CHAPTER 44: CHAPTER 44

The world was too loud.

Ace walked away from The Gilded Cage, his new hearing dialed up to a volume he couldn’t control. He could hear a rat scratching inside a dumpster three alleys over, the low murmur of an argument coming through a closed window, and even the steady hum of electrical wires buzzing like angry hornets. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus and to push the noise away. It was like trying to drink from a firehose.

AUDIO ENHANCEMENT LV.2: FILTERING PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.

In moment of desperation, he sent a mental command. The overwhelming rush of sound finally began to fade into a quiet, manageable background hum. He discovered he could still choose to focus and pick out a single conversation from a block away, but the constant assault on his ears was over. He leaned against a brick wall, breathing heavily. The System’s rewards were never gentle.

When he finally made it back to his Unit B-17, the space was empty and quiet, and the silence felt like a heavy weight lifting from his shoulders. Evelyn was still there, her face was illuminated by the laptop screen. She looked up as he walked in, her keen eyes immediately saw that he looked pale and tense.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice cutting through the silence of the room. "You look like you have seen a ghost."

"Ramos set a trap for me," Ace explained, his own voice rough with exhaustion. He sank down onto a crate as the last of his energy faded, leaving him completely drained. "It was at the gambling den. He had everything rigged to make it seem like I was the one stealing from him." He decided not to tell her how he had actually fixed the situation. He believed that the less she knew about the nanites and the mysterious System guiding him, the safer she would be.

Evelyn pressed her lips together into a thin, tight line. "I knew he would try something. What did you do?"

"I found the real thief," Ace said. "It was the manager, a man named Kovac. I gave the proof to Marcus and then I just walked out." This was mostly true, though he left out the dangerous digital sabotage and the huge risk he had taken.

Evelyn looked at him carefully for a long moment, then slowly nodded in approval. "Good. You turned his own plan against him." She turned back to her laptop, but Ace noticed she wasn’t actually typing. She was just staring at the screen, her body perfectly still and tense.

It was then that he saw it. Tucked beside her laptop, partly hidden by her arm, was a textbook. The title was stamped in clean, professional letters: PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY. Next to it was a spiral notebook, it’s pages filled with precise, neat handwriting and detailed diagrams of muscles and bones.

Ace could only stare. He was looking at a medical textbook, yet he was standing in a dusty workshop that smelled like oil and felt tense with fear. The book was so completely out of place that he almost thought he was imagining it.

"Evelyn?" he asked, his confusion cutting through his fatigue. "What is that?"

She flinched, a movement so small he almost missed it, and quickly moved her arm to cover the book. "It’s nothing," she said, trying to sound casual. "Just something I was looking at."

Ace pressed further, his curiosity overpowering his manners. "It doesn’t look like nothing. That’s a book for medical students. Why do you have it?"

For a moment, it seemed like she was going to lie. He could see her thinking and putting her defenses up. Then, her shoulders slumped in defeat. The strong, practical woman he knew seemed to fade away, replaced by someone who looked much younger and more vulnerable. She let out a long, tired sigh.

"Because I was supposed to be one," she said. Her voice was quiet and had lost its usual sharpness. "A doctor. I was in pre-med and I was at the top of my class."

Ace was completely shocked. Evelyn? A doctor? He tried to imagine her wearing a doctor’s white coat instead of her usual hoodie and holding a stethoscope instead of a laptop. He just couldn’t make that image fit with the woman who could calmly talk about blackmailing a judge.

"What happened?" he asked her softly.

"It was everything at once," she said, the words flat and bitter. "The money problems, the pressure... life just became too much. My scholarship covered tuition but It didnot cover my rent, food, books. Then my mom got sick. All the medical bills started piling up, and I couldn’t keep up with the costs. I was forced to choose between eating and buying a four hundred dollar textbook." She gestured vaguely at the expensive book on the desk. "I dropped out after two years."

Suddenly, everything made sense to Ace. Her sharp intelligence, her calmness under pressure, and her ability to research and plan like a military general, all of it was a sign of a brilliant mind that had been forced into a different kind of battle.

"So, the coffee shop..." Ace began.

"The coffee shop is just a job that pays my rent, and it barely does that," she finished for him. "But it’s a flexible job. It lets me find other ways to make ends meet." She looked away from him, her gaze drifting toward the shadows in the corner of the workshop.

Ace remembered how she had moved when those thugs showed up at her apartment. He also remembered the rumors his friend Silva had mentioned weeks ago, the ones he had been too distracted to look into.

"Other ways?" he asked, feeling a cold dread settle in his stomach. "Evelyn, what other ways are you talking about?"

She was silent for so long that he thought she wouldn’t answer him. When she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet he had to lean in to hear her, his new hearing picking up every strained word.

"There’s a place," she said, still not meeting his eyes. "It’s an underground fight club down in the warehouse district. They have rings set up in an old cargo bay. There are no rules there. Well, there is one rule: the last person still standing wins."

A sudden, cold fear shot through Ace. "You fight there?" he asked.

"It’s not like that," she said, finally meeting his eyes with a defensive tone. Her expression was a mix of shame and a flash of pride. She explained that it wasn’t just random brawling but an organized event with weight classes. "I’m good at it, Ace. Really good. The money is fast, and it’s a lot. It’s enough to keep my head above water and maybe, one day, think about going back to study."

He could only stare at her, horrified. A clear image formed in his mind: not of Dr. Evelyn in a white coat, but of Evelyn in a fighting ring under harsh lights, facing an opponent twice her size. The thought of his brilliant researcher friend risking her life for a paycheck was terrifying.

"Evelyn, that’s insane!" he burst out. "You could get seriously hurt or even killed! Why didn’t you tell me?""

"Tell you what?" she shot back, her defensiveness rising. "That while you were getting thrown out of your house with only thirty-seven dollars, I was getting punched in the face for five hundred? We all have our ways of surviving, Ace. Your strategy involves a mysterious talent for fixing things and finding leverage. Mine involves knowing exactly where to hit a two-hundred-pound man to make sure he doesn’t get back up."

Her words hung heavily in the dusty air between them. It was the closest she had ever come to acknowledging his own secrets, and he realized she was right. Who was he to judge how she managed to survive?

The anger he felt began to fade, replaced by the sobering weight of reality. They were not just two broke kids anymore. They had real money now, yet they were still acting as if they didn’t.

"Evelyn, look at this," he said, his voice quiet but intense. He gestured around their empty workshop and then pointed at the laptop screen showing their Aegis dashboard. "We have ten thousand dollars from Borland, Hemlock, and the lockbox. Our rent for this place is only ninety dollars a month. We no longer have to choose between eating and getting punched in the face."

Evelyn looked at him, her defensive posture softening into confusion. "What are you trying to say?"

"I’m saying we are thinking too small," he explained. "Shaking down crooked cops and judges is Deke’s game, and it only puts a target on our backs for a few thousand dollars. As for working for Ramos, that is just a slower way to get ourselves killed."

He stood up, feeling a new energy flow through him. "We have real capital now and we have Aegis Solutions. This company does not have to be a fake front for blackmail; it can be something legitimate."

"Ace countered her skepticism. "We are a problem-solver with a unique skill set, a researcher who can find anything, and work well with people. We can build something that is not just about surviving the week." Ideas began to flow from him, fueled by a desperate need to escape the criminal underworld entirely. "We could develop a real app for security or private communication, something that uses our talents. We could properly flip tech by buying broken electronics, refurbishing them, and selling them for a real profit. We could even make simple games. We can do anything, but we do it legitimately. We can use the blackmail money to build a honest business so we never have to rely on blackmail again."

He looked at her medical textbook and then back at her. "The money from a real, legitimate Aegis could pay your tuition. This could be our way out."

Evelyn fell silent as she absorbed his words. The dream was so enormous it seemed almost absurd, yet his logic was sound. They had the seed money and they had the drive.

"It’s a nice thought, Ace," she said finally, her voice softer than he had ever heard it. "But Ramos is not going to let his new pet accountant just walk away to make video games. He hasn’t given ten percent cut from the dock and the gambling den. That money is a leash around our necks."

"I know that," Ace said, the grim reality settling back in. "I am not suggesting we quit today. I am saying we start planning for tomorrow. We need to stop acting like we are about to be homeless and start acting like the CEOs of a startup that just secured its first round of funding. We are not just surviving anymore, Evelyn; we are building something that belongs to us."

He picked up Ramos’s burner phone from the bench. It still felt like a shackle. "But first, we collect every dollar Ramos owes us for that last job. Every dollar he gives us is another dollar we can use to buy our freedom from him."

Evelyn looked from the phone to Ace’s determined face. Her sad smile was gone, replaced by a thoughtful, calculating glint in her eyes. The researcher in her was back, presented with a new and fascinating problem to solve: how to build a future.

"Alright, CEO," she said, a hint of her old dry humor returning. "Our first order of business is to invoice the crime lord. Then we can talk about your stock options."