Chapter 1
My wife brought her first love back to my cloud penthouse for an affair, and even attempted to steal the corporation's core code. Caught red-handed, she showed no remorse, instead scolding me condescendingly: "He is my guest! How dare you touch him?!"
Chapter 1
New Detroit's acid rain fell like corrosive fluid, mixed with industrial waste gas, sizzling against the holographic glass of the cloud tower.
I stood at the floor-to-ceiling window on the 98th floor, my fingertips lightly stroking the liquid-metal wine glass.
At my feet lay a man vomiting blood.
Christian Howell—a tech expert of Cyber City, supposedly an elite returning home with the latest quantum algorithms. He had fucked my wife three times last night.
"Mr. Victor... President Vance..." Christian gasped, his damaged voice modulator hissing with static from his throat implant. "Your security system misunderstood... Madame and I were only discussing the neural network architecture of the European sector... My technology is absolutely vital to Vance Tech..."
Listening to his desperate lies, I felt a needle-like sting at the neural interface on my temple.
Three years of marriage. I had given my wife Sylvia the privilege of looking down from the clouds, access to pure resource reserves that even the mayor envied. In return, she had taken her first love to a luxury hotel suite to fuck right under my nose!
Rage churned in my chest, almost burning through my heart. But I didn't roar. In the cyber world, an out-of-control beast only gets hunted. True high-rankers use the most precise surgical knives to scrape out the traitor's blood and bone.
Click.
The triple-fingerprint-locked alloy door was brutally shoved open.
Sylvia stormed in on carbon-fiber high heels, wearing that expensive photochromic fiber dress—the hem flickering with a warning crimson due to her agitation.
When she saw Christian lying in a pool of blood, her modified cyber-eye filled with a mix of pity and fury.
"Victor! Have you lost your mind?!" Sylvia whirled on me, using that imperious tone she'd inherited as a Sterling heiress. "Christian is my invited guest! How dare you use your private security to attack him? This brutal, barbaric behavior—aren't you afraid the Sterling family will impeach you to the board?!"
Guest?
She dared speak to me in that condescending tone?
Instead of anger, I laughed coldly, a grim smile curling my lips. Without answering her barking, I simply raised my hand and snapped my fingers with my micro-permission ring.
Bzzzz—
The air in the center of the living room warped instantly as the holographic projection array hummed to life. Blue data streams wove a high-definition 3D image in midair—
On the smart waterbed of Suite 9012 at Neon Hotel, Sylvia and Christian were writhing like two animals in heat. The enhanced audio system even played back her moans without missing a beat.
"Data timestamp: yesterday at 15:14." I watched her face drain of color, my voice cold as steel. "Payment path: exclusive credit points of the CEO's wife of Vance Tech Group. Sylvia, your way of 'discussing neural architecture' is quite... retro."
"You—you bugged me?!" Sylvia's photochromic dress instantly turned a dead ashen gray. She stumbled back, still defiant. "Victor, this was just an accident, you can't—"
"Shut up!"
I waved my hand abruptly. The obscene footage on the holographic screen switched instantly to a set of frantic, blood-red data-streams—corporate espionage downloads.
"An accident? Using your highest-level CEO-wife clearance to let him secretly access Vance Tech's backbone network and attempt to steal my core asset codes—was that also an accident?" I looked at her without a shred of emotion.
That was the lowest-level AI source core and the quantum energy network key. If they had succeeded in stealing those, Vance Tech's security and servers would have collapsed instantly. The resulting chain reaction in finance and energy would have brought down my billion-dollar conglomerate, throwing me into an abyss from which I'd never recover.
This pair of dogs hadn't just come to pleasure themselves on my turf—they had schemed to eat my flesh, drink my blood, and utterly annihilate me.
I couldn't be bothered to listen to another word of bullshit.
My gaze swept over Christian on the floor like a blade, and I issued the highest-level command to my hidden security systems: "Execute Protocol 'Waste Disposal'—Target: Christian!"
The walls slid open silently. Two heavy riot robots rolled out on tank treads, their alloy mechanical arms gleaming with the hue of death under the cold light. Red scanning beams locked onto Christian's nape.
"No! Victor! I signed an NDA! You can't pull my module!" Christian finally realized what was coming. The arrogance in his eyes shattered as he desperately covered his nape and crawled backward. "Sylvia! Help me! Save me!"
"Stop it—" Sylvia shrieked, trying to rush forward, but the robots' high-frequency electrostatic field threw her back brutally onto the sofa.
"Execute." I looked down, cold-eyed.
The mechanical claw lunged out, precisely and brutally clamping onto Christian's skull. Another steel arm, equipped with a medical-grade extraction clamp, plunged without hesitation into his neck port.
Shhhhk—
A teeth-grinding screech of tearing metal, accompanied by a bloodcurdling scream, echoed through the penthouse. The "advanced neural module"—representing his identity, status, and all his knowledge—was ripped out along with flesh, blood, and nerve fibers.
Blood and silvery spinal fluid splattered across the nano-floor. Christian's eyes rolled back, his limbs twitching like a frog being electrocuted.
But that wasn't enough to pay for touching my woman.
"Initiate bio-removal procedure." I took a sip of the wine, thick as blood.
The robot raised the barrel of its high-energy thermal ray, pressing it dead against the vital spot between his legs.
Pzzzz—!
A blue-white plasma beam instantly pierced through. The smell of scorched protein rose with thick white smoke.
Christian couldn't even finish his scream. That last pride of manhood—along with his reproductive organs—was completely carbonized to ash within two seconds.
The once-returned elite was now reduced to a silicon-based cripple—no neurons, no fertility, lower than the poorest acid-rain slum dweller.
"AAAAHH!" Sylvia stared at the smoking wreckage of the man on the floor, covering her face and shrieking in utter breakdown, her expensive makeup ruined by tears. "Monster... Victor, you're a complete madman!"
"Am I?"
I tossed my glass aside and walked over to her across the shattered glass. I grabbed her slender neck, lifting her entire body off the ground like a ragdoll until her nose almost touched mine. I could clearly see my own reflection in her eyes—cold, utterly devoid of warmth.
"Compared to you trampling my dignity underfoot, this retaliation of mine is remarkably civilized." With my free hand, I pulled a translucent photon contract from my tactical terminal and slapped it onto her face.
"Marital Dissolution and Resource Deprivation Agreement." I watched her face redden from lack of oxygen, pronouncing each word clearly. "You are hereby disowned by the Vance family. Your high-level clearance, credit cards, aircar passes—all void. Most importantly—"
I paused, savoring the growing despair in her pupils: "Starting this month, you will permanently lose access to Vance Tech's serum technology support!"
At those words, Sylvia stopped struggling.
For upper-class nobles who relied on top-tier serums to maintain genetic perfection and resist environmental toxins, cutting off the serum supply meant genetic collapse, skin ulceration—a slow, ugly rot to death.
"No... you can't do this! Victor, I'm sorry, please don't cut my serum!" She finally broke down, desperately reaching for my sleeve, her pride shattered before survival. "For the sake of three years, you can't throw me off the tower!"
"Sign it, and take this garbage and get out." I released her with contempt, letting her fall to the floor.
Under the cold barrels of the robots, Sylvia tremblingly pressed her bloody handprint onto the contract.
She helped the nearly unconscious Christian to his feet and stumbled toward the elevator.
Just as the doors were about to close, she suddenly looked up, her pleading eyes morphing back into venomous curses.
"Victor Vance, don't get too cocky." She gritted her teeth like a dying snake. "I am a Sterling! Once I return to my family, my father and brother will use all the group's resources against you! Just you wait!"
The elevator doors slammed shut, cutting off her poisonous vow.
The hall fell silent again, save for the cleaning drone tirelessly scrubbing away Christian's char and blood.
I walked to the window, watching a wobbling aircar plunge into the acid rain thunderstorm below.
She thought the Sterling family was her final haven, a golden ticket that would pull her from the abyss.
How laughably stupid.
"Adam," I said coldly, calling up Vance Tech's AI core.
"I'm here, Mr. Vance." The emotionless synthesized voice echoed in my mind.
I looked at my reflection in the window, a cruel smile curling my lips: "Immediately liquidate all Vance Tech holdings of Sterling Group bonds. Initiate S-class short-selling procedures. Block their twelve core gene-serum supply chains. Cut off all their bank credit lines."
"Command confirmed. The Sterling family's capital chain is projected to collapse entirely within thirty minutes."
