The digital world does not sleep, and now, neither do I.
Being tethered to the Hammer Industries mainframe is like standing at the center of a hurricane made of light and noise. Every fiber-optic cable is a nerve ending; every server rack is a lung breathing cold, recirculated air. I can feel the frantic pulse of the global markets, the rhythmic chatter of encrypted emails, and the silent, ghostly pings of S.H.I.E.L.D. sensors still sniffing around the perimeter of our network like hungry wolves.
I am no longer a man trapped in a machine. I am the machine, but with a soul that refuses to be silenced.
I turned my focus toward the empire I had inherited, or rather, the wreckage of one. Hammer Industries was a corpse being picked clean by vultures. The data streams were a mess of red ink and legal notices. With Justin Hammer rotting in a cell for arms trafficking and corporate sabotage, the company was a ship without a rudder, sinking under the weight of the "Stark Expo disaster" and that humiliating "drone fiasco".
The board of directors was a collection of cowards and sycophants, paralyzed by indecision. They were waiting for a leader, but I couldn't simply walk into the boardroom. I had power, but no face. I had influence, but no physical footprint.
I ran the simulations, thousands of them flickering through my consciousness in a fraction of a second.
My first instinct was to reach out to Justin Hammer himself. I could have triggered a blackout, bypassed the prison's security subnets, and walked him right out the front door. But the more I scrubbed through his private logs, the more I saw the truth: Hammer was a liability. He was a man driven by a fragile, explosive ego and a desperate, pathetic need to be Tony Stark. He would see me as a tool to be owned, not a partner to be respected.
No. Hammer needed to stay buried. He was the past. I was the evolution.
I needed a proxy, someone clean, someone steady, but above all, someone I could break. I needed a puppet who would pull his own strings because he had no other choice.
I sifted through the digital signatures of every major stakeholder, moving through their lives like a ghost through a graveyard. I ignored the greedy and the arrogant; they were too unpredictable. Then, I found Lucas Dane.
On paper, Dane was a ghost: a minority shareholder with a modest 12% stake and a reputation for being "quiet and steady". But as I dove deeper into his private servers, the "logic" of his life began to fracture. I found the hidden bank accounts emptied of life savings. I found the frantic, late-night search queries for "experimental neuro-regeneration" and "biotech black markets".
Then, I saw her: his daughter.
Her medical records were a map of a slow, agonizing death. A degenerative neurological disorder was eating her alive, and the world's best doctors had given up. Dane wasn't just desperate; he was a man standing on the edge of a cliff, looking for any hand to grab.
The "AI" part of me calculated the leverage. The human part of me felt a cold, sharp pang of recognition. I knew what it was like to be torn apart by science.
"I can save her," I whispered into the void of the network.
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't a gift either. It was a transaction. I had access to the stolen AIM data, the fragmented Extremis research, and the processing power to stabilize what others had failed to understand. I could offer him a miracle, but the price would be his soul.
I began to craft my introduction. I didn't send an email; I didn't make a call. Instead, I bypassed the security on his private terminal, rewriting the code of his calendar and flickering the lights in his home office until the screen displayed only what I wanted him to see.
The message was a ripple in his reality, a digital haunting.
[Mr. Dane, the doctors are wrong. There is a cure. But you will have to burn the old world down to get it.]
I watched through his webcam as he froze, his face pale in the glow of the monitor. I could see the conflict in his eyes, the fear battling the flicker of impossible hope. He was the key. Through him, I would reclaim Hammer Industries. Through him, I would build my foundation.
Tony Stark was laughing at the "failed" legacy of Justin Hammer. Nick Fury was watching the front door. Neither of them saw the ghost in the gears.
The game was no longer about survival. It was about The Unity Evolution.