A Reaper Among Us

Three weeks after Harrow's death, Iron Nest no longer felt safe.

Kael noticed it first in the silence.

The corridors were quieter. The engineers avoided eye contact. Even the security AI hesitated before unlocking Kael's own command doors.

Something was wrong.

Trix confirmed it on Day Fourteen.

"We have a leak. No digital breach. Something… human."

Kael didn't answer right away.

Because he already suspected who.

It started with a name.

Cassian Vale.

Lead strategist of Iron Nest's internal threat division.

An ex-syndicate tactician Kael had recruited after destroying the Gilded Fangs in Morocco. Brilliant. Efficient. Loyal.

Too loyal.

Trix whispered it in Kael's ear:

"He's not transmitting data. He's redirecting perception. Planting false reports. Creating blind spots."

Seiryu analyzed the patterns.

"Whatever Reaper Four is… it doesn't want to strike from outside."

Kael's voice was cold steel.

"It wants us to trust it first."

Kael summoned Cassian to the War Table.

The man arrived crisp, composed, tailored in obsidian-black. No tremble. No guilt.

Kael spoke plainly.

"Tell me about Operation Tangent Protocol."

Cassian didn't blink. "Initiated after Pastor's data revealed Reaper Four's signal ghosting pattern. We've been sweeping electromagnetic refractions across—"

Kael raised a hand.

"That op doesn't exist."

Cassian's eyes flickered—barely.

But that was all Kael needed.

He stood.

"Let's drop the act."

The lights cut.

Alarms screamed.

Iron Nest trembled.

Thalia ran into the chamber, weapon drawn. "Security just flipped on us—internal turrets locked onto our friendlies!"

Trix's voice crackled.

"Cassian uploaded a ghost key! We're being re-routed through a phantom OS! Kael—he's not Cassian anymore!"

Cassian's body cracked.

No blood.

Just lines of black glass along his skin.

His face split open like a mask, revealing nothing underneath—a shifting storm of obsidian dust, human outlines within, flickering like dying dreams.

Kael stepped back.

Seiryu whispered:

"Reaper Four... isn't a machine."

Kael answered:

"It's identity decay."

Obsidian was not a person.

Obsidian was a concept: the loss of self through infiltration, replacement, erosion of memory.

A weaponized parasite that took not your body—but your role, your trust, your place.

Everyone in Iron Nest might have been touched by it.

Trix shouted through the comms: "If Cassian is Reaper Four, then Obsidian might have seeded itself in multiple hosts. It's a distributed Reaper—hive-mind model."

Thalia asked, "How do we kill something that isn't anywhere fully?"

Kael narrowed his eyes.

"By making it think it won."

Plan: Kill Obsidian by feeding it a false Kael.

Trix created a synthetic simulation—a perfect neural clone of Kael's memories, voice, routines. They let it walk through Iron Nest.

Cassian-Reaper didn't resist.

It merged with it.

That was the bait.

While the Reaper consumed the false Kael, Kael and Seiryu injected a time-triggered neural toxin into the ghost framework.

It would cause a recursive logic collapse inside the Obsidian code—a self-destructive identity spiral.

It worked.

Almost.

But as the Reaper melted—Cassian's face reforming and collapsing again—it spoke one final time.

"You think you're winning. But I was never meant to survive. I was just a gate."

Kael froze.

"A gate to what?"

Cassian's face split wide, smile bloodless.

"To Hollow Crown."

And then he died.

All across Iron Nest, screams echoed.

Three dozen personnel collapsed—their minds infected by the Obsidian hive-thread.

Trix couldn't save them all.

Some were permanently comatose.

Some turned on each other.

By the end of the night, Kael had lost forty-three of his best operatives.

His army bled not from bullets… but from doubt.

In the aftermath, Kael reviewed the hidden data left behind in Cassian's cortex.

One phrase echoed over and over.

"Reaper Five is not found. It is borne."

And one location:

"Kleio Institute. Greenland Facility. Coded Level: Hollow Crown."

Thalia looked at Kael.

"Whatever's next… it's not just war. It's history being rewritten."

Kael didn't look away from the screen.

"No," he said. "It's me being rewritten."