The war had changed.
This was no longer about followers, views, or viral trends.
This was a battle for the human mind.
---
Jason and his core team gathered in the PulseCast R&D bunker, a lab buried beneath their San Francisco headquarters. The room buzzed with screens and biometric rigs. At the center stood a new prototype:
NeuroLock.
A discreet headset. Open-source firmware. Designed not to influence thought—but to protect it.
Naomi explained to the team, "It reads subtle cognitive baselines and alerts users when they're being exposed to persuasive synthetic content—ads, audio, even subconscious suggestion through sound cues or visual flashes."
Cass raised an eyebrow. "You're telling me it can feel manipulation?"
Jason nodded. "It doesn't fight fire with fire. It builds a wall. A neural firewall."
Rohan folded his arms, skeptical. "You're gonna need a miracle to get public adoption. People won't just wear tinfoil helmets."
Jason smiled. "Which is why we're going with a different model."
He turned to a screen showing a sleek pair of AR glasses, slim and stylish.
"Looks like fashion. Works like a shield."
---
Meanwhile, in Zurich, Vivian Keats observed NeuroLock's debut with clinical detachment.
Her own project—EchoMind—was already in live testing.
Unlike NeuroLock, EchoMind didn't protect thoughts.
It shaped them.
Waves of subliminal pulses. Priming language patterns. AI-suggested feedback loops that built addictive mental patterns over time.
Users thought they were in control.
They weren't.
"Conner's building a wall," she muttered, "but I'm building the water."
---
Back in San Francisco, Jason appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss the coming age of neuro-integrated technology.
The host asked the million-dollar question:
> "Why should people trust you with something so close to their brain?"
Jason answered without hesitation.
"Because we're not asking them to trust us. We're giving them the tools to trust themselves."
That soundbite went viral overnight.
Downloads of NeuroLock tripled within 48 hours.
---
But fame always brought shadows.
A masked individual posted a video online claiming to be a former Valkyrie engineer. The distorted voice made a chilling claim:
> "You don't understand what they've built. It's not just software. Valkyrie's creating synthetic belief systems. Digital religions. Memetic weapons."
The video ended with a cryptic warning:
> "The next war won't be fought on battlefields. It'll be fought in your dreams."
---
Jason sat alone in his office, that line echoing in his head.
Fought in your dreams.
He remembered nights from his past life—how consumer culture, news cycles, propaganda, and marketing shaped not just what he thought—but who he was.
This time, he had the power to push back.
He looked down at the next blueprint on his desk.
Something new.
Something beyond NeuroLock.
Something that didn't just detect manipulation.
It could decode it.