the obsidian proxy

The air in the room was the only thing colder than I was. It was a private office, thirty stories above the churning, indifferent city, minimalist to the point of menace. No clutter, no personality—only the necessary tools for control. And I was one of them.

I stood before The Director, the only man whose voice could make the iron cage around my heart tremble, not with fear, but with the memory of the discipline that built it.

“Operation Obsidian Proxy,” he stated, his voice a low, melodic baritone that always sounded more like a promise than an order. He tapped a single, black file folder on the polished obsidian desk. “Thorne Corp. The target is Julian Thorne.”

My hands remained still at my sides. My expression was a blank slate, the face of Elias—no, the face of the weapon The Syndicate had spent two decades perfecting. I had a single, all-consuming purpose: infiltration, exploitation, and destruction. I was the poison sent to dismantle kingdoms.

“Thorne Corp is too big, Director,” I stated, my voice calm, analytical. My job was not to question, but to offer the most precise assessment. “Market capitalization alone makes them resilient. Their internal systems are proprietary and highly decentralized. They are a fortress.”

The Director smiled, a slight curl of the lip that didn't reach the cool intelligence in his grey eyes. “Fortresses are built by men, Elias. And men, no matter how clever, always leave a cornerstone weak enough to pry open. Julian Thorne is that cornerstone. He is brilliant, yes. But he carries a legacy he cannot afford, and he trusts too easily when he believes he is alone.”

He pushed the file across the desk. It felt heavy, not with paper, but with the immense pressure of the mission. It detailed Julian Thorne's life: his birth into corporate royalty, his staggering academic achievements in advanced cryptography, his ascension to CEO at an unnervingly young age. It was a biography of a king, complete with every potential vulnerability.

“We don’t want the company, Elias,” The Director continued, leaning back, the power radiating from him like heat off a furnace. “We want what Julian Thorne is protecting: Project Echo. It is the nexus of their future, a true quantum leap in secure networking, and it is a threat to our other interests. We don't acquire it; we break it and bury it. We want a collapse. Total, irreversible structural failure.”

Total, irreversible structural failure. That was my specialty. I had orchestrated three such failures in the last five years, each one executed with surgical precision, leaving only smoke and confusion in my wake. Each time, I walked away unscathed, unchanged, ready for the next job.

“I need an entry point. Thorne Corp’s security is layered. I can’t go in as low-level data analyst,” I said, opening the file. I scanned the initial analysis of their internal structure. My mind was already running simulations, calculating the risk-to-reward ratio of every angle.

“You won’t,” The Director said, his tone shifting to pride. “You are going in at the executive level. They recently lost their head of physical and digital defense in a rather unfortunate, abrupt accident. You will replace him. Your new identity, Elias Vance, is a highly-touted independent security consultant who specializes in corporate restructuring after hostile foreign incursions. You are expensive, elusive, and utterly trustworthy. They will be desperate enough to hire you.”

My jaw tightened imperceptibly. Trustworthy. The single word was the ultimate irony, the ultimate lie. It was the core component of my weaponization.

The Director stood, walking around the desk. His hand rested lightly on my shoulder—a rare, intimate gesture that served as a subtle reminder of who owned me.

“Your objective is dual: first, gain Julian Thorne’s complete professional trust and system access. Second, trigger the internal collapse of the Echo project. The timeline is tight, Elias. We need this done before the Q3 financials are released.”

I closed the file, the weight of the task settling perfectly into the compartment reserved for my missions. I had no family, no friends, no life outside of The Syndicate’s work. There was no hesitation, no doubt. Just the elegant clarity of a deadly assignment.

“And if he becomes a problem?” I asked, meeting The Director’s gaze. It was a necessary formality.

The Director smiled again, colder this time, a flash of pure calculation. “He is not a target for elimination, Elias. Julian Thorne is too valuable to be a martyr. We leave him with nothing but his shame and the ashes of his empire. But should he discover the truth before the collapse… well, you know the protocols. Protection of the Proxy is paramount.”

It meant if Julian found out, I had carte blanche to neutralize the threat—any way necessary. I took a deep, silent breath, the air filling my lungs but doing nothing to warm the emptiness inside.

“Understood, Director.”

I turned, the file clutched in my hand. I walked out of the cold, silent office, leaving the city lights twinkling below. In three days, Elias Vance would be born, ready to walk into the life of Julian Thorne and tear it apart, brick by careful brick. The mission was all that mattered. Anything else—any crack in the armor, any momentary lapse of discipline—was unacceptable. I was Obsidian Proxy, and the destruction of Thorne Corp was now a foregone conclusion. The only variable was the emotional damage required to achieve it.

My secure base of operations—a sterile, unmarked penthouse overlooking the harbor—was designed for exactly this: metamorphosis. The moment I locked the door behind me, the weapon known by no name shed its skin and began the exhaustive, demanding process of becoming Elias Vance.

I laid the Thorne Corp file open on the minimalist steel table. My own data, the digital life I was about to inhabit, was projected onto the wall. Every detail, every inconsistency, had to be ironed out until the fabricated history was more solid than reality. The Syndicate’s process was ruthless and flawless. Elias Vance wasn't just a fake name; he was a meticulously engineered ghost with a seven-year professional trajectory.

Birthplace: Seattle.

Education: Unnamed, but prestigious, degrees in Cybersecurity and Global Corporate Governance.

Career: A string of high-profile, successful, short-term contracts. The pattern established: He cleans up messes nobody else can, demands a king's ransom, and disappears. Elusive. Exclusive. Perfect.

The beauty of the disguise was that it was built on my real skills. I am a world-class security expert. My knowledge of hacking, defense protocols, and corporate infrastructure is unparalleled. I just usually deploy those skills with malicious intent. Elias Vance was merely the moral reflection of my true abilities.

I spent the next forty-eight hours submerged in the details of the persona. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I simply absorbed. I learned to speak with the subtle, clipped accent of old Seattle money. I chose the right tailor, the perfect watch, the specific brand of expensive, obscure whiskey that Elias Vance would occasionally drink. Every gesture, every calculated silence, was practiced until it was muscle memory.

In one file, there was a photograph of Julian Thorne. It was a high-resolution headshot from a recent Forbes article, taken moments before a public speaking engagement. He was wearing a dark suit, impeccably cut. His hair was midnight black, swept back, revealing a high, intelligent forehead. But it was his eyes that caught me—a startling, clear grey, framed by the hint of exhaustion. They held the aloof, guarded look of someone perpetually waiting for a crisis. They were beautiful. And profoundly isolated.

I stared at the image for a long moment, a flicker of something unwelcome trying to surface in my chest. Isolation. It was the only thing I truly understood, the only constant of my existence. I was built in isolation, and my work depended on finding and exploiting it in others.

Exploit his loneliness, The Director’s voice echoed in my head. He trusts too easily when he believes he is alone.

I dismissed the thought immediately. This was merely an observation, a data point. Julian Thorne was a target, not a kindred spirit.

My internal clock, governed by years of discipline, told me it was time to move from digital construction to physical preparation. I walked over to the adjacent room, which served as my armory and closet. I selected the clothing for the first few weeks—expensive, neutral, designed to blend into the executive landscape without drawing attention. Authority, not flash.

Then, I looked at my hands. They were weapons—trained for intricate disassembly, whether of a server or a man’s throat. But they also needed to look like the hands of a high-level consultant. I spent an hour practicing the elegant, relaxed posture of a man who commands deference rather than demands it. I worked on my handshake—firm, quick, professional, leaving no lingering warmth.

As I dressed in the thousand-dollar suit that was now my uniform, I caught my own reflection. Elias Vance. He looked competent, confident, and utterly impenetrable. A man with nothing to hide because he had perfected the art of hiding everything.

I picked up the burner phone—the only device that would ever connect me back to The Syndicate. I sent the single, coded message: Ready.

Less than a minute later, the reply flashed: The interview is tomorrow at 0900. Do not fail.

Failure was not an option. It wasn't just a dismissal; it was erasure. The Syndicate never allowed its failed assets to retire; they simply disappeared. I knew the stakes intimately. My brother, Marcus, had tried to walk away five years ago. I hadn't seen him since, but the memory of the sheer, panicked desperation in his last call was a cold lesson I carried with me.

I checked my briefcase. Inside, nestled beneath innocuous security proposals and financial audits, was the customized data stick. It was the key to the first phase of the plan: a rootkit designed to plant deep into Thorne Corp's network during my initial security assessment, creating a silent conduit for data siphoning. I ran through the insertion protocol one last time, timing the sequence down to the millisecond.

The man in the mirror smiled slightly—the practiced, reassuring smile of an expensive consultant. It didn't reach my eyes.

Julian Thorne, I thought, as I picked up my briefcase. I’m coming for you.