CHAPTER 302: GHOST DATA

The engine’s echo was gone, leaving the neighborhood draped in a heavy, watchful quiet. Sirens hadn’t arrived yet, but I could already see curtains shifting in windows, neighbors peeking out with frightened eyes, wondering if what had happened here would bleed onto their carefully trimmed lawns.

I leaned against the low fence in front of the Stewards’ home, glass glinting in the grass near my boots, catching the afternoon light like tiny mirrors of what just happened.

Blank.

The name still hovered in my System log, an empty placeholder wrapped around an S-Rank threat. I had only seen something like that once before.

Mark.

Or, more accurately, Subject 3834.

I closed my eyes, letting the breeze cut across my face as I forced myself to remember. It had been a while since I last talked to him. I wonder if he’s still in Europe where he killed Director Connor.

Or...did he make it back home? He always told me that he’d be the one to find me.

The System had shown me his name when I first used Scan on him, and it was exactly like this: Blank. No aliases, no real identity, no social existence.

Just an empty slot where something human should have been.

I assume it’s because Mark is a subject, an asset, a ghost with no past and no future, someone who never had a name to begin with, or whose name was scrubbed so thoroughly it never existed in the first place.

But this man—this pale, thin, limping hacker who slipped away on a motorcycle—definitely wasn’t Mark. Didn’t look like a NovaCore subject. Mark and the other subjects wore their past on their skin, covered in deep, branching scars like tree roots, spiderwebs of old burns and sutures crisscrossing their arms, neck, and face. Even the best medics couldn’t hide what NovaCore did to them.

But the hacker’s skin, what little I saw of it, wasn’t scarred at all. Simply pale.

I rolled my shoulders, tension cracking down my spine. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was another subject—NovaCore had a habit of changing their methods—but Instinct told me otherwise. This man wasn’t a weapon built to kill. He was a phantom in the data streams, living in wires and signals, pulling at the threads of people’s lives to get what he wanted.

Which made the Blank name even stranger.

No name meant no record. No record meant no paper trail.

Which meant he wasn’t living in any registered home, wasn’t picking up groceries from corner stores with credits linked to a name, wasn’t checking in for any work under any system-recognized ID.

He would have to be living somewhere that required no documentation.

An abandoned building, maybe multiple.

Somewhere in a forgotten corner of the city where no one asked questions because no one cared enough to ask.

And considering that he kidnapped kids from C and D-ranked neighborhoods—the lowest sectors, places riddled with decay, collapsing rooftops, and hallways that smelled of mold and despair—this theory wasn’t just plausible.

It was likely.

But the problem was obvious.

There were hundreds

of abandoned buildings in those sectors, block after block of empty, rotting structures barely standing, housing squatters, small-time dealers, and the occasional addict looking for a place to die quietly.

If he was hiding in one of them, I’d have to sift through it all, piece by piece.

But I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

Because this wasn’t about my case anymore.

It was about getting justice for the lower ranks.

It was about helping Mary.

I turned, glancing back at the Steward house. The ambulance had just arrived, tires crunching over broken glass. Two paramedics stepped out, one pulling a stretcher, the other slinging a medkit over her shoulder. Behind them, a second patrol car rolled up, officers stepping out, giving me cautious nods as they surveyed the shattered window and the blood streaked across the carpet inside.

It was out of my realm of expertise now.

Out of my jurisdiction, too.

Technically, as Grant had reminded me, I was just a detective. I could investigate, chase leads, put my life on the line, but I wasn’t meant for the aftermath—the statements, the medical clearances, the paperwork that would follow in the wake of this kind of violence.

This was the part where I left.

And so I did.

I walked.

The wind picked up, tugging at the collar of Camille’s repaired coat, flaring it around my legs as I made my way down the cracked sidewalks of this mid-ranking neighborhood. It was the kind of place where parents still let their kids play outside, where old men trimmed their hedges while gossiping about local politics, where the worst thing that usually happened was a car getting egged on a Friday night.

But not today.

Today, a man with no name tried to kidnap a girl who was still fighting herself more than she was fighting him.

Mary.

She had looked so small sitting on that couch, her wrists bruised, her eyes hollow, her breath catching like she was drowning in air.

She was terrified.

Confused.

But she resisted.

Even with her mind screaming that the man who tried to take her was her "father," she resisted. Even with the phantom chains of Stockholm syndrome wrapped around her thoughts, she didn’t go with him.

She fought back.

And that mattered.

She was slowly fighting back against him.

"Good job, Mary," I murmured to the empty street, the words carried away on the wind.

A final thought came to my mind. One that I wish I never had to deal with.

What if I had asked for a gun? With my status as a Detective and my position in the government, I would of likely been given one on the spot.

And if I had a gun...I could of just shot him right then and there. Ending this mad man who stalks and kidnaps kids.

...No, I need to calm myself.

Ever since I had killed that pale man in the lab facility I’ve been feeling more detached from the world.

Why was thinking about shooting the man such as easy thought for me?

I should ask Alexis about coping mechanisms, because the last thing I want...

Is for me to find murder as something trivial.