The light in the hotel suite was gray and cold when Ethan stirred. Outside, the city was just starting to hum with its Friday morning restlessness, but inside, his mind was already sprinting.
He slipped out of bed and moved to the desk without bothering to stretch or rub his eyes. His body moved on autopilot—his mind, however, was a lightning storm of computation. Windows flickered open across three monitors; he had upgraded his setup in the last few days. Now he looked at the overlapping digital blueprints, identity logs, and auction files. On his phone, an encrypted time-sync app blinked green. His thoughts were already threading pathways, running cost-benefit simulations, and weighing risk profiles.
Time to finalize.
Alias 04—Samuel Rourke—was growing roots. Last night, he'd seeded two minor tech forums with accounts referencing his "consulting work." He'd published a placeholder blog post on a page hosted under a forgotten .net domain purchased from a reseller in Slovakia. Small but deliberate breadcrumbs. Over time, they'd mature into the digital patina of a living person.
But today wasn't about Samuel's life.
Today was about his first hideout.
Ethan slid to the center screen and pulled up the property shortlist again: three files hovered in virtual folders.
Brooklyn – A condemned laundromat. Good access, zero foot traffic, but zoned poorly.
Yonkers – A two-story fixer-upper. Quiet suburb, potential nosy neighbors.
Newark – An old print shop. Auction-listed. Legitimate transfer route. Basement access. Broken freight elevator. Thick concrete walls.
Ethan leaned in.
The Newark site was a gem in disguise. The print shop had been abandoned for seven years after a fire damaged part of its upper floor. What the records didn't show—but satellite imaging and utility data did—was that the building still had active underground plumbing and a backup diesel power line. A cross-reference with a city zoning loophole revealed he could register it as a commercial archival storage facility under the right name.
More importantly, the property was on public auction—meaning he could use a shell buyer without raising flags.
His fingers danced across the keyboard. He routed a 48-hour crypto hold through an Estonian proxy, layering mixers across Monero and Zcash protocols. The shell buyer—"Kobalt Services"—wasn't real, but it didn't need to be. It just had to exist long enough to sign the papers and disappear.
He uploaded forged ID files, inserted a digital signature, and triggered the transactional dead drop chain.
Purchase Initiated.
His phone buzzed.
Paige.
He didn't pause before answering.
"Ya still breathin', Ethan?" Her voice cracked through with its usual southern lilt, light but concerned. "School's boring without you."
Ethan leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes still scanning purchase confirmation logs. "I'm alive. Still laying low and resting. Should be back on Monday though."
"You better. Ms. Felicia Harper's ghosted after day one, and we have a substitute. Amy and that other girl, Rachel, are still out, too."
Ethan's mind pivoted mid-call. Amy and Rachel's absence was expected. Felicia's withdrawal, however, was sooner than he thought. Trauma cascade effect? Emotional fatigue from magical bullshit? Or... awareness creeping in?
He responded lightly. "Can't blame anyone for taking time. Some things take longer to walk off."
"Well, just don't forget me, alright? Take care of yourself."
He smiled faintly. "You too."
She hung up.
Ethan tossed the phone onto the bed, then returned to the screens with renewed urgency. He brought up the internal layout of the Newark property and launched a 3D model overlay program. His fingers began tagging zones:
Zone A – Primary safe room.
Zone B – Equipment vault.
Zone C – Emergency exit tunnel (subject to excavation).
Zone D – Shielded comms room (Faraday lining).
Zone E – Sleeping space. Small. Secure. Silent.
He opened another window and launched an optimization subroutine—Sage's enhancement kicked into overdrive. Calculations streamed through his thoughts like code. Structural reinforcements. Power load potential. Airflow regulation for underground environments.
He was designing a fortress that would allow him to be invisible to the world for a while.
Ethan opened a logistics tracker and began logging next steps:
Purchase and seal the space under Alias 04.
Set up PO boxes and dead drops through third-party couriers.
Begin ordering preliminary gear: Faraday tent, biometric locks, backup batteries.
A timer beeped softly. Crypto hold confirmed.
The first major asset was his.
Next, he would need to find a small Real Estate office. He would hire them and give them a Limited POA for Real Estate Transactions. With that, he would give a real estate attorney the legal authority to sign closing documents on his behalf, accept the delivery of the deed, and record the deed in Samuel Rourke's name.
Once the attorney mailed the deed to the P.O. Box, he could start renovating the building, and it would soon be untouchable.
He leaned back, steepled his fingers, and stared at the flickering map of the Newark property.
"This is it," he murmured. "Home base zero."
But he wasn't done—not yet.
He opened a secure app on his phone. Tapped in a series of numbers. One line stood at the top of the call log: A.
He tapped.
Amy answered on the third ring. Her voice was groggy, but not unfriendly. "Hey, Ethan…"
"Did I wake you?" he asked, keeping his tone gentle, casual.
"Nah. Just… slow morning. Haven't been sleeping great." A faint pause. "Weird dreams. Loud ones."
Ethan leaned forward, elbows on his desk. "Are you okay? Loud how?"
"They're filled with stars. But not peaceful ones—these are moving, whispering. I can't remember what they say, but it feels like they're… waiting for something. Watching me. And I…" She stopped, uncertain.
"You what?"
"I float sometimes. When I wake up. Like my body's not heavy anymore. And my skin glows faintly in the dark. Not bright—just enough to see."
Ethan nodded silently, though she couldn't see him.
Internally, his thoughts swirled like a data storm.
'Is it magical signature persistence or something else? Amy, as the host of Nut's essence and power, must synchronize beyond what is normal. Is it an aftereffect of Nsanti? Whatever it it must be empowering Amy—changing her on a quantum level, I think. Reshaping her on a cellular… no, maybe something deeper. Regardless, she's like this due to my actions, so I need to make sure she's okay.'
But out loud, he said, "That sounds… overwhelming. Are you okay?"
"I think so. I don't feel sick. Just… different. Sometimes I feel like I'm standing at the edge of the sky, you know?"
"I don't really get it, but just know that you're not alone," he said softly. "If you need to talk, I'm always here for you."
Amy's voice wavered for a moment. "Thanks, Ethan. I mean it."
They ended the call a few minutes later, Amy sounding more grounded. Ethan, meanwhile, returned to his monitors, already logging every word she'd said.
He opened a fresh document: Subject: Amy Williams – Nut Bond Case Study. He timestamped her symptoms and added a hypothesis: Partial transcendence? Could also be avatar conditioning? Maybe holding both a demon's and a goddess's power within for a moment caused these changes. Maybe this will allow Amy's body to handle her powers with ease. Must prioritize her well-being.
But he set it aside for now.
There were still many things to do and even more things to consider.
Ethan opened his darknet procurement board, split into four columns: High Priority, Delayed Delivery, Proxy Sensitive, and DIY.
High Priority:
Silent diesel generator (with internal mufflers).
Portable Faraday tent (for comms blackout testing).
Tiered biometric lock modules (offline operation only).
Delayed Delivery:
Solar panels (camouflaged roof installation).
Water purification system (compact, solar-powered).
Proxy Sensitive:
Concealed thermal cameras.
Unmarked medical kits.
Pressure-sensitive floor tiles for intrusion detection.
DIY:
Custom data vaults (built from old server racks).
Vibration-triggered alert nodes (coded in microcontrollers).
Hard-light reflective surface mesh for panic room camouflage.
Each item had a delivery pathway planned: some to PO boxes, others to rotating drop points Ethan had mapped using cross-city courier exploits. He was cautious about quantities—nothing too large, nothing too synchronized. No patterns.
He tapped open a private inventory board: Safehouse Construction Timeline. Based on current estimates, he'd have rudimentary shelter and backup power within two weeks. Full security perimeter and silent systems? Two months—if nothing delayed the deliveries.
As his mind began looping simulations, counterfactuals, and emergency response blueprints, his vision cleared like fog lifting. Now that everything was set, he could relax his mind a little, as even for him, his constant thinking and making plans did get tedious without time to relax in between.
Ethan leaned back and closed his eyes—a mistake. The silence, paired with thoughts of how to keep his parents safe, dragged old ghosts from their graves.
A hallway.
A scream.
The sound of glass shattering and his mother's breath catching halfway through his name.
The memory punched through before he could stop it—his tiny hands clutching a candy bar, a man's shadow falling over them, the muzzle flash that tore the world in half. The smell of copper and smoke. The way her weight slumped against him, warm and heavy. His father's roar, later—the first wordless proof of hatred that would never end.
What followed was despair and beatings that carved scars deeper than the wounds ever could. His only grace, the only thing that kept him sane, had been the heroes from the comics he loved—the ones who could save everyone. The kind he knew he could never be.
He saw it all again, sharp and merciless, as though someone had ripped the scar open.
He gasped and gripped the desk until his knuckles turned white, trying to breathe, trying to shove the memory back down. But the past bled into the present, warping into a nightmare: his current parents lying dead on the hotel floor, blood pooling beneath them, their eyes wide with that same disbelief and fear.
His pulse spiked. His mind whispered the same phrase again and again, mechanical, terrified as he curled in on himself.
"It'll be my fault again. It'll be my fault again. It'll be my fault again… Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Don't hit me, Dad. It's my fault."
Minutes slipped away. When he finally steadied, he pressed a trembling hand to his temple and cursed under his breath, tears streaking down his face.
"Damn it… even with Sage's mind, some ghosts won't stay buried."
He sat back, staring at his reflection in the dark screen until it stopped shaking. Then, piece by piece, he rebuilt the mask. The analyst. The strategist. The one who would never make such mistakes again. The boy who could turn those memories and the pain attached to them into precision.
The ghosts quieted—for now.