They were using the oxygen taxes to systematically starve the lower classes and

tag them as mutants. They were culling them and turning their very souls into gasoline for their war machines.

A sudden sharp ping echoed in Sebastian’s mind.

[Warning: Admin Suspicion Spiking.] [Admin Suspicion: 5%]

Sebastian gasped and staggered backward while clutching his chest.

His physical body was reacting violently to the sheer unadulterated rage boiling inside his mind. He wasn’t just annoyed anymore. He wasn’t just acting like a pragmatic survivor. His latent killing intent was so absolute and so conceptually terrifying that it was actively leaking through his spoofed ID!

The server was registering the murderous intent of a Demigod trying to claw its way out of a Level 42 grunt’s body.

"Hey, Trent, you good man?" Rix asked looking alarmed. "You’re shaking."

"I’m fine," Sebastian gritted out and squeezed his eyes shut.

He forcefully grabbed his own heart rate. He applied a mental tourniquet to his rage and shoved the fury down into a tiny compressed box in the back of his mind. He forcefully slowed his breathing to override his biological urge to rip the entire facility apart with his bare hands.

He watched the red bar in his vision slowly tick back down.

[Admin Suspicion: 3%... 1%... 0%.]

Sebastian opened his eyes. They were completely dead and flat again. The perfect

mask of a corporate sociopath was back in place.

"Just the sight getting to me," Sebastian lied smoothly and turned his back on the acid vats.

He walked back toward the transport trucks. He needed to get the Regional Core. He needed to finish his mission and get back to Earth.

But as he listened to the wet bubbling of the Harvest Den behind him, Sebastian

made a cold unyielding promise to himself.

He wasn’t just going to steal their Core.

Before he left Server 112, he was going to burn the entire Vanguard Syndicate to

the ground.

——

The shift finally ended.

Sebastian sat on the edge of his squeaky bunk in the Vanguard barracks and

stared blankly at the rusted metal wall.

His ears were still ringing with the mechanical hum of the transport truck.

But worse than the noise was the terrible smell of the Harvest Den.

He had spent the last three hours pretending to be a loyal corporate grunt, hauling the bodies of starved civilians into meat grinder.

He didn’t flinch or break cover.

He had played the part of Trent, the Level 42 Gunner to absolute perfection.

"Hey, Trent," Rix muttered from the adjacent bunk and tossed a dirty towel into his locker. "You want to hit the mess hall? They’ve got synth-protein blocks tonight. Beats starving."

"I’m going to pass," Sebastian replied with an average tone he had mapped onto this stolen identity. "My stomach is a little wrecked from the fumes down there. Going to catch some sleep."

"Suit yourself," Rix sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. "Don’t blame you. Today

was a lot."

Sebastian waited until Rix and the rest of the squad filed out of the room.

The moment the heavy metal door slid shut, his posture shifted!

The exhausted slouch of a low-level grunt vanished and was instantly replaced by the terrifying stillness of the Sovereign of Laws.

He let out a slow breath.

"I really hate corporate jobs," Sebastian whispered to the empty room.

He pulled up his interface. The red [Admin Suspicion] meter sat peacefully at zero percent.

The planetary firewall of Server 112 was incredibly advanced but fundamentally

stupid. It only tracked what it was programmed to track.

As long as he was registered as Trent, the system expected him to perform like Trent.

If Trent suddenly dropped a miniature sun on a building or teleported across the city, the server would immediately flag the mathematical impossibility.

The Suspicion meter would hit one hundred, his Spoofing Drive would short out, and an orbital cannon would delete him.

’I need to work,’ Sebastian thought and cracked his neck. ’But Trent needs to

sleep.’

The solution was a classic exploit. He needed an alter-ego!

He needed a loadout of completely unregistered gear that didn’t tie back to his

spoofed server ID.

If he committed acts of horrific violence in an untraceable suit, the server would generate Error logs but it wouldn’t know where to send the penalty.

He waited another twenty minutes to ensure the barracks were completely dead.

Then he moved.

He didn’t use a stealth spell because he couldn’t risk the mana flare.

Instead, Sebastian relied entirely on the physical synchronization of his biological meat-suit.

At thirty percent sync, his raw agility and muscle control were beyond anything

a normal human could comprehend.

He slipped out of the barracks window and landed on the wet fire escape without making a single sound.

Sector 4 at night was a miserable labyrinth of rust and desperation.

Sebastian navigated the shadows with the practiced ease of a man walking to his kitchen for a midnight snack.

He avoided the main thoroughfares where the heavy-borg enforcers patrolled.

He stuck to the high ground and leaped across ten-foot gaps between apartment

buildings with effortless grace.

His destination wasn’t far. He had memorized the localized map during his transport ride earlier.

Two blocks east of the barracks sat a Vanguard surplus depot.

It was a massive concrete warehouse where the Syndicate stored discarded gear, defective armor plating, and confiscated civilian contraband.

Sebastian dropped silently into the alleyway behind the depot.

Two Vanguard guards were stationed at the back loading dock.

They were leaning against a stack of wooden crates, sharing a synthetic cigarette and complaining about their paychecks.

"I’m just saying, if we’re doing hazardous waste disposal, we should get hazard

pay," the first guard grumbled.

"Take it up with Garret," the second guard snorted. "See how fast he feeds you to the vats."

Sebastian stood in the absolute darkness just ten feet away. He didn’t draw a

weapon.

He simply picked up a small heavy piece of loose concrete from the puddle at his

feet.

He flicked his wrist and tossed the stone perfectly over the guards’ heads.

CLACK.

The stone hit a metal dumpster on the far side of the loading dock.

Both guards jumped and raised their kinetic rifles.

"Who’s there?" the first one barked and turned his flashlight toward the noise.

They both stepped away from the door with their backs turned to Sebastian for exactly two seconds.

It was more than enough.

Sebastian blurred forward!

He didn’t run, he glided.

He slipped right behind them and caught the heavy iron handle of the depot door.

He turned it, slipped inside, and shut it with a soft controlled click just as the guards turned back around.

"Just a sewer rat," the second guard muttered outside. "Relax."

Inside, the surplus depot was pitch black and smelled of stale dust.

Sebastian navigated the dark aisles of towering shelves.

He didn’t need a flashlight because his eyes had adjusted to the gloom perfectly.

He passed crates of standard-issue kinetic rifles and racks of dented breastplates.

He didn’t want any of it. He needed something without a digital serial number.

He needed something the system had categorized as miscellaneous trash.

He found it in a dusty crate labeled Confiscated Anomalies Pending Incineration.

Sebastian popped the latches and opened the lid.