No Stranger To Ruining Lives

Jackson Illerioum IIX had never once imagined he’d have to worry about money. In all fairness, that was a justifiable belief; he’d lived in the Sacred City, thousands of feet above the crumbling streets below, and for all his life had never wanted a thing. For 10 years, he’d planned on inheriting the Family Trade. For 10 years, he’d worked for his father from within the shadows, tugging strings from behind a screen. Billions of dollars and at least as many bytes had passed between his hands – as far as he was concerned, he’d built the Illerioum empire, transforming it in the space of a decade from an unknown collection of entrepreneurs to a household name in energy distribution. He could imagine nothing… nothing worse than being banished from the Sacred City on the night of his 21st birthday, the evening of his greatest triumph: the night when he should have finally come to inherit the empire he’d worked so hard to build.

Hot frustration had cooled fast as he adapted to the life below, but when he’d reviewed the surveillance tapes a few months later, everything ounce of fury he’d let go returned, far colder and harder than before. He didn’t want to believe it was possible – but in retrospect, it should have been obvious, and it only cut him deeper that he hadn’t seen it coming. His father was a ruthless man, after all. The peacekeepers hadn’t “caught” Jackson in the act of corporate espionage. He had been set up.

It was entirely below him to have to stoop to something like this. When he’d lived in the Sacred City, he’d brought rival Families to their knees; now he was being forced to steal pocket change from a lower city bank, because his card had been frozen and his own well-filled bank account was long gone. For all he’d lost, though, Jackson smiled grudgingly at the fact that there was one thing they hadn’t taken from him, aside from his mask: a sense of creativity. He glanced up at the bank across from the noisy cafe he was seated at, tapped a button on his phone, and watched as, all at once, every street light on the block turned green.

The first crash brought half a smile to his face, but the feeling turned fiercely sour when the screaming began. Screeching tires punctuated cries of fear; murmurs quickly rose to shouts as everyone stopped what they were doing and crowded around the cluster of wrecks on the streets. Jackson was no stranger to ruining lives, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t thrill him a little, but the Sacred City had always gone about it differently… he never saw their faces, never had to watch the sacrilege of bankruptcy punished in the public squares. This was different… this made him sick. Jackson tilted his head back, just barely picking out the lights of the City he once called home so many thousands of feet above, and then turned his gaze away and spat on the ground. Everything about today was leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

He counted to four, and cast his misgivings aside; they would only drag him down, and then this would all be for naught. Best to get it over with quickly, he supposed. At least the bank was empty now – everyone had rushed outside to help. Jackson stood up, left without paying for his coffee, and strode across the street to the now-empty building, save for the cash inside. He tapped his phone one more time, and right on cue, the traffic cameras turned and looked away.



The slim metal frame on his left wrist vibrated silently; before he was even completely awake, he was sitting up and swiping through the holograms it projected around his arm, instinct guiding his stained yellow hands. Hundreds of his programs had triggered alarms – it was an attack on a scale he hadn’t seen in years. Bloodshot, electric-blue eyes darted frantically over the error messages at speeds difficult to follow. It didn’t take long to realize he was not being targeted – he exhaled a sigh of relief and sat back against the decaying headboard, staring up at the motel room’s stained and weathered ceiling. The rest of the error messages were relatively straightforward, but even after clearing all of them, there was no indication as to what had happened, nor any reason for an attack so large… save for one. Something that didn’t seem quite right.

Life as a Spectre had taught him to spot the details, the clues – the little things that were out of place. Very rarely could a system be compromised by a direct or frontal approach; it was only lateral thinking that had got him this far, and he’d long since learned that when something felt wrong in his gut, it usually was. He rolled the holograms back, pulling up the video feeds at the corner of Eighth and East Freedom street. It took him almost five minutes of reviewing the footage before he abruptly realized what had set him off: the cameras typically panned from left to right at very predictable intervals, but a few seconds after the attack on the streetlights, all the eyes looking east had looked away.

The spectre sat in the darkened motel room, deep in thought, for almost a minute. He’d heard rumors, but had suspected for the longest time that in a trade like this, he was alone. On a whim, he grabbed his duffel bag, left a roll of cash on the filthy bedside table, and pushed his way through the door. It wasn’t any fact or figure that made him limp as quickly as he could – just a feeling. Just a hunch.

Something that didn’t seem quite right.