The silence came without warning.
Derek noticed it on a Tuesday morning, halfway through a protein shake, when he realized his phone had not buzzed once in three days. No anonymous inquiries routed through intermediaries. No journalists fishing for statements. No vague emails from "consulting firms" asking about Blackfire's long-term vision. Even the low-grade noise—online speculation fed by planted rumors—had thinned out.
For the first time since Blackfire Technologies had stepped into the light, the world had stopped poking it.
That should have been comforting.
Instead, Derek felt a faint tightening behind his eyes.
Silence was never empty. Silence meant someone had finished asking questions and had started listening.
He rose from the breakfast table on the twenty-fifth floor, dressed in training shorts and a fitted black shirt, and crossed into his office one floor below. The glass walls overlooked downtown Los Angeles, sunlight bouncing off steel and concrete like the city itself was restless. Derek wasn't. He pulled up a dashboard on one of the wall-mounted screens, fingers moving with practiced efficiency.
Traffic logs. Legal inquiries. Patent searches. Network scans.
Nothing obvious. No spikes. No red flags.
"Too clean," he muttered.
A soft knock came at the door before Ruth's voice sounded through the intercom. "Alan Payne is here."
"Send him in."
Alan entered with his usual calm, suit immaculate, expression neutral in a way that only lawyers who had survived decades in hostile rooms could manage. He took one look at Derek's face and paused.
"You noticed too," Alan said.
Derek nodded. "They stopped."
Alan set a thin tablet on the desk. "JBL. No calls. No follow-ups. No indirect pressure. Their media contacts went dark last week."
"That's what worries me."
Alan leaned back slightly. "Most firms would be relieved."
"Most firms don't build black boxes," Derek replied.
For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of the building's systems filled the room—a carefully engineered white noise designed to defeat audio surveillance. Derek had insisted on it.
"They didn't lose interest," Derek continued. "They changed posture."
Alan's lips twitched. "You think they're watching."
"I know they are."
---
Three miles away, in a glass-and-marble boardroom overlooking Wilshire Boulevard, JBL Investment Group had come to the same conclusion.
The meeting was small by design. No assistants. No junior analysts. Just five people who had been with the firm long enough to understand one rule: if you didn't understand something, you assumed it could hurt you.
Fabian Matthews stood near the screen, hands clasped behind his back, replaying the memory of a young man with calm eyes and an unyielding refusal. Derek Morgan had not postured. He had not negotiated. He had simply declined.
That was what unsettled them.
"Blackfire is now classified as a black-box asset," the head of strategic risk said calmly. "We do not approach. We do not provoke. We do not leak."
One of the directors frowned. "And if they're bluffing?"
Fabian shook his head. "They aren't."
A slide appeared on the screen: timelines, capital flows, shell structures so complex they bordered on art.
"No eighteen-year-old orphan becomes this without leverage," Fabian continued. "Either he's backed by something we can't see, or he is something we can't measure."
Silence followed.
"Assign observation," the chairwoman finally said. "One analyst. One cyber firm. No interference."
"And if they notice?" someone asked.
"They already have," she replied. "That's the point."
---
Back at Blackfire, the game didn't care about corporate anxiety.
On the third floor, a dozen developers crowded around a live simulation. The medieval city on-screen breathed. Smoke curled from chimneys. NPCs moved through the streets with purpose—not loops, not scripts, but intent.
A merchant screamed when a sword nicked his arm. A guard hesitated before engaging, fear flickering across his face before duty won.
"They're retaining memory clusters," one AI engineer said, voice tight with excitement. "He remembers who hurt him."
"And he avoids that street now," a psychologist added quietly. "Like trauma."
Derek watched without blinking.
"Run mortality response," he said.
The tester complied. A character was struck down. The NPCs nearby froze. One dropped to their knees. Another fled. A third began shouting incoherently.
"They don't want to die," someone whispered.
Derek felt it then—the shift. Not in the room, but in the trajectory of everything they were building.
"This isn't just a game," one developer said.
"No," Derek replied. "It's a system."
---
By evening, Derek had issued three quiet orders.
First: accelerate the secondary server farm timeline. Missouri was no longer enough.
Second: split all future patent filings across multiple jurisdictions, with staggered disclosures designed to reveal nothing in isolation.
Third: tighten legal compartmentalization. No single department knew the whole.
He wasn't hiding.
He was evolving faster than anyone watching.
Alan observed him from across the desk. "You're not worried they'll come back?"
"They will," Derek said. "But not like before."
"And when they do?"
Derek smiled faintly. "They'll ask permission."
---
The warning arrived just before midnight.
It wasn't a threat. It wasn't even addressed to him.
A neutral industry report appeared in Alan's inbox, routed through three firms and a public archive. No signature. No watermark. Just data.
One sentence was highlighted.
Simulation platforms historically precede paradigm shifts.
Derek read it once. Then again.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes closing briefly as the city lights burned beyond the glass.
"So," he murmured, almost amused. "They finally understand."
Not what Reality Quest was.
But what it could become.
And somewhere, in boardrooms and offices that had never agreed on anything in their lives, people had begun to do the same thing JBL had done.
They stopped talking.
And started watching.