Chapter 4

Three days later, the data harvest was complete. I had achieved the first major milestone of my mission: a comprehensive dump of Thorne Corp’s current R&D, structural weakness reports, and initial schematics for Project Echo. The Director was expecting the data drop at a secure dead spot outside the city—an abandoned train yard known for its high electromagnetic interference, perfect for concealing the transfer.

I left the office at my usual time—midnight—and drove my rental sedan across town. The Syndicate had outfitted my vehicle with sophisticated cloaking tech, making me invisible to routine surveillance. Still, the process of the drop was always the most stressful. It was the moment I connected my world of fabrication (Elias Vance) to the true, brutal reality of my masters.

I parked deep within the shadows of a rusting warehouse. The area was silent, smelling of damp concrete and metallic decay. I executed the transfer sequence—a heavily encrypted packet sent via a directional burst satellite link, leaving almost no trace.

It took fifteen tense minutes. During that time, I was pure vigilance, monitoring every frequency, every flicker of light. I knew The Syndicate was watching, not just for security reasons, but to assess my compliance.

The moment the transfer confirmation flashed, my burner phone buzzed—a direct, encrypted message from The Director, bypassing all network security.

DIRECTOR: E2. Status.

I keyed my response, concise and factual. PROXY: E2 Complete. Echo schematics acquired. Vulnerability confirmed. Awaiting Phase 2. The target is highly suspicious, but compliant.

The reply was immediate, cold, and utterly dismissive of my personal risk assessment.

DIRECTOR: The target’s emotional state is irrelevant. Phase 2 begins immediately. You will now focus on gaining access to the physical controls for the main Echo power core. We need a remote shutdown capability built into your system report. Timeline accelerated by three weeks.

Three weeks. That was aggressive, reckless even. Building a remote shutdown into the main security report was essentially handing them the self-destruct mechanism. It was too fast, too sloppy. It risked exposure.

PROXY: Recommendation: Maintain current timeline. Acceleration risks premature exposure of the rootkit. Suggest Phase 2 focus on long-term data acquisition before critical systems engagement.

The Director’s reply was a hammer blow.

DIRECTOR: PROXY. Your function is execution, not consultancy. Do not deviate. Your success is predicated on my knowledge of the operational landscape. Thorne is close to publicizing Echo’s capabilities. We move now. Report Phase 2 implementation schedule within 24 hours.

I stared at the phone, the cold metal digging into my palm. The Syndicate wasn't just my mission; it was my leash, and The Director was pulling hard. My gut twisted with a sick certainty. They didn’t care about clean work; they cared about speed. They wanted Echo buried before the public could recognize its value.

I was being forced to accelerate the betrayal of Julian Thorne, a man whose only crime was protecting his company. The weight of the obsidian identity felt suffocating. I needed to get back to my base, review the schematics, and find a way to follow the Director's order while simultaneously building a failsafe—a backdoor—into the remote shutdown, a compromise that might, just might, save Julian.

I drove back, not as Elias Vance, the confident consultant, but as the proxy, the conflicted weapon, realizing with terrifying clarity that the man I was hired to destroy might be the only lifeline I had left.

Back in my penthouse, the next seventy-two hours blurred into a siege of technical planning. My task was to design a robust, auditable security solution for the Echo power core while secretly inserting the remote shutdown feature—a malicious payload hidden beneath layers of clean code.

Julian, meanwhile, was not making it easy. He demanded I work directly under him, not Anya Sharma. This meant daily, late-night reviews in his private office on the sixty-third floor.

His office was vast, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entire city. It was impeccably clean, bordering on austere, yet somehow, incredibly isolating. There were no personal touches—no photographs, no sentimental clutter. Just a massive glass desk and the silent weight of responsibility.

Tonight, I presented the initial draft of the power core defense architecture.

“It’s effective,” Julian conceded, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled under his chin as he read the printout. “But why the redundancy in the manual override access? Why three key steps for a localized shutdown? It’s inefficient.”

This was the exact layer where the malicious code was hidden. I had deliberately layered the code to require multiple access points, forcing The Syndicate to pass through several of my checkpoints.

“Inefficiency is a calculated feature, Mr. Thorne,” I explained, pointing to the schematics. “The power core is the single most critical asset. An adversary won’t hack it; they’ll try to bribe or coerce the technician who holds the manual access. By requiring three separate, authenticated personnel—each with a different key and a randomized sequence—we create a system that requires a coordinated internal conspiracy, not just one compromised employee. It’s human security, not code security.”

Julian’s eyes narrowed, processing the logic. “You see the world as a constant conspiracy, Vance.”

“I see the world as it is, Mr. Thorne,” I countered. “And your company is a prize worth killing for. The redundancy stays. Unless you prefer to rely on the competence of a single, underpaid employee.”

The jab landed. Julian sat up straighter, the implicit insult to his operational structure getting his full attention. “Draft the policy. But I want to see the final, compiled source code for that system myself. Every line.”

My blood ran cold. The compiled source code contained the remote shutdown payload.

“That’s highly irregular, Mr. Thorne,” I said, maintaining a professional front. “The source code is my proprietary property. My job is to guarantee the function, not to give away my trade secrets.”

“Your trade secret is built inside my fortress,” he retorted, his voice hardening. “If you want that unprecedented f*e, I need unprecedented transparency. I’m not running a charity. I need to know precisely what is running inside my core systems. Are you refusing?”

This was the moment of highest risk yet. Refuse, and the contract is terminated. Comply, and The Director’s payload is exposed.

I made a split-second decision. I couldn't risk the entire mission yet.

“I am not refusing, Mr. Thorne. I am protecting my intellectual property,” I said, then paused, letting a calculated compromise settle in the air. “I will provide you with a heavily obfuscated, annotated version of the source code—enough for your own internal security team to verify function, but not enough to replicate the proprietary encryption algorithms. That is my final offer.”

Julian stared at me, his intense gaze trying to pierce the truth behind my eyes. He was searching for any sign of deception. I held his gaze, my features locked into a mask of weary professionalism.

Finally, he gave a slow, deliberate nod. “Do it. But if I find a single line that suggests a backdoor, you’ll spend the rest of your contract explaining it to my legal team.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, allowing a small, professional acknowledgment of his threat.

As I gathered my materials, I felt a strange pang of something that wasn’t fear of The Syndicate, but guilt toward Julian. He was fighting for the life of his company, and I was giving him a partially obscured bomb. I walked out of his office, the cold knot in my stomach tightening with the realization that every victory for Elias Vance was a step closer to Julian Thorne’s utter destruction.