Chapter 11: GHOST IN THE MACHINE
The building's security camera pointed at the hallway like a dead eye.
I stood at the bottom of the stairwell, watching the red recording light blink in steady rhythm. Two in the morning. The building was silent. Perfect conditions for a test.
"Ghost Mode. Activate."
The command felt ridiculous—like something from a bad science fiction movie. But the moment the thought formed, something shifted.
Cold washed through my body. Not painful, but unmistakable. Like stepping into an air-conditioned room after hours in summer heat. The sensation started in my chest and spread outward, coating my skin in something that felt almost like static.
[GHOST MODE: ACTIVE. DURATION: 240 SECONDS.]
A timer appeared in my peripheral vision. Counting down. 239. 238. 237.
I climbed the stairs.
The camera was mounted at the corner where the stairwell met the second-floor hallway. I walked directly beneath it, watching the recording light.
Nothing changed. The light kept blinking. The lens kept pointing at the empty space where I should have been visible.
But was I actually invisible to it? Or was this just confirmation bias?
I needed a better test.
The building's front entrance had a monitor behind the security desk. Usually unmanned at this hour, but the feed still recorded. If I could check the footage...
"Later. First, understand the limits."
I walked down the hallway. Apartment 2C. The door opened.
Mrs. Patterson—elderly, insomniac, always complaining about noise—stepped out with her trash bag. Her eyes found me immediately.
"Oh! Mr. Radcliff." She clutched her chest. "You startled me. What are you doing up so late?"
"She can see me. Ghost Mode doesn't affect human vision."
"Couldn't sleep. Taking a walk."
"Well, don't let me keep you." She shuffled toward the garbage chute. "Have a good night."
I watched her go, processing the implications. Invisible to cameras. Visible to people. The ability was technological, not physical. It blocked electronic surveillance, not eyeballs.
Useful. But not as powerful as I'd hoped.
[GHOST MODE: DURATION REMAINING: 178 SECONDS.]
I needed to test more variables. The building had motion sensors in the stairwell—installed after a break-in last year. If Ghost Mode blocked those too...
I found the sensor on the third floor. A small white box mounted near the ceiling, designed to trigger lights when someone passed.
I walked beneath it.
The lights stayed off.
"Motion sensors too. Anything electronic."
What about phones? If I walked past someone on a video call, would their camera pick me up?
No way to test that tonight. But the theory was clear: Ghost Mode created a bubble of electronic invisibility. Cameras, sensors, possibly even thermal imaging. Anything that used technology to detect presence.
[GHOST MODE: DURATION REMAINING: 47 SECONDS.]
Almost out of time. I headed back toward my apartment, counting steps, measuring distance. How far could I travel in four minutes? How many cameras could I bypass?
The timer hit zero.
[GHOST MODE: DEACTIVATED. COOLDOWN: 600 SECONDS.]
The cold sensation faded. I felt normal again—exposed, trackable, vulnerable.
"Reactivate. Ghost Mode."
Nothing happened. No cold wash. No timer. Just silence.
[GHOST MODE: COOLDOWN ACTIVE. TIME REMAINING: 598 SECONDS.]
Ten minutes. Ten minutes of vulnerability between each four-minute window of invisibility.
I sat on the stairwell and started counting.
The concrete was cold through my jeans. The building creaked around me—settling sounds, pipes, the ambient noise of a structure that had seen better decades. I let my mind drift while tracking the seconds.
One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.
The waiting was harder than the action. In combat, in surveillance, in the moment of the kill—time compressed. Everything happened fast, instinct taking over, training replacing thought.
But this? This was just sitting. Counting. Watching numbers tick down in my head.
Four hundred. Five hundred.
"This is the job now. Not just killing. Planning. Timing. Understanding every advantage and every limit."
Five hundred seventy-eight. Five hundred seventy-nine.
[GHOST MODE: AVAILABLE.]
I activated it again just to feel the cold wash over me. To confirm it worked. To prove I wasn't imagining things.
[GHOST MODE: ACTIVE. DURATION: 240 SECONDS.]
The timer started counting down. I deactivated it manually—another mental command, another seamless response—and watched the cooldown begin again.
"Four minutes on. Ten minutes off. In the assassin world, that's the difference between clean entry and corpse removal."
I climbed to my feet. My back ached from sitting on concrete. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. But I had what I needed.
Tomorrow, I'd visit the Continental. The real test of whether two gold coins and a supernatural ability were enough to enter the world's most exclusive hotel for killers.
I set my alarm for 8 AM and collapsed onto the mattress without undressing.
Sleep came fast. The dreams were full of timers counting down.
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