Chapter 25: The First Shot Across the Bow
The two percent bump in Synergy from helping Leo didn't make Alex feel powerful. It made him feel exposed. Letting someone in, even just a little, felt like prying open a reinforced door he'd spent months welding shut. The system was a sentimental bastard, but the city wasn't. The city remembered every weakness.
The bill from Julian Reed arrived three days later. It didn't come on legal letterhead. It didn't come from a process server. It came through the digital pipes of the internet itself, silent and surgical.
Alex was in his room, tweaking the Sentinel client, when a notification popped up from his web hosting provider. Not an email. A full-screen, system-level alert that froze his interface.
[ACCOUNT SUSPENSION NOTICE - CODE: TOS-7B]
[REASON: HOSTING OF MALICIOUS SCRAPING TOOLS AND DISTRIBUTION OF UNAUTHORIZED SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE.]
[EFFECTIVE: IMMEDIATELY.]
[APPEAL PROCESS: SEE SECTION 14.C.]
His stomach dropped. The Sentinel website was down. The client update server was down. The backend API for his paying customers was down. Everything, gone. Just like that.
This wasn't a lawsuit. It was a decapitation. Reed hadn't gone after him personally; he'd cut off his oxygen supply. Sentinel was his legitimacy, his tiny stream of revenue, his proof that he could build something real. Now it was just a dead link.
He spent the next hour on the phone, his knuckles white. He was routed through three different customer service reps, each more useless than the last. The final one, a guy with a bored monotone, gave him the script.
"I'm sorry, sir, the suspension is final. Our automated systems flagged your account for Terms of Service violations."
"What violations? What specific tools? What software?" Alex demanded, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
"I don't have that information, sir. The decision is made at a higher level. You can appeal via the form."
"A higher level." The words were ice in his veins. Reed's influence reached into the bland, faceless corporations that were the bedrock of the modern internet. He hadn't needed a flamethrower. He'd just made a phone call.
He slammed his laptop shut. The silence in his room was deafening. The hum of his server was still there, a mocking reminder of the power he supposedly wielded. He could run circles around their security, but he couldn't stop a suit from making a call to another suit.
He had to tell Chloe. The thought was a fresh wave of nausea. He'd just pulled her deeper into this, and now their first, functioning asset was gone.
He met her at a different spot this time, a grimy diner off Astoria Boulevard where the coffee was burnt and nobody looked at you twice. The vinyl booth was sticky. He slid in opposite her.
"They killed Sentinel," he said, the words flat. No greeting. "The hosting provider. Shut it down for TOS violations. Malicious tools. Surveillance software. Bullshit."
Chloe didn't look surprised. She looked… resigned. She stirred her coffee, the spoon clinking against the thick ceramic mug. "How many customers?"
"A hundred and twelve. Paying. They just lost their service."
"We'll refund them. Every last dollar. We eat the cost." Her voice was steady, but he saw the tension in her jaw. That was their seed money, their runway.
"It's not about the money," Alex said, his voice low. "It's the message. He can erase us with a whisper. We're not even a company to him. We're a stain he's wiping off his shoe."
"So we get a new host. We move the domain. We come back up in 48 hours." She was trying to be the strategist, but the plan sounded feeble even to her.
"And he does it again. He'll just keep making calls. He'll get our payment processor to drop us next. Our bank to freeze the accounts. He doesn't have to beat us. He just has to make it so we can't exist."
The reality of it settled over them like a shroud. This was corporate warfare. It wasn't fought with code or fists, but with access and influence. It was death by a thousand administrative cuts.
"The pitch competition," Chloe said, latching onto the only lifeline they had. "It's more important than ever. If we win, if we get that visibility, it becomes harder for him to just make us disappear. People will be watching."
Alex nodded, but the fire was gone from his eyes. He felt hollowed out. He'd been so focused on the digital threat, the phantom of a physical attack, he'd forgotten the most powerful weapon people like Reed had: the power to make you irrelevant. To simply revoke your license to operate.
He walked home alone, the city feeling different. The noise was no longer a shield; it was the sound of a world that would keep spinning without him in it. The halal cart guy, the kids on the corner, the rumbling train—they'd all be here tomorrow, whether Alex Chen's little company lived or died.
When he got back, his dad was in the living room, watching the news. He muted the TV as Alex came in.
"You look like hell," Jiang said, his voice not unkind.
"Rough day," Alex mumbled, heading for his room.
"This… business of yours. It is going okay?"
The question, so simple, felt like a punch. Alex stopped, his back to his father. He couldn't tell him the truth. He couldn't tell him that the golden goose was already dead, plucked and served up on a platter by a man they'd never meet.
"It's fine, Dad," he said, the lie tasting like ash. "Just… growing pains."
He retreated to his room and closed the door. He didn't open his laptop. He just sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, listening to the faint sounds of his family living their lives on the other side of the wall.
He'd been so proud of that $5,000. He thought he'd bought them stability. He'd just bought them a target.
The Host-System Synergy metric flickered in his vision. It had dropped. 45%. The "-30%" debuff from Existential Threat was doing its work, eroding the small gains he'd made.
Reed's first shot hadn't been a blast. It was a poison. And it was already in his veins. The fight wasn't about winning anymore. It was about seeing how long he could last before he bled out.