Chapter 7: Ghost in the Data
**[Alex Stone's Apartment, Aethelburg - 3:19 AM]**
The world outside Alex's apartment had shrunk to the dimensions of his laptop screen.
The city slept, but he was wide awake, navigating a different kind of darkness.
The digital underworld.
His living room had transformed into something his landlord would never recognize.
What was once a spartan, minimalist space—the kind of place where a man could think clearly—was now the chaotic nerve center of a one-man intelligence agency.
A second monitor, hastily scavenged from his bedroom closet, sat connected to his laptop by a snake's nest of cables.
Both screens blazed with cascading lines of code, open-source satellite maps, and dozens of browser tabs layered like playing cards in a rigged game.
Empty coffee mugs stood like silent sentinels on his desk.
Markers of time lost to obsession.
He wasn't a cop anymore. Not officially.
Now he was something else entirely—a ghost, haunting the digital pathways of the city, hunting for the secrets of a dead man.
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**[3:31 AM]**
He started with the basics, building a skeleton of a life from scattered digital bones.
Albin Croft. Age 72.
For a man living in the modern age, his digital footprint was surprisingly sparse.
No Facebook profile with family photos. No Instagram shots of morning coffee. No Twitter rants about politics or the weather.
It was like the old man had deliberately chosen to exist in the margins of the connected world.
A ghost even before his death.
Alex dug deeper, using his old university credentials—the ones the department hadn't thought to revoke yet—to access academic archives that most people forgot even existed.
Papers from fifty years ago began to surface on his screen like artifacts from an archaeological dig.
"Theoretical Applications of Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields in Non-Linear Spacetime."
"Chronometric Distortion in High-Energy EM Environments."
"Localized Temporal Manipulation Through Resonant Frequency Modulation."
Alex stared at the titles, his coffee growing cold in his hand.
The papers were brilliant, dense, and bordered on pure science fiction.
The work of a young genius who saw the world differently than everyone else.
Then, for twenty years, academic silence.
Like the man had simply vanished from intellectual existence.
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**[3:47 AM]**
Alex cross-referenced the name with corporate employment records, casting his net wider into the murky waters of corporate databases.
There. He found him.
Albin Croft. Senior Researcher at OmniTech Dynamics from 1985 to 2005.
OmniTech. Alex knew the name—everyone in law enforcement did.
A corporate behemoth that had its fingers in everything from telecommunications to private defense contracts.
The kind of company that made billions solving problems the government couldn't officially acknowledge.
His fingers moved across the keyboard with practiced efficiency, muscle memory guiding him through databases most people never knew existed.
He pulled up old press releases, archived employee lists, forgotten corporate newsletters gathering digital dust.
Buried in the electronic sediment, he found a handful of patents filed under Albin Croft's name.
One was for a "Resonant Frequency Targeting System."
Another for something called a "Localized EMP Shielding Grid."
The language was dense with technical jargon, but the implications were clear enough.
Croft hadn't just been a theoretical physicist playing with equations.
He'd been building weapons.
Then, in 2005, at the height of his career, Albin Croft had "retired."
At only 52 years old.
Too young. Too brilliant. Too valuable to just walk away from a corporate giant like OmniTech.
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**[4:15 AM]**
The CrimeSync implant hummed quietly in the back of his skull, processing data faster than his conscious mind could follow.
It was like having a bloodhound made of code running alongside his thoughts.
*[CrimeSync: Anomaly detected in employment records. Cross-referencing with sealed litigation archives...]*
The system worked in the background like a silent partner, digging through databases that would take him hours to search manually.
Legal records. Corporate filings. Court documents buried under layers of bureaucratic red tape.
*[Result Found: Sealed wrongful termination lawsuit. Croft v. OmniTech Dynamics. Settled out of court. Details classified.]*
A falling out. A corporate divorce ugly enough that both sides had agreed to bury it under legal concrete.
Alex leaned back in his chair, pieces of the puzzle clicking into place with satisfying precision.
A reclusive genius with a corporate grudge.
Research valuable enough to kill for.
Secretive technology that someone desperately wanted to keep buried.
This wasn't about revenge for his grandson's death.
This was about something Albin Croft knew.
Or something he had built.
Something worth murdering an old man to obtain.
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**[4:52 AM]**
He hit a wall.
A hard one.
Alex had traced OmniTech's internal records to a firewalled, off-site server—a digital fortress designed specifically to keep people like him on the outside looking in.
His usual hacking tools were useless here, bouncing off the server's defenses like pebbles thrown at a tank.
Whoever had designed this system knew exactly what they were protecting and from whom.
He sat back, the blue light of the screens painting harsh shadows across his face.
The frustration was a physical thing, a bitter taste coating the back of his throat.
The answer was in there. He could feel it, tantalizingly close but impossibly out of reach.
Like trying to grab smoke with bare hands.
Alex looked down at his hands, then at the keyboard.
He'd already pushed CrimeSync to perform remote queries far beyond its original specifications.
Could he push it further?
Could he use it not just to find data, but to actively manipulate it?
To become the key that unlocked doors that shouldn't exist?
A cold thrill, mingled with genuine fear, ran down his spine like ice water.
*[CrimeSync: Direct interface protocol requested with external device.]*
New text appeared in his mind, sharp and clear as if someone had spoken directly into his thoughts.
*[Warning: This function is untested and potentially dangerous. Neurological feedback, data corruption, and psychological dissociation are documented side effects. Do you wish to proceed?]*
The warning was about as subtle as a gunshot in a library.
But the alternative—letting a killer walk free because of a firewall—was completely unacceptable.
"Proceed," he whispered to the empty room.
*[Acknowledged. Initiating neural handshake protocol...]*
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**[4:54 AM]**
The sensation was unlike anything he'd ever experienced in his life.
It started as a cold, electric feeling at the base of his skull, then spread through his nervous system like liquid nitrogen flowing through his veins.
The soft hum of his laptop's cooling fan seemed to synchronize with his own heartbeat.
The lines of code scrolling across his screen stopped being a foreign language written by someone else.
He didn't just read them anymore.
He understood them. He could see the architecture, the data pathways, the security loops—not as a programmer would, but as if the code were his native language.
Alex placed his fingers on the keyboard.
He wasn't typing anymore. He was thinking, and his fingers were merely transcribing those thoughts into pure data at impossible speeds.
He wasn't trying to hack through the firewall by force.
He was negotiating with it. Convincing it. Finding the tiny logical inconsistencies in its programming and exploiting them with surgical precision.
There—a recursive flaw in the security handshake protocol.
A microscopic loophole that no human programmer would have ever spotted, buried twenty layers deep in the authentication code.
*[Interface successful. Access granted.]*
He was inside.
The entire process had taken less than ninety seconds.
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**[5:13 AM]**
Inside OmniTech's secured server was a digital graveyard—a collection of abandoned projects and semi-deleted files that the corporation had tried to forget.
"Ghost projects," according to the internal documentation.
Research deemed too radical, too dangerous, or too politically sensitive to continue.
The kind of work that got quietly buried when it became clear that some questions were better left unanswered.
And buried among the digital corpses, Alex found what he was looking for.
A folder labeled "A. CROFT - PROJECT CHRONOS."
It contained Albin Croft's private research logs—a mixture of incomprehensibly complex equations and handwritten notes that had been scanned and digitized.
Most of the mathematical work was beyond Alex's understanding.
But the written entries told a story that made his blood run cold.
*Log Entry 743: The energy requirements are immense, but the field stability is finally holding at 97.3% efficiency. The localized temporal effect, even at the quantum level, is undeniable. My colleagues called me a madman when I first proposed this. But I notice they're still watching. I see them in the hallways, whispering.*
Alex scrolled down, his pulse quickening.
*Log Entry 751: OmniTech wants the research back. They know I kept copies of everything when they forced me out. A man named Deckard visited my home today—obviously not his real name. He's from their corporate security division. Made what he called a 'generous buyout offer,' but his eyes told a different story. They don't want to build this technology. They want to bury it permanently.*
Deckard. Finally, a name. A face to hunt.
*Log Entry 755: Had to upgrade the security system on my workshop again. The prototype device is more dangerous than I initially calculated. A single pulse, even at minimal power settings, can disrupt the delicate electromagnetic rhythms of any electronic device within a fifty-meter radius. And if my latest calculations are correct... perhaps even biological systems.*
Alex felt ice form in his stomach.
The murder weapon. Croft had built it himself, never realizing he was forging the instrument of his own death.
The final entry was dated just one day before the old man's murder.
*Log Entry 760: He came back. Deckard. I saw his black sedan parked across the street this morning, watching my house. He knows I'm close to perfecting the stabilization matrix. I have to hide the prototype before they come for it. They can kill me, but they will never get their hands on this technology.*
There it was. All of it.
A suspect with a name. A clear motive. A murder weapon that could stop a man's heart without leaving a trace.
A perfect, airtight case file that officially, no one on Earth besides Alex Stone could access.
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**[6:01 AM]**
He needed to know what Miller was doing with the official investigation.
Committing one felony to solve a murder was morally ambiguous.
Committing a second was just another Tuesday in his new reality.
Alex routed his connection through proxy servers on three different continents, his enhanced reflexes making the process feel like an extension of his own will rather than clumsy human fingers stumbling over a keyboard.
He slipped through the Aethelburg Police Department's network security like smoke through a screen door.
He found Detective Miller's case file for Albin Croft's death.
It was depressingly thin. A manila folder's worth of bureaucratic indifference.
The preliminary medical examiner's report from Dr. Finch was exactly what Alex had expected:
*CAUSE OF DEATH: Massive Cardiac Arrest secondary to acute arrhythmia.*
*INVESTIGATIVE NOTES: No signs of forced entry or struggle. No defensive wounds present. Victim had documented history of heart irregularities. Body discovered by patrol officers conducting routine wellness check.*
Miller's investigative summary was even worse:
*All available evidence indicates death by natural causes. The detail regarding synchronized clock stoppage is noted but attributed to coincidental power fluctuation. Recommend case closure pending final toxicology results.*
Case pending closure.
Miller hadn't just missed the clues that were right in front of his face.
He'd picked them up, examined them carefully, and thrown them directly into the trash.
A brilliant old man was dead, murdered by his own invention, and the killer was about to walk away completely free.
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**[6:47 AM]**
Alex closed all his connections, carefully erasing every trace of his digital intrusion.
The first pale rays of dawn were painting his apartment windows in shades of grey and amber.
Outside, the city was waking up—normal people starting normal days, unaware that somewhere in their midst, a killer was walking free.
He now had a suspect with a name: Deckard.
A corporate security specialist for OmniTech Dynamics—a professional ghost whose job description was making inconvenient problems disappear permanently.
A man who was completely untouchable through official police channels.
Alex couldn't hide behind his computer screen anymore.
The real investigation would have to move into the physical world, and that meant taking risks that could destroy what remained of his career.
But how do you hunt a man whose profession is hunting other people?
You don't knock on his front door and ask polite questions.
You find a window into his life that he doesn't know exists.
And Alex Stone had always been exceptionally good at finding windows that other people couldn't see.
He stood up from his desk, joints protesting after hours of motionless concentration.
The CrimeSync implant had shown him capabilities he never knew he possessed.
But it had also shown him something else—a glimpse of what he might become if he kept pushing the boundaries between man and machine.
The question was whether he'd still be human enough to care about justice when this was all over.
Or whether he'd just be another ghost in the machine, hunting in the dark.
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**DETECTIVE'S LOG: ALEX STONE**
**CASE FILE: 002 - The Clockmaker (Unofficial)**
**STATUS:** Covert investigation yielding significant results. Official investigation pending closure as "Natural Causes."
**KEY EVIDENCE (CRIMESYNC ENHANCED DATA):**
* Motive Established: Victim created experimental device ("Project Chronos") capable of generating targeted electromagnetic pulses
* Primary Suspect Identified: "Deckard," corporate security operative from OmniTech Dynamics, attempting to acquire or eliminate research
* CrimeSync Evolution: Direct neural interface with external computer systems viable but carries significant neurological risk
**CURRENT OBJECTIVE:** Develop surveillance strategy for high-level corporate security target. Investigation must transition from digital to physical phase.
**Personal Note:** I'm walking a tightrope over an abyss. One wrong step and I lose everything—badge, career, freedom. But an old man is dead, and his killer is about to disappear into corporate shadows. Some lines you don't get to uncross.
The machine in my head is getting stronger. Each time I use it, I feel a little less like myself and a little more like something else. But right now, that might be exactly what I need to be.
**End of Chapter 7**
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*"The truth doesn't care about jurisdiction, protocols, or career preservation. It only cares about being found."*
**To be continued...**