is not optional. It's survival. To go back is to reintroduce the problems we bled to solve."
"And maybe those problems were a more honest price to pay." Elias tilts his head, offering a thin smile. "Better than this slow suffocation—every soul weighed, measured, and commodified. You talk survival, but survival at what cost? When the corporations decide what you eat, what you learn, what you dream—are you alive, or just another product line?"
I snap, "You're making it sound like some cartoon dystopia. It's not like corpos run everything."
He laughs, bitter and sharp. "Not yet. But give it time. By the moment you recognize the cage, it'll be welded shut."
Mister's tone hardens, still level. "That's reductionist. Humanity doesn't move in absolutes. Laws and policies may lag, but they catch up. Systems adapt—incrementally, yes, but steadily. No empire has ever been absolute."
"And that's your mistake," Elias growls, leaning forward until Tetra's boot stops him short. "You think corporations wait for the law to catch up. But they don't. They'll reshape the world faster than it can be regulated. By the time the first incident case reaches a courtroom, the corps will already own the court. And the judge. Even the law that you thought was yours."
Silence stretches. The rest of the party stays quiet, no one willing to pick the fight back up.
My eyes flick to the bulletin board. Mister's helmet tilts, tracking my gaze. We scan the collage, desperate for something—anything—to throw back at Elias. A crack. A contradiction. Proof.
But the deeper I look, the fewer answers I find. Just questions. Clippings scream headlines I don't fully recognize. Judgment Day, Paris Burns. Photos of smouldering ruins. A date: 9/11. An organization called the Tanwir. And scattered references to something called the UNSAF.
UNSAF, what's that? I frown, trying to make sense of it all.
Remi's voice cracks. "Oh shit. I remember this. Paris got fucking leveled—whole city turned to ash. Tanwir terrorist guys were blowing up faster than anyone could track. Every UN state had to pull up and lock in. Made a whole anti-terror task force and everything just to crush them. That's the UNSAF."
Tetra's gaze sharpens as he steps back from Elias, turning to study a pinned emblem on the wall: a torn robotic arm printed over a scorched flag scrawled with Arabic script.
"I think one of my elders was there that day. They used to tell stories about it."
"That's not all... " Azure steps in beside him, unease creeping into her voice. "Look at these." She gestures toward pages strewn across the wall—anatomical sketches, implant schematics, grotesque modifications of cyberware. "These aren't just illegal. They're operating way past human tolerance. Only genetic freaks could carry this much load without slipping into cyberpsychosis."
"Huh…" Shock leans back, arms crossing as her eyes scan the mess around them. Her voice dips, uncertain. "Okay… so, uh… this isn't some fringe conspiracy thread. This is serious. Like—really serious."
I tilt my head. "How so?"
She forces a laugh, but it comes out thin. "Uh—VPNs chained on VPNs, packets bouncing across half the globe. Whoever set this up knows their networking. Logs, encrypted tunnels, ghost servers. It's… dense." She swallows hard. "And it's not just local."
"What is this?" Mister stays on Elias. "Talk."
Elias exhales through his nose, shoulders relaxing as though the weight's finally shared. "There are others that believe in the cause. We're trying to take back what this world lost: freedom. Before the corpos gutted it. Before your governments sold it off."
Tetra frowns. "Freedom, huh. Seems like that's always the start to an excuse."
I step in, voice tight. "This shit again? Please. Cities like Vancouver—Gestalt's made corpos pay for repairs and rebuilding. They've been checked."
Elias turns, eyes gleaming. "And you really believe that'll last? That a mayor, a politician, can hold back the tide? Either he's lying to you, he's their puppet, or he's just waiting to be disposed of once he's no longer useful."
His words stick, sharper than I want to admit. I force a glare. "You're bitter as fuck."
"And you," Elias hisses, "are naive." He leans forward, grin jagged. "You think I'm still exaggerating? Let me spell it out."
His voice drops, rough but deliberate. "Every device you run—it's a tracker. Every app—it logs where you go, how you move, what you buy. Data centres know when you're hungry before you do. And when they sell that to insurers or employers? You're not a citizen. You're a spreadsheet. A liability if your stress markers run too high, an asset if you buy enough to stay docile."
I narrow my eyes, jaw tightening. "That's just paranoia. Not everything's about being watched."
"Really?" Elias shoots back, heat rising. "Then explain predictive policing. Whole neighbourhoods flagged as 'high-risk zones' because the algorithms crunched numbers from your eating habits, your movements, your messages. People can be branded criminals before they even do anything. You call that safety?"
Mister interjects. "It's imperfect, yes. But it prevents bloodshed. Those systems catch threats before they happen."
"Before they happen? You mean before they exist. We're already halfway there—whole neighbourhoods flagged as 'high-risk zones' just because the data says so. That's the foundation already laid. What's the next step? A machine declaring someone guilty before they've even thought of a crime? Because of 'pattern recognition'? Tell me—where's the line between protection and persecution?"
"That'll never happen." Mister shakes his head. "Now you're drifting into absurd doomsday scenarios."
Elias leans forward, barking a laugh. "Are you absolutely sure?"
The room goes quiet. Everyone's still working, but nobody misses a word.
He presses on. "And implants? You think they're just tools. But they double as surveillance. Neural jacks that rewire your dreams into ad space. Bio-monitors that ping your boss every time you slip out of line. Even smartguns report every trigger pull back to the corps. Your lives don't belong to you—they're leased back, piece by piece, through contracts you never read."
I snap, more defensive than I mean to. "Are you kidding me? I'm not some corpo drone. I choose my jobs. My gear."
"Do you?" His tone slices. "Do you really? Or were those choices handed to you—polished, giftwrapped—so you never look outside the regular catalog? You think you're free because you get to pick which leash you wear."
That pisses me off more than I want to admit. Of course I do my own research. I'm a professional, for fuck's sake. My mouth opens—but nothing comes out. I grit my teeth, fighting the urge to smash his face in.
Mister lets out a breath, his voice still calm and composed. "Even if what you say is true, people choose this world because the alternative is chaos. You're not wrong about the costs, Elias. But you ignore the trade-offs. A disconnected world is also famine, plague, warlords with bigger guns. Progress is the path of least death."
Elias's eyes flash. "Or the path of prettiest slavery. You mistake comfort for freedom."
"And you mistake destruction for liberty."
Before Elias pushes again, Mister cuts him short. "Enough." He exhales. "Debate's over. I'm not here for your manifesto. I'm here for the facts."
Shock clears her throat. "Speaking of facts… this guy's connections are everywhere. I can't pin exact places—but I've cracked a few encrypted logs." She reads, voice unsteady:
"Log one… Brother from elsewhere has failed to check..."
"Log two… Afghanistan and Russia show little progress..."
"Log three… East Asia fronts are stalled. Cause is not Arasaka. Cause is Autumn Blade.
"Log four…" Shock hesitates, tilting her head slightly as if trying to parse meaning. "Shatter the market. Break the machine. Cast off the shackles. Return the flesh to freedom."
The mantra hangs in the air like static.
I whisper before I can stop myself. "For fuck's sake. This guy's a neo-terrorist."
Elias doesn't deny it. His silence is worse.
Shock continues. "Oh… ohhhhh… you guys aren't gonna believe this. There's like… multiple files or versions of the virus. Oh wow, they're all neatly packaged and everything—compressed archives, self-extracting payloads, contained modules for different operating systems. It's… it's practically a curated suite."
She doesn't even sound accusatory—more like stunned. Then she frowns. "Wait… with my copy—the mutated version—and this baseline as a source… this isn't what I thought at all."
Shock squints, lips moving as she parses code. "It's not even that advanced. It's not brute-forcing firewalls or penetrating ICE layers. It's not even breaking through intrusion countermeasures. It's just… piggybacking. Hitching onto a backdoor that's already in the firmware." She looks up, baffled. "That doesn't make sense. Why would the implants ship like this?"
"Wait…" Azure stiffens instantly, colour draining from her face. "No. No, don't tell me—"
Shock cuts in, confirming with grim finality. "No. It's not me misreading. The code isn't the weapon. It's a key. It pretends to attack neural drivers, but really it's just flipping a switch—or twisting a dial—that's already there. A built-in failsafe, or a trigger, embedded across market-standard cyberware. It doesn't cause psychosis. It unlocks it."
The room stills. No one breathes. What…?
Remi's jaw tightens. Tetra mutters something under his breath. But Azure just stares, horrified.
And Elias? Elias almost looks proud, his shoulders lifting as if a weight's been shed.
"Finally. See what I mean? The virus doesn't even do that much. We built multiple versions—some bloated with junk code, some stripped to bare recursion, like red herrings. All designed so no matter the skill set—netrunner, sysop, script kiddie—someone would eventually crack it. And you did." His eyes gleam. "Which was the point. We needed someone curious enough to stumble on it, to validate the discovery."
Mister crouches beside Elias. "What's the purpose? What's the code actually for?"
Elias doesn't hesitate. "I told you already. Corporations don't just want customers—they want rats to control. Every major cyberware line—Arasaka neural sockets, Ziggurat OS overlays, Biotechnica wetware drivers—they all ship with invisible backdoors. Buried deep in kernel space, locked behind undocumented opcodes. No one outside the boardroom even knows they exist. And if they do, they're probably gone. We only recently learnt of it because of an inside source. Every corporation has their own version of a cognitive overload switch. Each and every single one of them."
Shock leans closer, morbidly impressed. "Hidden under secure enclave wrappers, buried under junk instructions… holy shit. That's… that's elegant."
Azure, still staring at Elias, slowly unfurls her hands. The plating splits, mechanical tool-fingers unraveling like a flower. "I've always been paranoid about firmware updates, proprietary drivers… but if this is true…"
"Girl, if you think you're screwed…" Shock gestures at her brain, voice grim. "Take a look at me."
Elias smiles faintly. "Painful, isn't it? Now that you know the truth. Each corp has its own lock, but the keys all work the same. And that's no accident. But the rest of the population? Still blissfully ignorant."
Tetra shifts his weight, lips parting with hesitation before he finally speaks. "Okay, then, uh… let's expose it! Let's tell everyone. People deserve to know!"
Remi nods sharply. "Yeah, choom! You're damn right. The whole world needs to fuckin' see!"
"No. Think for a second." Azure cuts in, bitter and cold. "And then what'll happen? You think shouting into the void, dumping code on the Net, is gonna fix it? Corps own the feeds, remember? They'll scrub it, discredit it, blacklist anyone who spreads it. You'd vanish before the story even loads."
Shock exhales, shaking her head. "She's right. The fact this even exists—that they wove psych load triggers into standard drivers without anyone catching it—that's… terrifying. Impressive, but terrifying."
I feel my stomach twist. I don't have any implants, not a single chip wired in me. And yet… if a failsafe like this could be buried in chrome everyone trusted, how deep does this go? Friends, allies, half the modern world—anyone could be a ticking time bomb without knowing.
My heart kicks up, pounding faster than I want it to. My throat tightens, dry and hard to swallow, and a shiver runs down my spine.
Elias lifts his chin, basking in our dawning realization. "And now you finally see it. The leash. The truth hidden in plain sight. It was never about building something new—it was about waking up to what was already there."
The room sinks into silence.
Mister straightens slowly. "I've heard enough." He steps behind Elias and clamps a hand onto his shoulder, yanking him back while his other arm snakes around the throat. The choke cinches tight, pressure cutting into his carotids.
Elias thrashes, spitting a grin even as his face reddens. "You think this is over?! You have no clue—" His words break off into a strangled cough. He claws weakly at Mister's arm, then shudders, body going limp as consciousness slips away.
"Fucking hell…" Remi mutters under his breath.
"Yeah," Tetra exhales, uneasy. "That's… a discovery."
Remi scoffs. "It's a fucked discovery, that's what."
Tetra nods faintly. "Yeah… still trying to digest it."
We stand there, unsure of what to do next.
With nothing left to distract me, my senses sharpen.
The floorboards creak and shift beneath our weight. Behind the walls, a faint electric hum thrums steady. The bulletin board, the Tanwir, the virus… just what is going on?
I glance at the others.
Azure's breathing is quick and shaky. Shock mutters to herself, eyes glowing faint as if she's dissecting a corpse no one else can see. Remi grinds his teeth, heat rolling off him in quiet fury, while Tetra steadies him with small pats between her own uneven exhales. And Mister—he's a void in the middle of it all, calm and unreadable.
Then a buzz cuts through.
The sound of Mister's phone shatters the stillness.
We all turn to him.
He pulls it out, calm and deliberate, as though the weight of this room doesn't touch him. He pauses. Then he speaks, clipped and professional. "Michelangelo wants to talk."
My stomach knots. "Shit. What do we do with him now?"
Azure freezes. "We… we can't tell him this. Not yet. He'll run it straight back to Arasaka."
Shock doesn't look up, her tone flat and grim. "Yeah… no. I'm not touching this one. You guys handle it."
Tetra glances between us, unsure. Remi scoffs, muttering low. "Figures. Corpo agent showing up right on schedule."
The silence stretches, every eye turning—metaphorically—toward Mister. He tucks the phone away.
"There's no need to panic," he says. "I'll just tell him we went out for early recon and threat assessment. It's perfectly reasonable."
Azure presses her lips together, clearly unconvinced. I'm still stuck on the idea of what Michelangelo would do if Arasaka found out what we knew.
The rest of the team seems satisfied with Mister's excuse. Although, I'm not sure how well it does to calm anyone's nerves.
But then his phone buzzes once more.
"Michelangelo is… understanding. He appreciates us moving ahead. The only thing he asks is that we pass the virus data to him. Arasaka will study it. And… he'll join us here shortly. Within the hour."
Azure curses under her breath. Tetra's hand stills against Remi's back. Shock's eyes finally dim, expression bleak. And I can feel my own hand trembling.
"No," Remi growls. "That shit ain't happening. I didn't sign up to giftwrap all this for a corpo."
Mister raises his hand, cutting through the threat of the team imploding. When he speaks, his voice is smooth and steady.
"Our job was to secure the virus for Arasaka. That hasn't changed. But…" He tilts his head slightly, considering. "We still have time on our hands, and we don't have to deliver the virus untouched. And Michelangelo doesn't have to be the only one watching."
I raise an eyebrow, doing my best to maintain composure. "What do you mean?"
"I know someone on the police force. If they walk in at the right moment… it could change everything, or at least buy us time. It'll put Michelangelo in a very inconvenient position to carry out Arasaka's orders, even if they wanted him to."
Mister taps around his phone screen, holding up a finger for silence. "One moment."
We wait. The quiet swells heavy, the only sound the faint buzz of an impending call.
The line clicks alive, and a gruff, tired voice cuts through.
"Who is this, and why are you calling me on this number?"
Mister doesn't hesitate. "Hello, Chief Woods."
The air goes cold. Every head in the room turns. Chief Woods? THE Chief Woods of the VPD? No one breathes, the weight of what that means crashing down at once.
On the other end, suspicion sharpens the voice.
"This is a private number. Not a public line. If this is some kind of prank, I'll hang up now."
Mister remains unshaken. "Tell Mayor Gestalt that we have the answer to your cyberpsycho issue."
"…Go on."
The room collectively reels, silent in shock.
And the line holds.