The rain slowed, then stopped.
Mavis lay in the alley, his body was glowing faintly beneath the torn, blood-soaked shirt. The blue light pulsed under his skin like electricity through wires. Inside his mind, a voice rang out, calm, robotic and absolute.
[Host identified: Mavis Donard.]
[Scanning humiliation data… Accumulated: 1,247 instances.]
[Betrayal Severity: MAXIMUM.]
[Initializing Vengeance Protocol.]
Mavis's fingers twitched. The voice wasn't just speaking to him, it was doing something deeper. Rewiring him and reconstructing him from the inside out.
Then he felt a sharp pain, a searing agony erupted through his entire body. Every nerve ending screamed at once. His back arched off the wet pavement. He tried to scream but no sound came out at first—his throat was too raw, his lungs too damaged.
Then he found his voice when he screamed from the pains.
His hands clawed at the ground, nails scraping against concrete. But underneath the agony, something else was rising. Something immense and powerful.
Strength.
His fractured ribs shifted. He felt them move inside his chest, felt the broken pieces grinding together. Then he heard a crack. They snapped back into place, fusing instantly. The pain was excruciating, but it was also... rebuilding him.
Cuts across his face and arms began to close, skin knitting together like invisible thread pulling through flesh. The swelling around his eyes receded. His split lip sealed itself.
Mavis clutched his head, still screaming. Data flooded his mind in torrents. Numbers, coordinates, maps, passwords, account numbers and encrypted access codes. All of it connected to the Donard family. Information that had been locked away for ten years, suddenly available.
His father's voice, his mother's laugh, Cherry's smile. All of it mixed with bank vault locations, security protocols, biometric keys.
The System's voice cut through the chaos:
[Mission 1: Recover the Donard Fortune.]
[Reward: Full System Access + Skill Unlocks.]
Mavis gasped for air. His body trembled violently, caught between the pain of reconstruction and the overwhelming flood of information. Sweat mixed with rainwater on his skin as his muscles spasmed.
"Is this real?" he whispered hoarsely. "Or am I losing my mind?"
The voice answered immediately, it was emotionless and certain:
[Your suffering has been recorded. Your vengeance will be quantified.]
Then something else appeared. His father's image flickered into existence before him, it was not real, but projected somehow by the System. A hologram made of blue light and memory.
His father looked exactly as Mavis remembered. Strong jaw, kind eyes with the same suit he'd worn to business meetings.
"Mavis," the vision said in his father's voice. "They thought they buried us. They thought wrong."
Mavis stared, his breath catching as tears blurred his vision. "Dad?"
But even as he reached out, he knew it wasn't real. Just data. Just the System using his memories to communicate.
More images flooded through. A secret vault hidden beneath the old Donard Estate, a bloodline authentication code encoded in his DNA, his father leaning close when Mavis was sixteen, whispering something he'd thought was just advice at the time.
"Fight for what's yours, son. Always. No matter how long it takes."
The memory clicked into place like a key turning in a lock. Suddenly, all the fragmented data in his head aligned. It all made sense now. They formed a complete picture.
Five vaults, hidden across California. Each one containing pieces of the true Donard fortune—the assets the attackers never found. His father had prepared for the worst. He had hidden everything where only a Donard could access it.
Only someone with their blood.
Mavis knew exactly where to go now. The first location burned bright in his mind: San Francisco. An old building in the financial district with basement level, and a vault that required his handprint and retinal scan.
The glow beneath his skin faded slowly. The reconstruction was complete. He lay there for a moment longer, adjusting to the changes. His body felt... different. Stronger and more solid, like he'd been operating at half capacity his entire life and only now understood what full strength felt like.
He stood slowly, testing his legs. They held, more than held—he felt steady, balanced and powerful. The pain was gone entirely. His ribs, which had been broken minutes ago, felt perfect.
A puddle of dirty water reflected the morning light. Mavis caught sight of his reflection and stopped.
He looked like a stranger. Same face, but different somehow. His jaw was set harder, his eyes, even in the dim reflection, seemed to carry a faint blue static around the edges. His posture was straighter and more commanding.
The broken man was gone.
He bent down and picked up the soaked divorce papers from the puddle. The ink had run, making Charlotte's signature barely legible. He stared at them for a moment, then crumpled them in his fist.
"Three years of humiliation," he murmured, his voice was low and steady. "You wanted a broken man to kick around, but you made something else instead."
The System pinged again, the sound reverberating inside his skull:
[Mission Active. Location of first vault transmitted.]
[Timer: 72 hours.]
A countdown appeared in the corner of his vision. A digital numbers ticking down. He had three days to reach the San Francisco vault and recover the first portion of his inheritance.
Mavis looked up. The sun was rising over New Harbor's skyline, painting the buildings in shades of orange and gold. The city was waking up. People starting their days, unaware that something had fundamentally changed in the shadows.
He stepped out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. Morning commuters hurried past, not giving him a second glance despite his torn clothes. Just another nobody in a city full of them.
But he wasn't nobody anymore.
He tightened his fist, the divorce papers crumbling further in his grip.
"Sonar," he said quietly, his words carried away by the morning wind. "Your countdown starts now."
The System hummed in agreement, already calculating trajectories for vengeance.