Chapter 2: Ghost Code

Alex Chen hadn't slept.

Not exactly.

His body had collapsed into bed, sure—but his mind had been running like a GPU on overclock. Images, stats, upgrades, and that throbbing message haunted every second of restless sleeping.

"You were chosen, Alex Chen. Welcome to the next evolution."

He sat up as sunrise cut through his broken blinds. The System HUD shone calmly in the corner of his eye, almost as though it had been waiting.

Quest Progress: 0%

[Explore Origin] – Learn the origin of the system integration.

Reward: Skill – DeepScan

Time Limit: 24 hours

"Of course there's a timer," he muttered, hauling himself to the kitchen.

The coffee machine made a mechanical death gurgle. He resigned himself and chewed on another protein bar instead, eyes already scanning the System panel. His new Upgrade Point glowed temptingly.

He hovered over Mental Capacity, but something gave him pause.

He reloaded his Status screen:

[Alex Chen – Status Screen]

Level: 1

Mental Capacity: 12

Reaction Time: 9

Memory Index: 10

Physical Strength: 8

Focus Duration: 7

Available Upgrade Points: 1

"Okay, think," he told himself, pacing the kitchen. "The System knows me. Or somebody does. It's embedded in my perception—so either this is hyper-advanced neural tech… or I'm going insane in the most productive way possible."

He opened his laptop and launched a sandboxed dev environment.

There has to be something. A footprint. A pattern. Ghost code.

He began typing frantically, apart from the primitive fear clawing at his chest.

Somebody must have planted something this invasive, it would have to leave a mark—even if only in neuro-signal modulation. Perhaps not in standard channels. But Alex now had something better.

Augmented focus. Augmented memory.

He'd remembered lines of old code from college he hadn't thought about in years.

He wasn't the same.

Three hours later, Alex stared at the monitor in disbelief.

There it was.

Deep within the SynTech neural cloud network trash data, he'd uncovered a pattern of deepwave signal injections—non-random, repeating every 17 minutes, slight waveform variance.

Just the kind of pattern you'd get from a stealth system implant.

The same one that pinged when the System went live.

"SynTech," he growled. "You bastards."

It was not an accident. He had not stumbled into anything.

He had been working for the people building this thing all along.

The System pinged again.

Progress: 23%

[Explore Origin] – Trace the signal source

Alex dove back into the code, hands flying.

He traced the signal through a proxy server in Iceland, then another node in Taiwan. He knew the game of obfuscation well—it wasn't meant to confuse hackers, it was meant to confuse detection protocols.

Security through excessive complexity.

But he wasn't normal anymore.

He saw patterns where he shouldn't.

An hour of frantic tracing later, he hit a brick wall.

Private Node Detected

Access: Denied

Firewall Class: Quantum

A gentle chime rang in his head.

[New Objective Unlocked]

Infiltrate Quantum Firewall.

Reward: Passive Skill – Code Slicer Lv.1

Warning: High Risk – Intrusion May Trigger Alert.

Alex slowly exhaled. "Well, subtlety was never my thing."

He engaged a personal custom attack suite. It wasn't made for quantum-level encryption—but maybe, with the System…

"System," he experimented, intrigued. "Can you assist with decryption?"

To his surprise, the HUD responded:

System Skill Unlocked: Decrypt (Basic)

Temporary Boost Activated – Memory Index +2 | Mental Capacity +1 (Duration: 10 minutes)

The code burned in front of him like stars reconfiguring into constellations.

He attacked the firewall with surgical precision, using timing leaks, false redundancies, and recursive traps. Screaming streams of counter-code howled across the terminal, but Alex hung on.

And then—

Access Granted.

His heart nearly stopped.

A directory opened.

And at the top: Dr. Rachel Kim – Core Research Logs.

He had just had time to open the first file when the terminal screamed in alarm.

[ALERT: Intrusion Detected – Trace Initiated]

Source Node Lock in 60 seconds.

"Shit—shit—shit—"

Alex ripped the connection by hand, purging RAM and flushing caches. The system nearly locked up under the pressure. His laptop roared with heat, fans choking like they were suffocating.

Then it stopped.

No trace. At least… he hoped.

The HUD chimed again.

Objective Complete: Explore Origin – 94%

Partial Data Retrieved – Rachel Kim Logs (Fragment 01)

Skill Unlocked: DeepScan Lv.1

+1 Upgrade Point Gained

Alex collapsed back in his chair, heartbeat racing.

Fragment 01 – Project Transcendence

"Test Subject 001 failed again. The System sync was unstable. Brainwave rejection at 0.3% divergence. We require someone whose mental elasticity compensates on the fly.

I warned them forced installations would not take. It has to be. organic. Selected, not implanted.".

Whoever finds the System deserves it.

End log."

Alex scowled at the screen, jaw clenched.

He hadn't been hacked. He hadn't been picked at random.

He'd been picked by some kind of neural evolution experiment. And the researcher responsible for it—Rachel Kim—worked at SynTech.

Or at least she used to.

The logs were two years old.

He tapped his status screen again.

[Alex Chen – Status Update]

Level: 2

Mental Capacity: 13

Reaction Time: 9

Memory Index: 12

Physical Strength: 8

Focus Duration: 7

Available Upgrade Points: 2

He didn't hesitate this time. One point into Mental Capacity, one into Reaction Time.

The world slowed down again—not physically, but perceptually. Like time ran at 1x and his brain ran at 2x. Everything was. responsive.

Hyperreal.

Then a new notification slid into his field of view.

[New Threat Detected]

Suspicious Behavior Logged – External Watchdog Activated.

Entity Tag: Viktor

Status: Aware.

The name paralyzed him.

"Viktor…

The name had been mentioned before. In whispers. Within SynTech. Never formally, never in meetings. But always with whispered respect… or fear.

And now whoever—or whatever—Viktor was, they knew he existed.

The game had changed.

That night, Alex never returned home.

He wandered the maze of Neo-San Francisco's underworld prefectures—abandoned data centers, derelict subway tunnels, half-built vertical farms converted into housing blocs.

He ended up on the outskirts—a dead old coworking space.

The door wouldn't lock, but he wedged a chair under the handle and plugged a portable rig into the wall.

If he was going to survive what was coming, he needed allies. Information. Tools.

And most of all…

He needed to find Dr. Rachel Kim.

She created the System.

She knew why he'd been chosen.

And she might be the only one who could advise her on how to survive Viktor.

The System addressed her again.

New Quest Available: Locate Rachel Kim

Status: Missing. Last Seen – Sector 23, Arcadia BioCorp

Reward: Unknown

Alex smiled grimly.

"Guess we're leveling up."

The upgrade had begun.