For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The 24-hour diner, in the deep, silent hours before dawn, became their war room. The air was thick with the smell of stale coffee and grease, a gritty, real-world counterpoint to the ethereal, digital hunt they were conducting. The few other patrons—a weary truck driver, a couple of night-shift cops—were ghosts in their own worlds, oblivious to the fact that the two students hunched over a laptop in the corner booth were piecing together a conspiracy that threatened the city.
Peter was in his element. The exhaustion, the guilt, the raw emotional wound from his fight with May—it all receded, burned away by the cold, clear fire of a problem to be solved. He was no longer just a man; he was a conduit, his fingers a blur across the keyboard, his mind a phantom slipping through the cracks of the digital world. He was the engine.
Diana was the navigator. She didn't understand the complex code that scrolled across the screen, the esoteric language of backdoors and encrypted servers. But she understood the target. She watched Peter's frantic search, her focus absolute, her mind working on a different, more strategic level. She processed the fragments of information he uncovered—financial records, personnel files, shipping manifests—and assembled them into a coherent psychological profile of their quarry.
"He's arrogant," she murmured, her gaze distant and thoughtful as Peter hit another encrypted wall. "Look at the project name: M.O.D.O.K. It's an acronym of pure, unrestrained ego. This is not the work of a man who wishes to remain a ghost. This is a man who believes he is a god, and he is building his own pantheon."
"A god who knows how to hide," Peter muttered in frustration, running another decryption algorithm that immediately failed. "I've run through every known A.I.M. server, cross-referenced their shell corporations... Thorne hasn't left a single digital fingerprint since he dropped off the grid. It's like he doesn't exist."
"Then we are looking for the wrong man," Diana said simply.
Peter stopped typing and looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"A man like Thorne, a man who sees himself as a creator, a genius superior to all others... he would not use his own name," she explained, her voice a low, analytical hum. "His ego would demand something more. An alias. A codename. Something that reflects his self-perception. In the ancient world, great men often took names from mythology to elevate their status. To align themselves with the gods and heroes they sought to emulate."
Peter stared at her, a jolt of inspiration cutting through his frustration. Of course. He'd been looking for a scientist. He should have been looking for a myth. "A codename," he breathed, his fingers already hovering over the keyboard. "What kind of myth?"
"He is a builder," Diana said, her mind sifting through a millennium of stories. "An architect of a complex and terrible prison for a monstrous creation. He is brilliant, but his work is a perversion of nature. And he is trapped by his own genius, forced to operate in the shadows, in a labyrinth of his own making." She met his gaze, her eyes a deep, clear blue. "Search for Daedalus."
The name landed in Peter's mind with the force of a revelation. Daedalus. The master craftsman of Greek myth. The builder of the labyrinth, the prison for the Minotaur. A genius undone by his own hubris. It was perfect.
"Daedalus," Peter repeated, a slow, triumphant grin spreading across his face. "Di, you are a genius."
He opened a new search query, his fingers flying with a renewed purpose. He didn't search public servers. He dove deep into the dark web, into the encrypted, anonymous forums where men like Thorne would conduct their business. He cross-referenced the alias "Daedalus" with keywords from his previous search: cryo-condenser, bio-restorative, Hammer X-7.
For a moment, nothing. And then, a single, heavily encrypted data packet, buried deep within a black-market auction site for illegal technology, pinged back.
"I'm in," he whispered, his voice tight with adrenaline. "It's a shielded communication channel. The encryption is military-grade, but it's old... he's arrogant. He thinks no one would ever find this."
He worked furiously, his mind a blur of code and logic. Diana watched, a silent, steady presence beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder, a grounding touch in the digital storm. He broke through the first layer of encryption, then the second. A series of fragmented, coded messages appeared on the screen.
"It's a supply chain," Peter said, his eyes darting across the text, deciphering the code. "He's not just using A.I.M. He's sourcing some components from outside, from black market dealers."
"A god still requires offerings from mortals," Diana murmured.
"And he's about to get another one," Peter said, his voice dropping. He pointed to the last message, dated from only an hour ago. "Look. A meeting. Tonight."
He quickly decoded the coordinates and the subject line. The location: the old Gantry Plaza freight yards in Long Island City, an industrial wasteland of rusted cranes and decaying piers on the waterfront. The time: 3 a.m. The item for trade: a "Q.E.C."
"Q.E.C.," he repeated, running a quick search. "Quantum Entanglement Communicator. It's a theoretical device. Allows for instantaneous, untraceable communication over any distance by linking subatomic particles. It's the perfect tool to control a psionic entity from a safe distance."
They had found it. The next piece of the puzzle. The thread that would lead them directly to the architect himself.
Peter leaned back in the booth, the adrenaline slowly giving way to a profound, buzzing exhaustion. The first rays of dawn were beginning to pierce the darkness outside, painting the grey city streets in pale, watery colors. They had been there all night.
He looked at Diana. The weariness was visible in her eyes, but it was overshadowed by a fierce, burning intensity. They were no longer just two students in a diner. They were partners who had just found their first real lead.
"So," Peter said, his voice a low, grim whisper. "Looks like we have plans tonight."
Diana simply nodded, her hand still resting on his shoulder. The hunt was no longer a digital one. The ghost in the machine had given them a time and a place. And tonight, they would be there to greet him. The city slept on, oblivious, but in a greasy spoon diner in the heart of the night, its two greatest protectors had just decided the course of the coming war.
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