The hotel room was quiet, lit only by the soft spill of morning sunlight bleeding through half-closed curtains. Ethan stirred to the hum of the city outside—muffled car horns, distant sirens, the low drone of life continuing just beyond his walls.
On the nightstand sat a plate with toast and eggs and a cup of tea, still warm, with a note stuck to money next to the plate in his mother's careful handwriting: "Here's money for lunch. Had to rush to work, didn't want to bother you, love you sweetie."
She'd tried to act like things were normal. He appreciated the gesture.
Ethan swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rubbed his face. The room was temporary, but it had become his command center. Laptop. Phone. Notebooks. Sticky notes tacked to the mirror. Identity schematics scattered across the desk like blueprints of a new person.
'Phase 1 is stable,' he thought. 'But survival isn't one move. It's a net and this net can barely stop run-of-the-mill criminals.'
Phase 2 had to begin now. A safehouse wasn't optional—it was a guarantee he could disappear when needed. The longer he stayed Ethan Kane, the more vulnerable he was. He needed somewhere to vanish to.
Just as he opened his laptop, his phone buzzed.
Paige.
He answered quickly, keeping his tone light.
"Hey."
"Where in the hell are ya?" she asked, voice low and thick with drawl. "Ms. Harper's been huntin' you down like a bloodhound since first period."
"My parents wanted me to take a few days off," Ethan replied. "Y'know… decompress or something."
There was a pause. "Well, shoot… I guess that makes sense," she said, softer now. "You alright?"
"I'm good. Just tired."
"Mmhm. Harper's actin' like wants to grill ya. Want me to spin somethin' for her?"
"Just tell her I'm out sick. I'll be back in a few days."
"Will do." Then, gentler, "Don't go disappearin' on us again, alright?"
"I won't."
She hesitated a beat, then hung up.
The quiet returned.
Ethan cracked his knuckles, pulled up his new blank alias board, and typed the name: Samuel Rourke.
The alias needed to be American—U.S.-born, fully traceable, but buried deep enough not to raise flags. After setting up every countermeasure he could think of to hide his traces he dove into an archived Social Security database, exploiting a vulnerability in a state-run government web form. After an hour of combing dead records, he found his base: a child who died 16 years ago at the age of seven. No siblings. Parents deceased two years later. Clean.
He began rewriting.
Death certificate quietly deleted from county records.
Hospital notes altered to reflect a miraculous survival, moved into foster care under sealed state records.
He fabricated a progression—elementary school in Pennsylvania. High school transcripts forged from a now-defunct online academy. Community college in Ohio. Then an IT certificate course and minor freelance work that could be traced to dark web exchanges and VPN-obscured gigs.
He wrote a persona.
Samuel was quiet, reclusive, a security consultant who preferred encrypted email and left few digital traces. His main work: off-grid systems hardening, anonymous hosting consultation, and low-profile threat mitigation.
Now came the smoke.
He bought two aged domain names and set up a static website—rourkesecurity.net. Sparse. Black text on white. Nothing flashy. Just credentials, vague references, and an encrypted contact form.
He created a social media account and followed ten mid-tier cybersecurity experts, created a bot to reshare posts once a week with innocuous tech comments. He made a LinkedIn, locked down tight, with one contact from a fake company in Utah. Enough to look like a loner, but not a fake.
Then he logged it all in his identity tracker, syncing it to his phase schedule. Samuel Rourke was now real enough to be noticed, but not questioned.
Next came the hard part—property.
Ethan accessed five real estate search platforms, sorted by lowest price and least public activity. He filtered by commercial spaces, small footprints, and non-residential listings under $100,000.
Then he added a filter of his own: satellite camera density.
He mapped security networks, public cameras, and known surveillance zones using scraped data from municipal utility databases. Every intersection and corner with a feed was logged. Ethan cross-referenced these maps against property listings to eliminate high-surveillance zones.
Eventually, he narrowed it down to three.
In Brooklyn, there was an old, condemned laundromat tucked behind a deli and two garages. The main floor was useless—but the basement was dry, disconnected from the grid, and accessible from an alley gate with no working cameras nearby. Total cost: $65K. Seller: anonymous property group looking for fast, cash-based deal.
The second was in Newark. It was a derelict print shop near the edge of a light rail stop, abandoned for five years. It had thick concrete walls, layered lower levels, and a broken freight elevator shaft that might still be usable. Bonus: no working street lamps on its block. Price: negotiable, auction listing.
That last could be found in Yonkers. A crooked two-story house with water damage, graffiti on the back walls, and an overgrown fire escape. Looked like a squat—but had a sealed basement and dual-entrance layout. Not listed officially. Available via a foreclosure handler site.
He noted all three, flagged the agents, and sent crafted inquiries from Samuel Rourke's ghost email, requesting details and physical schematics under the pretense of "setting up a minimal-contact restoration studio."
He ended with a burner signature and encrypted response option.
Then he waited.
The hotel lights dimmed with a flick of Ethan's fingers as he pulled the blackout curtains shut. The day's sunlight had faded into an orange smear across the skyline, leaving the room in a cool, artificial glow.
He checked his laptop—no replies yet from the property agents. Good. It meant the messages weren't bouncing, and the fake buyer persona hadn't triggered any flags. Now it was time for the next piece of the puzzle.
He navigated to his secure bank account. His siphoned account had grown quietly while he'd been recovering from the pocket dimension ordeal. $2.5 million. Clean. Untouched. Waiting.
Ethan generated a new crypto wallet under "Samuel Rourke." Then two more under obfuscated variants: "S.R Consulting" and "NetSafeSR." Each one routed through a different mixer network, with gaps in timing and transaction structure.
He moved small amounts first—$500 here, $1,200 there. Let it sit. Watch for any upticks in surveillance pings or external pings on the wallet address. None came.
Next, he tested purchase logistics.
He used one of the wallets to order:
Two burner phones.
A set of portable power bank modules.
Three encrypted USB storage sticks.
Each order was processed through a black-market intermediary, anonymized, and shipped to a PO box registered under one of his early shell companies—"GreyGlass Logistics LLC"—using forged ID documents he'd prepared during Phase 1.
He marked the shipment times, routed the tracking through dummy terminals, and logged the potential windows for interception.
Couriers had a 3-6 hour blind window after package drop. The postal office held PO box drops for up to 72 hours with no flag unless queried. Acceptable.
He noted potential flaws—any large or high-risk shipment would require local interception or decoy recipients. For future safehouses, that meant building buffer identities or drop managers. More steps. More time.
But the system worked.
Slowly, piece by piece, he was carving out invisibility.
Once logistics were stable, he dove back into the underground—this time, the darknet proper.
Under his ShadowStitch handle, Ethan browsed three forums he trusted: RedLink, HydraRift, and NexusCrate. These weren't places for buying drugs or hit jobs—they were for technocrats, rogue engineers, and displaced black-market fixers who dealt in tools that governments didn't want to admit existed.
He compiled a search list:
DIY Faraday kits—small room-sized electromagnetic isolation setups.
Signal jammers—low-frequency and burst-range devices with minimal power draw.
Thermal insulation sheets—used by smugglers to conceal heat signatures from drones and IR scans.
Non-networked surveillance setups—cameras, motion sensors, and biometric locks that never touched the cloud.
From three top-rated vendors, he curated a gear shortlist:
Vendor: HexFault (Estonia) – Known for hand-built Faraday structures and adaptive noise jammers. Products reviewed as "military grade minus the war crimes."
Vendor: BlackHatch (China) – Specialized in thermal dampening panels and insulation paint that masked EM and heat readings for up to six hours post-application.
Vendor: WRAITH-X (U.S. based) – Provided biometric kits with randomized internal IDs, motion sensors that used air pressure differentials, and untraceable door locking systems.
All came with warnings. All were pricey. All were traceable if misused, but he could easily solve that.
He didn't buy anything—yet. But he recorded estimated costs, delivery times, and flagged optimal drop methods per vendor.
Next, he created a working inventory document: "Minimum Viable Safehouse Kit – Phase Alpha":
Low-frequency jammer (stealth bubble).
Silent generator (off-grid power).
Ventless heater (thermal-neutral).
Medical kit (burns, concussions, trauma).
Tiered security (camouflage first, deterrence second).
He'd prioritize camouflage for now. Heavy security would come later.