The elevator ride was smooth, a stark contrast to the violence waiting at the top.
Vance leaned against the metal wall, the cold magnetic cuffs biting into his wrists. He could feel the glucose he had just consumed dissolving into his bloodstream, rushing to his brain like high-octane fuel. His synapses were firing faster than normal, the phantom pain in his neural port throbbing in a steady, manageable rhythm.
Ding.
The doors slid open.
The four combat droids didn't ask him to move. They grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out, their metal fingers digging into his flesh.
They threw him into the center of the room and slammed him into a heavy metal chair bolted to the floor. Additional magnetic clamps snapped around his ankles and chest, locking him in place.
Vance looked up, taking in the belly of the beast.
The command center was a cathedral of paranoia. The walls were not made of concrete, but of light. Thousands of curved screens covered every inch of the circular room, from the floor to the vaulted ceiling. They displayed a dizzying, fractured mosaic of District 9: bedroom windows, factory assembly lines, back alleys, sewer grates.
It was a kaleidoscope of a million stolen secrets.
In the center of this digital panopticon hung a throne. It was a complex rig suspended from the ceiling by thick bundles of black data cables, hovering like a spider in the center of its web.
A man sat in the chair. He was skeletal, his skin the translucent grey of a deep-sea creature that had never known the sun. He wore a neural interface headset that covered the upper half of his face, his fingers twitching over a floating holographic keyboard.
[Envy]. The All-Seeing Eye.
The chair lowered silently until Envy was hovering just above Vance.
"You are the glitch," Envy whispered. His voice didn't come from his throat; it came from the room's surround speakers, amplified and distorted, echoing from everywhere at once.
"You walked through my blind spots. You calculated the processing delay." Envy tilted his head, the lenses of his headset whirring as they zoomed in on Vance's face. "No human can calculate that fast without a military-grade processor. Who built you?"
"My mother," Vance replied, his voice raspy but calm. "Though she wasn't very good at math."
"Silence."
Envy tapped a key.
ZAP.
A jolt of high-voltage electricity surged through the metal chair. Vance's body seized, every muscle contracting violently. His teeth slammed together, and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth.
When the current stopped, Vance slumped forward, gasping for air. Smoke rose from his cuffs.
"I don't like jokes," Envy said coldly. "I like data. Pure, raw, uncorrupted data."
He waved a hand. A mechanical arm descended from the ceiling with a hydraulic hiss. It held a menacing, helmet-like device bristling with wet sensors and fiber-optic cables.
"The Neural Siphon," Envy explained, his tone clinical. "It bypasses your vocal cords and reads the electrical impulses of your cerebral cortex. It translates surface thoughts into visual streams. It does not lie, and it does not make jokes."
The droids grabbed Vance's head, holding him still as the helmet descended. The cold, wet sensors clamped onto his skull, needles pricking his scalp.
A low hum filled Vance's ears. He felt a cold, invasive sensation, like icy water trickling over his brain.
"Now," Envy leaned back, pointing to a massive screen directly in front of them. "Show me. How did you breach the perimeter? Who gave you the algorithm?"
Vance closed his eyes behind his sunglasses.
The machine was trying to pull images from his mind. It was fishing for the memory of Old Ghost, for the blueprints, for the calculation of the 0.5-second delay.
If he thought about them, even for a split second, Envy would see them on the screen.
Time to build a wall, Vance thought.
He focused. He didn't try to empty his mind; nature abhors a vacuum. Instead, he constructed a barrier.
He visualized Math.
He began to construct a Mandelbrot Set in his mind—an infinite, recursive fractal pattern. He zoomed in on the edges, generating spiraling geometric shapes that repeated endlessly, growing more complex with every second. Black spirals, jagged edges, infinite loops of pure logic.
On the massive screen in front of them, static flickered. Then, an image resolved.
It was a nightmare of geometry. A swirling, high-contrast vortex of black and white fractals, spinning at a nauseating speed.
The room fell dead silent. The image on the screen was hypnotic and disturbing, like looking into the eye of a digital storm.
"What is this?" Envy whispered, baffled. "Stop hiding! Where is the data?"
"I'm organizing my files," Vance gritted out, sweat beading on his forehead. "It's a bit messy in here."
"Stop it!" Envy slammed his fist on the armrest.
Another shock hit Vance. This one was longer. Vance screamed through gritted teeth, his vision whitening. The fractal on the screen shattered into jagged static.
"Show me the truth!" Envy shrieked. "What are you hiding!"
Vance gasped, sweat and blood dripping from his chin. The pain cleared his mind, sharpening his focus.
"You want the truth?" Vance panted. "Fine. Look."
He shifted his mental focus. He didn't show the past. He showed a fabricated future.
He visualized Envy. He imagined Envy sitting in this very chair, but stripped of his skin, his muscles exposed, dissected like a frog in a lab. He visualized himself standing over Envy, holding a scalpel, calmly peeling back the layers to see what made the "All-Seeing Eye" tick.
It was a cold, clinical, and terrifyingly detailed hallucination of autopsy.
On the screen, the fractal vanished. It was replaced by a gruesome, high-definition image of Envy's own dissected face, staring back at him with dead eyes.
"GAH!" Envy recoiled, revulsion washing over him. He tore his gaze away from the screen. "You sick... twisted..."
"Get out of my system!" Envy roared. He couldn't stand it. The images were polluting his mind, attacking his sanity.
"Your machine is trash," Vance rasped, lifting his head.
He stared directly into Envy's magnified lenses. He sniffed the air.
The smell of bleach and ozone was gone. Now, radiating from the man in the chair, was the overwhelming scent of Vinegar. Sour, acidic, fermenting jealousy mixed with Rotting Paper—fear.
"You rely on these toys because you're afraid," Vance's voice dropped, becoming a sharp weapon. "You think seeing neurons firing is the same as knowing the truth. But you're just watching noise. You have a million eyes, Envy, but you're blind."
"I am not blind!" Envy hissed, leaning down until his face was inches from Vance's. "I see everything!"
"Then why do you need the helmet?" Vance challenged. "Are you afraid that if you look me in the eye, you'll see something your screens can't show you?"
Vance smiled. It was a bloody, jagged grin.
"You want to know how I beat your system? You want to know where the flaw is? I'll tell you."
"But not to a machine."
Vance jerked his chin at the Neural Siphon.
"Take this trash off me. Look at me with your own eyes. Man to man. Or are you too scared to play a game without your cheats?"
Envy trembled. The vinegar smell spiked, mixed with a sudden, sharp scent of Pride. He hated being mocked. He hated being called afraid.
He looked at the gruesome dissection image still frozen on the screen. The machine was useless against a mind this disciplined and dark.
"Fine," Envy spat.
He pressed a button. The mechanical arm retracted, ripping the helmet off Vance's head.
"You want to talk?" Envy's chair floated back, positioning him like a judge on a high bench. "Talk. But if I catch you lying, I will peel your skin off for real."
Vance shook his head, clearing the dizziness. The glucose was still burning in his veins.
The first hurdle was cleared. The machine was gone. Now, the real game could begin.
"I don't want to just talk," Vance said, his eyes locking onto Envy's. "I want to make a bet."
"A game of Verification."