Three months later, Jay had graduated and somehow landed a job at Virexon Corp, a sleek cybersecurity firm with clean offices and dirty secrets.
On paper, it made no sense Virexon didn't recruit from Silverton Tech often, and when they did, it wasn't for entry-level misfits. Jay hadn't even applied directly the offer came through a vague recruiter email with no interview—just an NDA, a start date, and a warning: "No outside projects permitted during your employment."
He didn't trust it because the hiring was too fast with the onboarding too smooth. They gave him the system card access on his first day but what they didn't know he was far too deep for a junior analyst. But Jay needed money because he was late on rent with his laptop barely working. And part of him the reckless part wanted in, so he played along.
He wore the suit with memorizing department names. He laughed at bad jokes from his supervisor, a hollow man named Mr. Cormac who wore his smile like a barcode. Jay drank the awful breakroom coffee where he even joined the "Wellness Breathing Circles" Virexon offered every Wednesday.
But beneath it all, he was still Mindfire so at night, he tapped into the internal network through hidden backdoors. During meetings, he focused not on what his coworkers said but what they thought and slowly, he began to see it. Fear and caution with silence that wasn't professional it was forced.
Some workers thought of "Phase Two" with unease. Some carried encrypted USBs that never left their pockets. And once, in the stairwell, he heard a stray thought so loud it echoed like thunder:
"Don't say it out loud they hear through the vents now."
Jay knew then Virexon wasn't just shady it was dangerous. Two weeks into the job, Jay found it: a folder deep within a virtual machine nested behind fake updates and system logs.
[ Project Echo]
The file pulsed like a heart encrypted with triple firewalled and military grade protection. He cracked the first two layers after hours of sweat, code, and stolen admin tokens. Inside, he found location logs with GPS points that matched illegal warehouse shipments he'd traced as Mindfire months ago.
Shipment manifests with strange symbols along with chemicals coded as "neural substrates." And names government officials, private prison directors, politicians. All tied together by vague payments marked as "infrastructure expansion." Jay copied what he could onto a hidden drive but not all of it just enough.
Then the voice returned it was not one of his coworkers and not himself but something else.
["You're in deeper than you know. They're watching you now."]
Jay spun in his chair, heart racing no one behind him. The cubicle was empty except for the blinking light of the security camera in the corner. He tried to push back tried to listen instead of reacting. Silence hovered but the voice had been felt real. It wasn't like when he picked up random thoughts this was directed, sharp. A message meant only for him. And then, as if summoned by it, a calendar reminder popped up on his screen.
[ Mandatory Audit. Floor 12. Conference Room Z. 5:00 PM.]
Jay blinked.
He hadn't scheduled anything but at 4:58 PM, Jay stepped onto Floor 12. It was quieter than the rest of the building less buzz, fewer voices. The walls were gray instead of white, and the ceiling lights flickered every few steps. An old printer gave off the smell of hot metal and ozone. He found Conference Room Z It wasn't a room but rather it was a security checkpoint. Two guards stood in front of a reinforced glass door. No name tags just suits and black gloved hands.
"Jay Elric?" one asked.
He nodded slowly.
"Come with us. This is just protocol."
"Protocol for what?" asked Jay.
Inside, the room it was bare with one table and three chairs. A single overhead light that buzzed faintly like a bug about to zap. A woman waited for him she was tall, elegant, dressed in a suit sharper than steel. Her black hair was braided neatly down her back, and her eyes were a strange shade of gold—too bright. Almost glowing.
"Mr. Elric," she said. "I'm Director Halden. Sit."
Jay sat.
She opened a folder, fingers precise like clock hands.
"Routine review," she said. "We do this with all new hires. Nothing to worry about."
He said nothing.
"Your academic record is impressive. Your scholarship notes were… updated recently. Quite suddenly."
Jay kept his face calm.
"Unusual hacking signatures have appeared on Virexon's outer perimeters," she continued. "Highly advanced. Not military, but close. You wouldn't happen to know anything about a user called Mindfire, would you?"
His blood turned to ice.
"No," he said evenly.
Her eyes flicked upward. "Pity."
A long pause.
Then she smiled. "You'll be moved to a different division starting Monday. Project Echo needs fresh minds."
Jay stiffened. "Project Echo?"
"Oh, don't act surprised," she said. "We know what you are, Mr. Elric."
She leaned in slightly.
"Have you… heard anything interesting lately?"
Jay's lips parted, but no sound came out.
"You're not the only one," she whispered. "We've studied your kind for a long time."
The lights flickered.
A second later, a scream echoed from somewhere down the hall. Distant—but not that distant.
Jay's breath caught.
Halden stood slowly. "That'll be all for today. We'll speak again soon."
She left him alone in the cold room.
No guards escorted him out with no cameras what was following him was only silence. And a new calendar alert blinking on his screen by the time he returned to his desk it said:
[Welcome to Phase Two.]
[ Access granted. Terminal D-9.]
That night, Jay sat in his apartment, staring at the encrypted USB from The Neural Rebellion.
He hadn't opened it yet.
Now he was afraid to.
Were they still out there?
Was Halden one of them?
Or worse… had The Neural Rebellion sent him into something even they didn't understand?
He opened the drive.
And a single file loaded:
[Echoes Don't Lie]
Before he could click, his laptop crashed into a black screen. And a message glowed faintly behind the screen glass, not part of the system. A thought burned into the inside of his mind:
"Run. Now."