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THE COST OF AUTONOMY

ผู้เขียน: Celine Kitty
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-01-17 18:30:06

The morning was quiet. Too quiet.

I sensed it the moment I stepped into the estate. The guards’ subtle shifts, the way staff avoided eye contact, the faint hum of restrained urgency; it all whispered that something had already moved without warning.

Dominic was waiting in the library, his posture rigid, hands clasped behind his back. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes betrayed concern.

“You’ve been observed,” he said immediately, not asking.

“I know,” I replied. “Marcus Vale is testing
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  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   RIFT

    Trust doesn’t collapse all at once.It thins first, like ice under invisible heat. You still walk on it. You still believe it will hold. And then one step lands wrong, and everything gives way beneath you.The internal breach changed the air inside the safe house. Not panic, Dominic never allowed panic, but compression. Voices lowered. Movements sharpened. Every access request became suspect. Every familiar process felt newly fragile.Someone inside one of our protected channels had sold routing metadata. Not operational plans. Not identities. But pathways, how information moved, where it paused, who touched it.In the wrong hands, pathways are more valuable than payload.“Show me the leak geometry again,” I said.We were in the strategy glass, a sealed analytics room wrapped in smart-surface displays. Dominic stood beside me, jacket off, sleeves rolled, posture relaxed but charged, like a blade resting flat.I expanded the network lattice and replayed the breach cascade. Three hops.

  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   ELARA'S POV

    Control doesn’t always break with violence.Sometimes it fractures under attention.By midday, the Crownbreakers’ move had already started reshaping the board. Not loudly, never loudly, but in subtle withdrawals and polite refusals. Two partner nodes delayed cooperation. One logistics channel suddenly required “extended verification.” A data broker we’d used for years went temporarily unreachable.No threats. No ultimatums.Just doors closing softly.“They’re testing how we breathe,” I said, watching the network dashboard thin like winter branches.Dominic stood behind me, one hand braced on the back of my chair, the other holding a secure tablet. He hadn’t stepped far from me all morning, not hovering, not obvious, but present in a way that felt deliberate. Protective without being possessive.“They’re measuring dependency ratios,” he replied. “Seeing which arteries matter.”“And if they find the critical ones?”“They buy them,” he said.His calm should have unsettled me. Instead, it

  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   THE OFFER THAT WASN'T A THREAT

    Elara: First Person POVMarkets don’t begin with gunfire.They begin with invitations.That was the first thing Dominic said after the purchase orders were confirmed and the room cleared. His tone wasn’t dramatic; just precise, like he was reciting physics instead of strategy. The kind of truth that didn’t need emphasis because it always proved itself eventually.We relocated within the safe house to a quieter operations wing, fewer people, thicker walls, signal-controlled airspace. It felt less like a bunker and more like a vault. Appropriate, considering someone had just tried to buy the world around us.I sat across from him at a narrow steel table, reviewing the spread map again. Influence nodes. Communication exchanges. Quiet takeovers. No explosions. No assassinations. Just ownership shifting like tectonic plates.“They’re not loud,” I said.“They don’t need to be,” Dominic replied. “Noise is inefficient.”“And you’ve crossed them before.”“Yes.”“And lived.”“Barely,” he said;

  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   THE VACUUM MARCUS LEFT BEHIND

    Victory has a strange aftertaste.People expect relief. Celebration. Closure.But what I felt after Marcus Vale fell was something colder; like standing in a room where a fire had just burned out, the air still hot but the shadows deeper than before.Power never disappears. It redistributes.And redistribution is when the real predators arrive.The safe house settled into controlled quiet after the perimeter breach. Reports came in, confirmations stacked, threat vectors downgraded. The team relaxed in fractions; shoulders lowering, voices returning, footsteps less urgent.Dominic did not relax.I’ve learned to read him in micro-movements. The stillness that looks calm but isn’t. The way his eyes pause half a second longer on doorways. The way his fingers rest near, not on, his phone, ready.Waiting.“For this to be over,” I said quietly, stepping beside him at the operations table, “you look like someone expecting the next strike.”He didn’t look at me. “Because I am.”“Same group?”

  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   INTO THE STORM

    The drive felt endless.Dominic didn’t speak. His hand rested lightly on mine for a moment before moving to the gear shift, fingers tense, thumb brushing his own jaw unconsciously. I kept my gaze on the city, though I felt it shrinking behind us, swallowed by the early fog rolling in from the outskirts. Every shadow, every curve of the road, reminded me that Marcus Vale’s defeat had not ended the world’s hunger for power.“We need a perimeter,” Dominic said finally, breaking the silence. His voice was steady, precise, but there was a weight beneath it I hadn’t heard before, a protective edge sharpened by instinct.“I can handle surveillance,” I replied, my fingers brushing against his on purpose, a subtle anchor in a world that felt increasingly chaotic. “Let me see who’s watching us. Let me help.”He looked at me then, really looked, and I felt the weight of his scrutiny. Not suspicion, not doubt, but calculation; measured, precise, and yet… there was something softer hiding behind i

  • OWNED BY THE DEVIL   THE CALM BEFORE IT BREAKS

    I woke thinking the world had paused.The night had been ours, long, quiet, full of things I hadn’t allowed myself to feel before. Dominic beside me, steady, unguarded, and finally… human.I almost forgot that the city outside never sleeps. That danger never sleeps. That Marcus Vale might be gone, but the world was still very much alive and unforgiving.A sharp buzz pulled me from my thoughts. My phone vibrated on the nightstand.I frowned. No name. No number saved. Just a string of encrypted digits.Dominic stirred behind me, lifting his head from the pillow. “Not morning yet,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep. “What is it?”I sat up, squinting at the screen. My heart thudded in a way I didn’t expect; not from fear, not entirely, but from the sudden pull of adrenaline.“It’s… someone watching,” I said. “Someone new.”Dominic was instantly alert, his hand on the edge of the bed, the blanket sliding from his shoulders. In a single movement, he was upright, moving toward the door. “S

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