The elevator ride had been unremarkable. Iris was used to drifting between departments, sipping lukewarm coffee and piecing together puzzles no one asked her to solve. But when the doors parted and she saw Aldrin—The Chairman himself—waiting just outside, something in her stilled.
He didn't acknowledge her beyond a glance, and she didn't press. She wasn't supposed to. Still, she noticed the button he pressed after stepping in.
Floor 23.
Ainsworth's floor.
The one he had fled from earlier in silence.
She stayed inside the elevator a moment longer than she needed to, watching the indicator lights blink past each floor. It was almost noon. This wasn't where Aldrin was expected to be—not by anyone. Not even the walls seemed ready for him.
Curiosity whispered at the base of her spine.
So, instead of stepping off onto her intended floor, Iris let the doors close again, waited ten seconds, and hit the same button Aldrin had.
When she arrived, the corridor was quiet, the kind of silence that wrapped around your ankles and slowed your steps. She moved like a shadow, keeping herself tucked behind corners, glass panels, and half-open doors. Aldrin was a presence you didn't just follow—you trailed with reverence and distance.
He entered Ainsworth's office with no hesitation. No badge scan. No code. The door accepted him.
Iris crept closer, her heart thudding louder than her footsteps. She leaned just enough to peek inside.
He was at the terminal.
She watched in silence, eyes flicking between him and the screen. He moved with the calm of someone uncovering a buried weapon—layer by layer, methodical and dangerous.
She squinted.
And then she saw it.
PROJECT: Revenant Directive
STATUS: ACTIVE
BEHAVIORAL PATTERN MATCH — ALDRIN
SIMULATION RESPONSE: AUTONOMOUS EVOLUTION DETECTED
Her breath caught.
"What the hell...?" she whispered, forgetting to stay hidden.
The office was never loud, but now it felt too quiet.
Iris had just stumbled forward, drawn by something she wasn't supposed to see — Project: Revenant Directive. The terminal screen still glowed behind Aldrin like an altar left uncovered.
Her voice broke the hush, sharper than she intended.
"Is that you? Is that—something you made?"
Aldrin's body turned with a calm that made her breath catch. His stare met hers like a blade unsheathed.
Iris realized her mistake immediately.
She had crossed into a realm she didn't belong in — a realm Aldrin ruled in silence, shadows, and precision. Her heart began to thud louder in her ears, but she didn't move. Couldn't.
He stepped toward her.
Not fast. Not threatening. But deliberate — like he was making a choice with every footfall.
"You shouldn't have seen that," he said finally, voice low and deliberate, more observation than threat.
"I didn't mean to—" she tried, but his raised hand silenced her.
He was thinking.
Calculating.
Assessing whether she needed to vanish.
"I'm not your enemy," she whispered, trying to stand her ground. "You know I'm not dumb enough to go blabbing this around."
A pause.
Then, almost coldly: "Then you're just dumb enough to walk into a room like this?"
The sting landed. She didn't flinch.
"You're not the only one who's curious when Ainsworth disappears and the Chairman follows like a ghost," she said quietly. "I put two things together. That's all."
Aldrin's eyes narrowed. "And now you've seen too much."
A strange, unwelcome pressure crawled into the air between them. She knew what this place was. Aldrin didn't need force to bury someone. Just silence.
Iris stood straighter. "Then kill me."
That gave him pause.
"Because if you don't," she continued, "you'll have to deal with me asking more questions. You'll have to deal with someone wondering why the girl from floor sixteen never came back from her lunch walk."
She crossed her arms, gaze hard. "Or... you let me come. You keep me close."
Another step from Aldrin. This time closer. So close she could see the decision dancing behind his eyes.
A voice echoed suddenly down the corridor.
"Chairman?"
They both turned, spotting a junior analyst peeking around a corner.
Too late.
They'd been seen.
Iris blinked. Aldrin didn't. His expression was unreadable.
But something shifted.
He turned back to her, a flicker of judgment still in his stare.
"This is a mistake," he muttered — but not to her. To himself.
Then louder, with steel in his tone:
"You'll follow my lead. You don't speak unless I say so. You don't touch anything. You breathe when I let you."
Iris blinked again, then nodded. "Deal."
He turned, coat billowing behind him like a banner of war. She followed, not triumphant — but marked. Claimed by something colder than curiosity now.
And though he said nothing more, Iris knew it:
She was no longer just a nosy analyst.
She was a witness.
And whatever the Revenant was…
She was walking straight toward it.
The hum of the elevator doors closing faded behind them. Whispers bloomed like wildflowers through the halls — quiet, but impossible to miss. An analyst leaving the tower with the chairman? Unscheduled. Unspoken. Unnatural.
The watchful few who caught it said nothing. But their silence folded into the day like a warning tucked into an envelope.
Outside, the city was wrapped in silver light, cloud-heavy skies hanging low. Aldrin walked without pause toward his black SUV, parked neatly along the curb like it had been waiting for something inevitable.
He opened the driver's side door and paused.
Iris was there. Not beside him. Not behind. Just there.
He didn't turn.
"You followed me," he said, voice low, unreadable.
"I'm already in trouble," she said, chin slightly lifted. "Might as well enjoy the view before you throw me out."
A beat.
The passenger door unlocked with a quiet click.
She climbed in, keeping her hands visible — not because she thought he'd hurt her, but because his silence made her unsure what counted as a threat right now.
The SUV purred to life. Aldrin eased them into traffic like the machine obeyed him rather than the road.
For a time, there was only the sound of tires over pavement and the faintest undercurrent of music from the console — piano again, subtle, melancholic. She didn't recognize the piece.
Iris shifted in her seat. "People saw us leave together, you know."
He didn't react.
"Kind of hard to explain why the chairman and a low-tier analyst are driving off into the city in the middle of the day."
Still nothing. His face was stone.
Iris huffed lightly. "You're not great at small talk, are you?"
At last, he said, "No."
She let the silence breathe. Then, voice more tentative:
"What was that directive?"
He didn't answer. Didn't even blink.
She pressed. "I know what it felt like. Wrong. Not like anything I've seen in our system. That wasn't just an old protocol. That was—"
Aldrin's eyes didn't leave the road, but his voice cut clean through her thoughts.
"Do you believe in ghosts?"
Iris blinked. "I…"
"Not the ones that haunt houses," he added. "The ones that live in records. In the bones of dead systems. In things that were buried for a reason."
Something in the way he said it sent a shiver crawling up her spine.
He didn't elaborate.
She turned slightly to face him, studying the lines of his jaw, the calm in his storm-gray eyes. "You're not telling me everything."
"No."
"Should I be worried?"
"Yes."
A long pause passed between them.
She looked ahead, biting the inside of her cheek.
"You're going to shut me out the moment you don't need me anymore, huh?"
Aldrin's grip on the wheel tightened slightly — the first visible tension since they left the tower.
"Then let's make a deal," she said, straightening. "You don't cut me out. I don't say a word to the office. Not about what I saw, or where we're going."
His eyes flicked to her, slow and sharp.
She raised her hands in mock surrender. "Unless you were already planning to disappear me. Then I guess I'll scream now and save us both some time."
Another silence. Then, to her surprise, the corner of Aldrin's mouth lifted — not quite a smile, but something dry, sardonic.
"I'd prefer not to clean blood out of the upholstery."
She exhaled a short breath. "So I'm in?"
"You're tolerated."
"I'll take it."
They drove on, the city thinning into roads forgotten by time and bureaucracy. Behind them, the tower loomed in the minds of those still watching — and whispers turned slowly into questions.
The Revenant had stirred.
And the hunt had begun.
The warehouse was silent, but not dead.
Its walls whispered with old ghosts, rusted steel humming faintly under the wind's breath as it swept through fractured panes and forgotten corridors. Dust hung in the air like ancient fog — suspended, unmoving. Somewhere deeper inside, a faint electrical buzz ticked. Alive.
Ainsworth moved without sound, each step calculated, every instinct sharpened. His eyes scanned the cavernous interior. The decay was natural — but the power flickering from one terminal was not.
He approached slowly.
The screen blinked. Not a glitch. A pulse. A rhythm.
[REVENANT DIRECTIVE – NODE ECHO DETECTED]
[OBSERVE. ARCHIVE. ADAPT.]
[TARGET: AINSWORTH]
[WELCOME.]
Ainsworth's jaw clenched.
He'd designed that phrase years ago. A silent handshake between predator and prey—only ever used in off-the-books operations. And yet here it was. Triggered. Active. Evolving.
But he hadn't reactivated the directive. No one was authorized. No one should've known.
Then came the sound—subtle, soft, but unnatural in the stillness.
The scrape of a chair leg.
His hand was already hovering at his sidearm as he turned.
A figure sat across the room, draped in partial shadow, posture relaxed like a man seated in a café — not in a tomb of war and silence. The dull blue glow from the monitor revealed only the faintest outline: a coat, a faint glint of metal beneath it, the glimmer of a calm expression.
"You've been waiting," Ainsworth said, stepping forward slowly, gun still holstered but ready.
"I was curious how long it would take you," the figure said, voice low, smooth. "You were always the fastest of them."
"You reactivated a protocol that's been buried for years," Ainsworth said flatly. "A directive that doesn't just watch—it learns. And adapts."
The figure tilted their head, amused. "Isn't that what you trained it to do?"
Ainsworth's eyes narrowed.
"This isn't mimicry," he continued. "This is something else. You're not just copying strategy. You're predicting it."
"I'm not the threat you think I am," the figure replied, voice almost gentle. "But someone else is. Someone who understands that the empire isn't a structure. It's a behavior."
Ainsworth stepped closer. "Who are you?"
The figure smiled, but it didn't reach their eyes.
"I'm the consequence you all forgot to plan for."
There was a pause. Heavy. Cold.
Ainsworth's hand inched closer to his weapon. The other man watched, unblinking.
"Last chance," Ainsworth warned. "Tell me who you're working with. Why the Directive's active."
The figure rose slowly from the chair, coat parting just enough to reveal a sleek pistol holstered at their side.
"Sometimes," the figure said softly, "ghosts don't haunt places. They haunt people."
Ainsworth's weapon cleared its holster in a blur.
The other moved in tandem — smooth, trained, not startled but ready.
They stood, mirrored reflections of something once clean now twisted by the passage of time — eyes locked, steel gleaming beneath industrial gloom.
A breath passed.
Then—
BANG.
A singular shot shattered the silence. The warehouse shook with its echo. Dust exploded into the air, swallowing the scene in a storm of particles. Somewhere, a bird cried and flew into the daylight through a broken skylight.
The screen behind them blinked once more—
[…ADAPT.]
And the light dimmed.