The Plaza Athénée wasn't just a hotel; it was a temple dedicated to financial indecency. Beneath the reception hall's massive crystal chandeliers, the global elite of the legal world strutted in bespoke tuxedos and designer dresses, a glass of champagne in hand.
In the middle of this sea of silk-clad sharks, Eliot stepped forward.
Internally, he was on the verge of a brain aneurysm. His heart was pounding, his palms were sweating, and he spent his time checking if the zipper of his seventy-euro rental pants hadn't burst.
But externally... the spectacle was stunning.
The "Defective Mattress Syndrome" had done its work. The nocturnal "other" had sculpted the young student's body with military precision. His black tuxedo, despite being a bottom-of-the-barrel rental, now molded to broad shoulders and a perfectly straight back. Eliot no longer walked hunched over, looking at his shoes. Constrained by the tightness of his jacket and the rigidity of his new musculature, he walked with his chest puffed out, with a deliberate slowness.
Sarah, magnificent in an emerald evening gown, walked to his left, visibly flustered by her date's appearance. Thomas, already on the lookout for the buffet, brought up the rear.
Suddenly, Eliot froze in the middle of the room. His dark eyes narrowed. His gaze—hard, cold, and piercing—began to sweep the crowd with terrifying intensity, breaking down every corner of the room, every face, every door.
Around him, conversations died. Two young corporate lawyers blushed, pointing at him. A judge at the European Court of Justice whispered to his neighbor: "Look at that young man's aura... He looks like a predator assessing his hunting ground. True prodigy charisma."
The reality was much less glorious: the stress had just triggered in Eliot a lightning-fast urge to urinate, and he was frantically looking for the restroom sign with the despair of a man about to explode.
Once the group was seated at the head table—a privilege Prince Yaz had personally orchestrated to keep an eye on his prey—the socializing began.
To Eliot's right, an eminent corporate lawyer from the City of London, eager to test this "genius" invited by the Foundation, leaned toward him.
"Mr. Morel," the Brit began with a condescending smile. "Since you excel in International Law, what do you think of the recent legal vacuum regarding the exploitation of underwater fault lines in international waters? A fascinating gray area, isn't it? How would you approach it?"
Eliot's brain blue-screened monumentally. He remembered nothing. Absolute blank. Panicked, terrified at the idea of looking like an idiot and being kicked out of the palace by security, he grabbed his glass of water, took a sip to buy time, and blurted out the first proverbial platitude that crossed his mind.
"You know, Counselor..." he said in a monotone, resigned voice. "Water always ends up flowing where the fault is. Inexorably."
He meant by this that his glass was leaking a bit, but the grave, detached tone he used produced a devastating effect.
Silence fell over the table. The London lawyer's eyes widened, struck by the metaphorical power of the phrase.
"Magnificent..." the legal pundit murmured, putting down his fork. "'Water always ends up flowing where the fault is.' A brilliant allegory on human nature and the law! Capital will always seep into legislative loopholes... What a synthesizing mind! You are a poet, young man."
Eliot, who understood nothing of what had just happened, nodded vaguely while tapping his clip-on bow tie, which only added to his aura of mystery.
It was at that precise moment that the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Prince Yaz of Oslavia had just appeared behind Eliot's chair. Impeccable, majestic, his gaze heavy with a burning hatred.
"Sir," the Prince whispered with a carnivorous smile, revealing perfect teeth. "It is a true honor to finally see you... in the broad daylight."
"Good evening, Your Highness," Eliot replied politely, half-standing, holding back a stress-induced burp. "Thank you for the invitation. The cheese gougères are incredible."
Yaz flinched. The arrogance of this "Ghost" was limitless. He had just insulted months of preparation for this gala by talking about cheese puffs.
"Enjoy them," Yaz replied in a velvet voice, heavy with innuendo. "Because in this environment, an accident happens so quickly. A bite gone wrong, a drink gone wrong... Be careful not to choke tonight. The fall can be... brutal."
Eliot blinked behind his glasses. To him, the message was clear: this was the famous hazing of the big Parisian law firms. They were testing his resistance to the stress of the profession.
"Don't worry, Your Majesty," Eliot replied with the innocence of a choirboy. "My mother always taught me to chew thirty-two times before swallowing. Safety first. Plus, I took a first-aid course, I've mastered the Heimlich maneuver!"
Yaz clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. He's mocking me. He's telling me to my face that he has parried all my attacks. The Prince gave an imperceptible nod to one of the waiters behind him and walked away.
The waiter, a behemoth with Slavic features, silently advanced toward the table. On his silver tray rested two sublime plates of truffle purée and beef tenderloin. One of them, delicately marked by an inverted parsley leaf, contained enough pure botulinum toxin to strike down a rhinoceros.
The assassin targeted Eliot's seat. He leaned in to place the fatal plate.
At the exact second the porcelain rim was about to touch the tablecloth, Eliot, who was nervously trying to unfold his napkin with trembling knees, delivered a monumental elbow strike to his own silver fork.
The piece of silverware flew into the air and hit the waiter with a metallic ting followed by a very painful thud.
The Russian let out a muffled gasp. His eyes crossed. In a reflex of acute pain, his arm veered, the tray wobbled, and the two plates slid. To avoid making a scene, the assassin caught them just in time and frantically placed them on the table before retreating to go cry in the kitchens.
In the rush, the plate with the parsley leaf landed right in front of Thomas.
"Oops, sorry!" Eliot blurted out, picking up his fork, looking contrite. "I have a little motor control issue with this suit."
"Don't worry, man," Thomas grunted, his eyes shining with gluttony. "I have a problem with world hunger, and I'm going to fix it right now."
Thomas grabbed his fork and engulfed a huge bite of the toxin-laced purée.
The Rule of "luck" had struck again. Eliot savored his meal, chatting happily with Sarah, completely unaware that across the room, Prince Yaz was watching the scene, biting his nails at this display of martial arts mastery.
It took exactly until dessert, two hours later, for the drama to unfold.
Thomas, who had just ordered his third glass of champagne, stopped dead. His face went from bright pink to apple green, then to ashen gray.
"Dude..." Thomas murmured, his pupils dilated. "I think those cheese gougères... they must not have been pasteurized."
SPLAT.
Thomas collapsed forward, his face landing flat in his praline chocolate dome, unconscious. The hotel doctor's diagnosis was swift, though erroneous: "Fulminant food poisoning."
Panic swept the table. Prince Yaz watched Eliot's friend's body being evacuated by paramedics. His perfect poison had been bypassed. The Ghost had publicly humiliated him by sacrificing his own pawn.
It was time to get down to business.
Thomas's evacuation by the fire department cast a chill over the evening. Sarah, worried sick, had insisted on accompanying him in the ambulance, leaving Eliot alone in the middle of the grand hall.
The young man stood near a marble column, an untouched flute of champagne in hand, wondering if it was socially acceptable to slip away and go study.
That was when a firm hand, covered in a fine leather glove, rested on his shoulder.
"The air in this room has become... unbreathable, don't you think?"
Eliot jumped and turned around. Prince Yaz towered over him in all his magnificence, a thin smile drawn beneath his millimeter-trimmed beard.
"Mr. Morel," the Prince resumed in a suave voice. "You strike me as a man who appreciates subtle things. Do me the honor of accompanying me to the private terrace. I've brought in some exceptional Havanas. We can talk... between men of power."
Eliot's brain screamed red alert. He hated tobacco. Smoking made him nauseous, and his mildly asthmatic lungs would never handle a cigar.
But his social logic (and his paralyzing anxiety) immediately took over.
He's a Crown Prince, his little inner voice panicked. If I refuse his cigar, it's a diplomatic affront. It's not 1789 anymore, this guy has immunity! He's going to make a scene, demand my deportation, or get me blacklisted from every bar association in Europe!
"With immense pleasure, Your Highness," Eliot replied, bowing very slightly, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
The presidential suite's terrace offered a dizzying view of the sparkling Eiffel Tower. The November night air was freezing. Yaz closed the heavy glass door behind them, instantly cutting off the hubbub of the reception. They were alone.
The Prince pulled out a solid gold case, snipped the end of a thick cigar with a pocket guillotine, and handed it to Eliot. The latter took it with the delicacy of a bomb squad tech handling C4, brought it to his lips, and lit it. He took a micro-inhalation, held his breath so as not to choke, and blew out the smoke with a face like marble, passing his watering eyes off as an intense glare.
Yaz leaned against the railing, surveying the capital.
"I have spent years building an underground empire, Mr. Morel," the Prince began, his tone heavy with threats. "A complex network, invisible to mere mortals. And yet... you arrived."
Eliot blinked behind his smoke-fogged glasses. An underground empire? An invisible network? His overworked student brain made a lightning-fast connection.
The Prince was obviously talking about the ruthless selection system of the Parisian law faculties! This "network" of elites, the tyrannical professors, the impossible-to-get internships, the academic traps to weed out the weak...
"You have foiled all my plans," Yaz continued, slowly turning his head toward him, his eyes narrowed to two murderous slits. "Senator Delacroix. The Stella affair. My best assets... erased. I must admit your method is fascinating. How did you dismantle my entire network with such ease?"
Eliot smiled. A small, modest, and sincere smile. To him, the Prince was simply congratulating him for having dissected Delacroix's laws in his midterms, and for having survived the all-night study sessions despite the racket from Stella's club.
"Oh, you know, Your Highness... I have no great secret," Eliot replied with terrifying aplomb, flicking the ash of his cigar over the edge. "I simply studied the system. I found the weak links... and I let them collapse under their own weight. Honestly, it wasn't that difficult. You just have to be observant."
Yaz's blood ran cold. Not that difficult? This secret agent had just reduced years of criminal genius and international trafficking to a simple observation exercise. The insult was monumental. The coldness of this "Ghost" surpassed anything he had imagined.
"You are very sure of yourself," the Prince hissed, jaws clenched. "But a system can always rebuild. And those who stand in my way end up disappearing. What do you intend to do now, Mr. Morel?"
Eliot, who thought the Prince was testing his knowledge on institutional reform and anti-corruption measures for the bar exam syllabus, wanted to make a witty legal quip to close the interview beautifully.
He turned to face Yaz. Carried by the incredibly straight posture his Alter-Ego imposed on him, he locked eyes with the mobster.
"Anyway, in France, when a system is corrupted from the top, we have an old habit," Eliot declared, giving a small, awkward laugh he hoped was conspiratorial. "We cut off the head of the problem. It's historical."
The silence that followed was absolutely heavy.
To Eliot, it was an excellent legal joke about the French Revolution. To Prince Yaz, it was a declaration of war and a death threat uttered by the most cold-blooded killer in Europe.
Livid, eyes wide at the audacity and violence of this weakling in a rental tux, Yaz violently crushed his barely smoked cigar on the marble balustrade.
"The message is very clear," the Prince murmured in a hollow voice. "Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Morel. It promises to be... unforgettable."
Yaz turned on his heel and went back into the hall, leaving Eliot alone on the balcony, delighted with his effect.
"And there you have it," the student silently congratulated himself, discreetly tossing his cigar into a flower pot. "Eight out of ten in networking. Thomas is going to freak when I tell him I made a Crown Prince laugh with a Robespierre joke."
Twenty minutes later, Eliot headed back down into the Plaza Athénée's majestic lobby, light-hearted and his stomach full of free hors d'oeuvres. The networking with the Prince was, by his own standards, an absolute triumph.
His phone vibrated in his rental pants pocket. A text from Sarah: "Thomas is puking his guts out. The paramedics think it's severe food poisoning. I'm going with him to the ER. Go home without us, we'll keep you posted. Enjoy!"
Eliot grimaced in sympathy for his friend, but a cowardly relief washed over him. He was going to be able to go back to his tiny studio, put on his old holey sweatpants, and dive back into his flashcards.
He was heading toward the hotel's massive revolving doors when a behemoth in a dark suit and an earpiece, looking about as warm as a prison door, blocked his path.
"Mr. Morel?" the man asked in a gravelly voice.
"That's me," Eliot replied, suddenly fearing he was going to be asked to pay for the coat check.
"Prince Yaz insisted on having you driven home by his personal chauffeur. Please follow me."
Eliot's face lit up with candid joy. The VIP treatment! The Prince had appreciated his joke so much he was paying for his cab! This was the culmination of his years of study.
"That's really too kind of him," Eliot gushed, falling into step behind the behemoth.
He got into the back of a German sedan with tinted windows, sinking delightfully into the genuine leather seats. Exhausted by the stress of the evening, he closed his eyes, lulled by the silence of the soundproof cabin, and half-dozed off, dreaming of his future law office.
When the car finally stopped, Eliot opened his eyes, expecting to see the decrepit facade of his student residence.
There was no facade. There was no street.
It was dark. The car was parked in the middle of a huge, abandoned industrial warehouse, lit by the pale light of a few construction spotlights. It smelled of dust, motor oil, and rusted sheet metal. They were very, very far from the 13th arrondissement.
The driver opened the door and yanked Eliot by the arm with a roughness that had nothing protocolary about it anymore.
"Hey! Easy, the jacket is a rental!" Eliot protested, stumbling onto the rough concrete. "Did you put the wrong address in the GPS? I don't live in Aubervilliers!"
The screech of a second car's tires cut off his protests. A luxurious black convertible drove into the warehouse and parked a few feet away.
Prince Yaz stepped out. He cast a profoundly disgusted look at the filthy floor, brushing imaginary dust off the lapel of his jacket.
"The filth of the plebs..." he muttered disdainfully, watching his Italian loafers lose their shine on the greasy concrete. "How ironic, for a man of your stature, to end up in such a cesspool, Mr. Ghost."
Eliot swallowed hard. The situation had just gone from "VIP service" to "local newspaper crime column."
"Your Highness?" he stammered, panic beginning to squeeze his throat. "I... I don't understand. If my joke about Robespierre offended you, I offer my sincerest apologies! It was legal humor, it's often very heavy-handed..."
"Enough comedy!" thundered the Prince, whose high-society mask had just shattered. "Did you really think you could threaten me with death on my own balcony and leave peacefully? You are an exceptional agent, I'll grant you that. But tonight, the Ghost disappears. And I wanted to see it with my own eyes."
Yaz made a small hand gesture. From the shadows of the warehouse pillars, two other bodyguards, mountains of muscle weighing at least two hundred and forty pounds each, advanced toward Eliot, slipping on tempered steel brass knuckles.
Eliot's consciousness screamed in terror. He wanted to beg, cry, call for his mother. He wanted to back away, but his legs suddenly felt very heavy.
That was when the terrifying miracle occurred. The evolution.
"He" didn't take mental control. Eliot remained fully conscious, fully terrified, locked in the front row of his own body. But the machine woke up. Months of intense, clandestine nocturnal training had forged perfect muscle memory. His autonomic nervous system short-circuited his cowardly consciousness.
The first behemoth lunged, throwing a lightning-fast right hook, aiming for Eliot's temple. A blow designed to kill.
"AAAAAAAH!" Eliot screamed, closing his eyes, convinced his head was going to explode.
In a pathetic backward flinch, his right foot slipped violently on a large puddle of motor oil. Eliot went backward in a slide worthy of a cartoon.
But this absurd clumsiness had a devastating effect. As he slipped, his torso slumped right under the trajectory of the lethal fist, which hit nothing but thin air. As he fell, Eliot frantically flailed his arms to catch himself. His right elbow, propelled by the kinetic force of the slide, shot up with the surgical precision of a steel piston and struck exactly the base of the guard's neck, crushing the vagus nerve with incredible violence.
The giant spasmed, eyes rolling back, and collapsed heavily onto the concrete, plunged into an instant artificial coma.
Eliot landed on his butt, eyes wide, out of breath.
"I swear I slipped on purpose! No, wait, I mean I DID NOT do it on purpose!" he moaned, scuttling backward like a crab.
Prince Yaz, meanwhile, was petrified. His best killer had just been wiped out in a second by a spectacular dodging technique.
"Kill him!" the Prince yelled at the second guard. "Kill this monster!"
The second guard, insane with rage, charged with the inertia of a rhinoceros. Eliot scrambled to his feet, tripping over his own shoelaces. He tried to run away, but his legs made a strange movement. His body pivoted on itself with disconcerting fluidity, dodging a lethal wrestling hold with a simple, clumsy half-turn.
For three minutes, the warehouse was the scene of a surreal spectacle.
Eliot screamed, whimpered, closed his eyes, and waved his arms. But every misstep, every stumble, every panicked movement placed him exactly out of striking range. Even better: his involuntary contortions turned into fatal counterattacks.
Trying to pick up his phone that had slipped, he ducked abruptly: the guard flew over him and smashed his shoulder into a metal beam. Straightening up in a panic, Eliot's skull hit the behemoth's chin with a loud clack. And finally, stepping backward, Eliot got his feet tangled, did a large windmill motion with his leg to keep his balance... and the heel of his rental shoe struck the guard's kneecap with the force of a jackhammer.
The knee gave way with a sickening crunch. The second behemoth howled in pain and collapsed, permanently out of the fight.
Eliot was panting, his shirt drenched in sweat, his hands trembling, the only one left standing amidst three bodies lying on the floor. He didn't have a single scratch on him. He looked at his own hands in total incomprehension, completely terrified by his own dexterity.
Prince Yaz, leaning against the door of his sports car, was livid. His knees were shaking.
He knew this legendary technique. Zui Quan. Drunken boxing. The art of mimicking absolute clumsiness to make one's strikes unpredictable and deadly. The secret agent had just massacred his elite close guard while pretending to be scared, humiliating him to the core.
The myth was true. The Ghost was invincible.
The silence that fell back over the warehouse was broken only by the groans of the guard with the shattered kneecap.
Eliot, out of breath, hands raised in front of him in a gesture of total appeasement, took a trembling step toward Prince Yaz.
The nobleman's reaction was instantaneous. The facade of mafia arrogance shattered. Faced with what he believed to be the greatest master assassin of his generation, the Prince of Oslavia jumped back, his face contorted in panic. With a trembling hand, he pulled a silenced semi-automatic pistol from inside his bespoke jacket.
"Do not come any closer!" Yaz screamed, his voice breaking with terror, aiming the weapon at the student's chest.
Eliot froze, his eyes round as saucers. The gun's black barrel was pointing straight at his clip-on bow tie.
"Your Majesty, I'm begging you, put that down!" Eliot squeaked, frantically waving his hands in a pathetic gesture of surrender. "This is a huge misunderstanding! I have to go home, I have my bar exam tomorrow morning at eight! I still have to study!"
Study. To Prince Yaz, the coded message was crystal clear: the secret agent was announcing that he was going to "review" his case and execute him on the spot.
"Stay where you are, monster!" the Prince yelled, taking another hasty step back.
But in his blind panic, Yaz totally forgot his surroundings. The industrial warehouse was not the polished marble of his palace. His luxury Italian heel violently hit the edge of an old, rotten wooden pallet.
The Prince of Oslavia lost his balance. His arms windmilled desperately in the air, the pistol slipped from his hands and slid across the concrete. He tipped backward, letting out a howl of pure terror.
He landed heavily on his back, right in the middle of a massive, rusted industrial machine, a relic of the old metallurgical factory. More precisely, the Prince's back hit the old trigger lever of a hydraulic shear for thick sheet metal with all his weight, the system of which had remained engaged for years.
Psssssssh...
The sound of compressed air echoed in the warehouse.
Eliot barely had time to widen his eyes.
CLACK.
The heavy solid steel blade, six feet wide and weighing several hundred pounds, came down with the force of a titanic guillotine.
French history has this annoying tendency to repeat itself. When foreign nobility comes looking for trouble on French soil, they often end up losing their heads. Literally. The cut was clean, surgical, and final.
A scarlet splash erupted from the machine to speckle Eliot's beautiful rental white shirt.
The young student stood frozen, his mouth slightly open. An absolute, deathly silence fell over the warehouse.
The metallic smell of blood hit his nostrils. Eliot doubled over, wracked by a monumental dry heave. He thought he was going to pass out. He closed his eyes, waiting for the shift, waiting for the darkness to envelop him and for his Alter-Ego, that cold, pragmatic machine, to take control to handle this nightmare.
But... nothing happened. The blackout didn't come.
Eliot opened his eyes again. He was still breathing. He was fully conscious. He looked at the Prince's headless body, then at his own bloodstained hands.
Slowly, Eliot straightened up.
Something had just changed. For the first time since the age of eight, the watertight barrier between the cowardly student and the original monster had cracked.
A new light, dark and dangerously calm, ignited in Eliot's eyes. His heart rate, usually so frantic, suddenly dropped to find a perfectly steady cruising rhythm.
His anxious student brain took back the reins, but with the implacable logic of his Alter-Ego.
If I call the police, they'll put me in custody. If I'm in custody, I miss the Bar exam tomorrow morning. If I miss the exam, my life is ruined.
The conclusion presented itself.
Eliot let out a long, exasperated sigh. He spotted a roll of heavy industrial plastic tarps in a corner of the warehouse and walked over to grab it.
"Unbelievable..." he muttered with profoundly mundane irritation, unrolling the plastic with precise movements. "Screwing up my study schedule at a time like this for some dickhead Prince! And my rental suit is ruined... I'm going to lose my hundred-and-fifty-buck deposit because of this moron."
He began wrapping the body with chilling efficiency, complaining aloud about dry cleaning prices, marking the first conscious collaboration between the cowardice of a stressed student and the pragmatism of a professional cleaner.
Six months later.
The May sun flooded the cobblestone courtyard of the grand Paris Law University. Students buzzed like a hive, stressed, laughing, freed from the weight of winter.
Eliot stood at the top of the large stone steps.
He no longer wore shirts that were too small or shapeless cardigans. Dressed in a well-tailored trench coat and a dark shirt, he stood perfectly straight. His shoulders were broad, his posture grounded. The wind slightly ruffled his hair.
He had undoubtedly changed. The gaze behind his glasses was no longer shifty; it was steady, even confident. The fusion with "The Other" was not complete, but the cohabitation had created a young man with undeniable charisma, mysterious and alluring.
He began his descent toward the courtyard. On the second step, the sole of his shoe caught the edge of the step. Eliot did a little windmill with his arms, lost his balance for a fraction of a second, and caught himself just in time on the handrail with a short, annoyed curse.
He adjusted his glasses. The machine was upgraded, but he was still Eliot.
"Eliot!"
He looked up. Thomas and Sarah were running toward him from the entrance gates. Thomas had gotten his color back since his food poisoning, and Sarah was radiant in a little spring jacket. She gave him a smile that made his legal heart skip a beat.
"So?!" Thomas yelled, panting. "The results are out! Did you get the email?!"
Eliot took his phone out of his pocket. The screen was lit up on his inbox. The official logo of the Bar Training School headed the message. He read the first line in silence.
"Congratulations Mr. Morel, following the jury's deliberations, we are pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Bar School."
Eliot slowly looked up from his screen. He looked at his two best friends, then turned his face to the blue Paris sky.
He cracked a smile. Not a sneer of terror, not a forced teacher's-pet smile. It was a complex, indecipherable smile. A half-angel, half-demon smile, loaded with the secrets of a mafia empire buried under a concrete slab and a criminal intelligence in full bloom.
"I passed," he murmured simply.
Volume 1 thus came to an end. Eliot G. was no longer just an unlucky student. He had just earned his ticket into the world of justice.
Playtime was over. The Ghost was going to become a lawyer.
May God protect the guilty.
Cause of death: Clean, accidental decapitation by an industrial guillotine shear (1982 model).
Police Verdict: Mysterious disappearance of a foreign diplomat and his close guard. Case closed. No body, no crime: out of sight, out of mind.
Red Flag for crowned heads: Never annoy a French student the night before his Bar exam. History has proven that crowned heads have an annoying tendency to detach from the rest of the body in this country in the face of popular exasperation.
End of Volume 1.