The morning light cast its faint, grey rays through Ethan's apartment window, but he didn't notice. He hadn't slept. How could he, knowing his secret name, his only identity in this hidden world, was known to a mysterious and powerful organization?
The money in his bank account, which just twenty-four hours ago seemed like an impenetrable fortress against the world's worries, now felt like worthless paper.
What good was financial security if your very existence was threatened? The euphoria of success and peace of mind vanished, replaced by a cold, sticky feeling of paranoia.
This was the first time he'd felt the same fear he used to cleanse from his clients' minds.
He got up from his laptop, which he'd been staring at blankly for hours, and began pacing his apartment like a caged animal. He checked the front door lock three times, though he knew it wouldn't stop anyone serious.
He looked out the window at the street below, analyzing the faces of ordinary passersby, wondering if one of them was watching him. Every black car looked suspicious, and everyone in a suit seemed like a secret agent.
He realized the bitter irony of his situation. He, "Morpheus," the master of dreams who breached the fortresses of minds, was now a prisoner of his own fear in his small, four-walled fortress.
He returned to his laptop. He had been naive. He'd used this encrypted app, "The Gateway," believing it offered him absolute protection.
Now, the app seemed like an open door he'd left behind. He spent the next hour examining the app's source code, looking for any loopholes, any backdoors, any trace that might indicate how it was compromised or tracked.
He found nothing obvious. The app was designed too well, which only increased his anxiety. This meant his pursuers weren't just hackers, but an organization with immense resources.
"Somnus Corp." "Project: Morpheus."
These words buzzed in his head like a sharp hum. He had made a grave mistake accepting Dr. Thorne's mission. It had been bait, and he had swallowed it whole. "Mr. X," the unknown client, wasn't just a businessman seeking a competitive edge. He was part of the conspiracy. He was testing him, or perhaps using him as a disposable tool.
Ethan sat back down, forcing himself to breathe slowly. Paranoia wouldn't help him. Fear wouldn't protect him. He'd learned from his work that fear paralyzes logical thinking, and that was the last thing he needed right now. He had two options: disappear, change his identity, take his money and flee to the farthest place possible, hoping they wouldn't find him. Or... attack.
Disappearing seemed like the more rational choice. But he knew deep down it was a cowardly and futile option. If Somnus Corp was that powerful, they would eventually find him. Hiding meant living as prey for the rest of his life, always looking over his shoulder, always waiting for the final blow.
No. He was tired of being prey.
It was time to remind himself and the hidden world he belonged to that he wasn't just a "cleaner." He was a predator too. To defend himself, he had to know his enemy. And the first step to knowing his enemy was to find "Mr. X."
This task seemed impossible. The app was designed to prevent any direct contact or tracking. Payments passed through dozens of dummy encrypted wallets before reaching him, making tracing the money to its source a waste of time. It was a dead end... digitally.
But then, he remembered something. Something physical in this entirely digital transaction.
Dr. Thorne's pen.
The pen had been delivered to an abandoned mailbox. "Mr. X," or whoever was working for him, had to go to that physical location to place the pen there. He had left a trace in the real world.
Ethan felt a glimmer of cold hope. He switched from examining the "Morpheus" app to hacking the city's public databases. His target was specific: the archives of public surveillance cameras on the street where the mailbox was located. It was a distant shot, but it was his only chance.
He entered the approximate date and time the client had told him the pen was placed. Hours of low-quality footage appeared before him. The process was tedious and exhausting. His eyes burned as he scanned the screen, tracking every car, every passerby, every movement in that dark alley. An hour passed, then two. It was like looking for a needle in a digital haystack.
He was about to give up, thinking that whoever did the task was professional enough to avoid all cameras. Then he saw it.
It wasn't a person, but a car. A luxurious black sedan, with completely tinted windows. In the hours leading up to the delivery time, this car had never passed through the street. But in the fifteen minutes before the deadline, the car slowly passed three times, as if scouting the area. And five minutes after the specified time, the car left the street and didn't return. It was very organized and suspicious behavior.
Ethan zoomed in as much as he could. The footage was grainy and the light was poor, but he managed to make out part of the license plate. Four numbers and two letters. Not enough to definitively identify the car, but more than enough to start a search.
He began the next phase of his hunt. He used the license plate fragment he'd obtained to search public databases for luxury car services and private limousine companies. Most of the results were unrelated, but he was looking for a pattern. A company that provided cars to major corporate clients.
After a search that lasted nearly an hour, he found it. A private chauffeur company called "Zenith Executive Services," specializing in providing transport for high-level executives. Their client list was private, but through some digging in financial forums and news articles, he managed to link "Zenith" to several major corporations. One caught his attention.
"Silas Investment Group."
It wasn't a tech or pharmaceutical company. It was a boutique investment firm, obscure and elite.
But something about its sober, luxurious name seemed like a perfect front. He felt his gut instinct, that intuition honed in dangerous dream worlds, telling him this was the right thread.
Mr. X wouldn't act himself; he'd task a firm like Silas to do the dirty work, providing another layer of protection and plausible deniability.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, feeling the cold satisfaction of accomplishment replace the paranoia.
He had turned his fear into a weapon, and his helplessness into a plan. He was no longer prey waiting to be attacked. He had become a hunter, and he had just found the scent of his first prey.
His goal was no longer to wait for the next client. His goal was to create his own mission.
He opened the "Morpheus" app again, but he didn't look at the new requests window. Instead, he opened his own "inventory," the small list of entities he had captured.
There were a few, most of them weak and primitive. But the latest addition was different. The "Paranoia Entity" he had extracted from Dr. Thorne's mind. It was sophisticated, precisely designed.
He hovered his mouse cursor over it. "Origin: Artificial. Primary function: Inducing distrust and pathological suspicion."
A faint, cold smile, the first genuine smile in days, touched Ethan's lips.
He had just found his first client. Someone at "Silas Investment Group" was about to have a very bad night.
He was no longer just a landlord. It was time for him to start proactively managing his property.