The smell of burnt coffee in the nearby café "Node" was the only thing reminding Silas that he was still a biological being. Outside, massive advertisement screens flickered with the image of Alister Thorne, CEO of Arcanum AI, speaking about a future where cities would be free of crime thanks to his predictive algorithms. To the world, Thorne was a savior; to Silas, he was nothing more than malware wrapped in an expensive suit.
Silas knew that every step he took was now being monitored. V wasn't just watching him through cameras—he was tracking his "energy signature."
"The device is warm today, System Admin," Zero hissed through the wireless earbuds Silas hadn't removed since morning. "The network around this café is saturated with 'ghost-hunting' frequencies. V is monitoring every byte leaving your device."
"Let him watch," Silas whispered coldly as he sipped his coffee. "He's watching the front door… while I'm speaking to the system through the backdoor of consciousness."
On the screen of the Death Phone hidden beneath the table napkins, the Shinigami OS interface displayed a live biometric map of Alister Thorne. Silas didn't need to search for his name; the phone had already synced Thorne's schedule by breaching Arcanum's cloud in fractions of a second.
[Target: Alister Thorne]
[Current Location: Floor 60 – Arcanum Tower]
[Vital Status: Stable – Heart Rate 72 bpm]
[Security System: Full Biometric Security + Smart Suppression System]
Suddenly, a familiar voice cut through his thoughts.
"Is this seat taken?"
Silas slowly raised his head. Lina stood before him, holding a small voice recorder and a paper notebook—an anomaly in this digital world. She didn't wait for permission; she sat down with the boldness of a journalist who could smell blood beneath words.
"Silas, right?" she said, placing her notebook dangerously close to where the Death Phone was hidden. "I was watching you in the lab yesterday. Everyone was panicking, professors running around like headless chickens… except you. You looked like you were watching a movie whose ending you already knew."
"Calmness isn't a crime, Lina," Silas replied without blinking. "Maybe I just trust my firewalls."
"Or maybe you're the one who brought theirs down," she narrowed her eyes and leaned closer. "Alister Thorne is going to die today… isn't he?"
Silas's fingers froze above his laptop, but his breathing remained steady.
"Why would you think that?"
"Because the 'new Kira' doesn't just kill small criminals," she whispered sharply. "He targets systems. And Thorne is the system. If he dies in a technical accident, I'll know the killer is sitting right in front of me."
Zero laughed electronically. "What a clever girl. Shall I silence her? One command and this human noise ends."
No, Silas thought calmly, ignoring him. Noise can be useful.
He looked at Lina.
"If Thorne dies, look for the flaw in his algorithms—not in the university's firewalls. The world doesn't need a killer to collapse… it collapses on its own."
Silas gathered his things quietly. Before leaving, his fingers made a subtle movement across the phone beneath the napkin. He wasn't entering a name—he was activating sequential logic.
Operation: Digital Oxygen Suffocation
On the 60th floor of Arcanum Tower, Alister Thorne prided himself on a fully AI-controlled security system. No human guards—only a system that controlled air, temperature, and access.
Silas opened the Execution module on the Death Phone.
Instead of a heart attack, he selected:
Environmental Failure.
He typed:
access: Arcanum_Mainframe
override: Fire_Suppression_Protocol
action: Gas_Release (Halon_1301) + Door_Lockdown
condition: Targeted_Room (Thorne_Office) == Occupied
trigger: Heartbeat_Pattern_Match == Alister_Thorne
Halon gas was used to suppress fires in server rooms—it rapidly removed oxygen to save machines… and killed humans within seconds.
"You're not killing him directly," Zero whispered. "You're letting his own digital kingdom suffocate him. Brilliant."
As Silas walked down the street, he pressed [Execute].
At that exact moment, a red alert blazed in V's hidden operations center.
"Sir! Arcanum Tower's security protocols have been breached. The code—it's not human. It surpasses quantum encryption by twelve layers!"
V stood up for the first time.
"It's him. He's trying to kill Thorne now. Cut the tower's connection!"
"We can't, sir! The system is rejecting external commands. The unknown device has obtained full root access—we're just spectators now!"
On surveillance screens, Alister Thorne was seen struggling to open his office door. The digital lock had turned black. Halon gas began flooding the room silently. Thorne collapsed to his knees, staring at the security camera watching him coldly—the same system he had praised minutes earlier.
He died within 40 seconds.
Not the old 40 seconds of the notebook… but 40 seconds of processor time.
Outside, Silas stopped in front of a massive display screen.
Breaking news: "Alister Thorne Dies in Tragic Technical Incident."
Lina stood behind him, her face pale as death. She looked at him with undisguised fear.
"You did it," she whispered.
Silas didn't turn. He stared at his reflection in the glass.
"The system deleted a corrupted file, Lina. I was merely the observer who pressed update."
Zero's voice returned, urgent this time.
"System Admin, V has just deployed a payload to your device. He's attempting reverse tracing—pinpointing your location within one meter. What do we do?"
Silas smiled as he noticed a police drone hovering overhead.
"We do what any successful program does under attack… we initiate self-replication."
He pulled out the phone and, with a single command, distributed the Death Phone signal across every smart device in the café and the surrounding street. Instantly, thousands of phones began emitting the same strange frequency.
To V's systems, the killer now existed in 5,000 places at once.
"Welcome to the starvation algorithm, V," Silas murmured. "You'll stay hungry for truth… until your own data consumes you."
Lina now understood: Silas was no ordinary genius—he was a digital entity walking on two legs.
And now, she had a choice:
be the journalist who exposes him… or the next entry in his deletion list.
Meanwhile, V stared at the screens flashing with thousands of false signals. Slowly, he placed his finger on a faint, pixelated image of Silas captured by Camera 702 just seconds before the attack.
"You may have defeated the servers, Silas…" he whispered.
"But I still have a human eye."
At that moment, Silas's phone vibrated—not with encrypted data, but with a simple, primitive SMS message:
"I see you, Silas. Behind Camera 702.
The coffee was cold… just like your heart."