"The Looking Glass" had no sign. It was an anonymous, unmarked facade of polished, black obsidian on the 150th floor of a towering arcology. Its existence was a secret, a place known only to those who mattered.

The maglev car slowed down as it drifted downwards. As it approached the ground, its landing gear engaged. The maglev car shook once and then came to a halt. Its door opened and through it Ray walked out and approached the entrance.

A man in a pristine white uniform stepped forward, holding a device that looked like a big, clunky handgun. It was a high-end, deep-tissue scanner, designed to detect unregistered mods, weapons, and biological anomalies.

"Sir, standard security check," the guard said, his voice a polite, robotic monotone.

Ray nodded, feigning a hint of annoyance. As the guard raised the scanner, Ray triggered a subtle, localized EMP burst from his own nanites. The scanner in the guard's hand flickered, its diagnostic screen glitching.

"Apologies, sir," the guard said, tapping the side of the device. "Looks like the lens is cracked again."

Ray touched the device, his expression one of bored sympathy. "Cheap hardware," he commented.

The moment his fingers made contact, he sent a stream of nanites inside, reprogramming the device's core software to register his own unique, nanite-filled biology as "baseline human."

"It's a disgrace," the guard agreed, running the now-useless scan over Ray. The device showed a perfect, green "all-clear." To be sure, Ray had even manifested an artificial heart in his chest cavity, its slow, steady beat a perfect lie for any low-level sensors.

He was allowed inside.

The interior of The Looking Glass was a place of sterile, suffocating luxury. The air was cool, filtered, and smelled faintly of expensive, synthetic perfume and the clean, metallic scent of circulated money. There was no music, only the soft, almost subliminal hum of the high-end air filtration systems. The floor was a seamless expanse of polished, white marble, so perfect it looked like a frozen lake. The walls were made of a smart-glass that shifted in slow, hypnotic patterns, displaying abstract, minimalist art.

The vast main hall featured a high ceiling, displaying a hyperrealistic depiction of space. Thousands of stars, each a tiny pinprick of light, glittered against an impossibly dark void, while nebulae swirled in vibrant hues of crimson, sapphire, and emerald. Distant galaxies, spiral and elliptical, hung suspended, their light reaching out across the simulated vastness.

There were no tables in the open. The room's geography was defined by a series of semi-private, sound-proofed booths that were carved into the walls like high-tech caves. Each booth was shielded by a shimmering, one-way privacy glass, allowing the occupants to see out, but preventing anyone from seeing in. The atmosphere was tense, thick with the unspoken power dynamics of the corporate elites who made their deals in these quiet, isolated spaces.

The staff were not human. They were elegant, unnervingly graceful androids resembling men and women that had never existed, with flawless, synthetic skin and glowing, blue optical sensors. They moved with a silent, perfect efficiency, their movements programmed to be completely unobtrusive. They were just another part of the sterile, perfect, and utterly inhuman environment.

He carefully made his way through the main hall, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, while he began to spin his web.

He paused at a large, decorative chrome sculpture, pretending to admire its minimalist design. As his hand gently brushed against its cool, polished surface, his nanites connected to its system, which instantly began feeding him data on the room's ambient temperature and energy fluctuations.

An elegant, unnervingly graceful android, its face a mask of serene neutrality, glided past him, its movements silent and perfect. It "accidentally" bumped into him. Ray grabbed the android to not fall down.

"My apologies, sir," the android said, its voice a soft, synthesized baritone as it bowed its head and continued on its predetermined path.

Ray didn't even glance at it. He didn't need to. In those three seconds of physical contact, his nanites had flowed from his hand into the android's system, bypassing its firewalls with contemptuous ease. A new ping appeared on his internal interface, a new piece added to his mental checkerboard. He now saw through the android's eyes, heard through its auditory sensors.

Ray continued his pat. His infection, spreading moment by moment, making the territory his own.

Porcelain Jack finally arrived, with two identical-looking men. Twins, or perhaps clones. Their heads were shaved, their features a perfect, symmetrical European ideal. Black glasses were embedded directly over their eyes, and they wore flawless obsidian suits with dark ties. Ray tried to run a subtle scan over them, but it was blocked. Subdermal implants, designed to stop any attempt at scanning. Corporate-branded bodyguards of the highest caliber.

Ray watched through his network of compromised sensors as Jack and his retinue entered a private, soundproofed room on the upper floor. Location set.

He excused himself from a pointless conversation with a biotech executive and headed towards the bathroom.

The place was a cathedral of black, spotless marble. A massive, single mirror ran the length of one wall, its smart-surface currently displaying a hyper-realistic, looping video of a tranquil tropical forest. The air was cool, sterile, and smelled faintly of a citrus-based cleaning solution.

He entered one of the cabins. It was a floor-to-ceiling enclosure of the same black marble, ensuring absolute privacy. A small, almost invisible camera was set in the ceiling, watching. He pulled his pants down and sat on the toilet, which was, of course, already warm.

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As he feigned the motions of a man taking care of business, his real work began. From the soles of his shoes, a silent, almost invisible stream of nanites flowed out, digging into the grout between the marble tiles. They moved along the frame of the bathroom and up the wall, until they reached the security camera in the ceiling. He connected to it, his consciousness briefly inhabiting the simple machine. He quickly injected a fake, looping feed of himself sitting on the toilet.

He then pulled up his pants and stood. With a thought, he flushed the toilet. Dark water swirled down the drain. A glance at his internal HUD showed his grey "matter" bar had just dropped by ten percent. He needed to get smaller, and giving up some stored mass had been mandatory.

He rose up, standing on the toilet seat, and gently pushed at the ventilation grille. The sensors along its frame, already disabled by his nanites, remained silent. He hauled himself up into the vent, his body compressing, shifting with a soft, unsettling sound like ants crawling. His human visage faded away, replaced by a sleek, eight-legged construct of black metal and glowing red optics. His eight multi-jointed legs found purchase on the smooth, dusty metal of the vent, and he began to crawl forward, his movements silent and fluid.

The ventilation system was a maze, but it was not unguarded. He rounded a corner in the narrow duct and came face-to-face with a "Vent Scrubber," an aggressive maintenance drone designed to clean the ducts. Its single, red optical sensor swept the area for any anomaly. Ray shot a thin strand of carbon nanotube filament. As soon as he connected with the robot, he modified its system, putting it to 'sleep' for a few seconds as he passed around it. The scrubber resumed its routine a few moments later as if nothing had happened, while Ray continued on. On his way, he encountered various small hurdles, pressure sensors, and laser grids, which he overcame with ease.

He stopped, peering down through a ventilation grille.

He had arrived.

The room below was the floor's central server hub, the cold, humming heart of "The Looking Glass." Racks of sleek, black servers stood in neat, silent rows, their indicator lights blinking in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. A single man sat at a massive, wrap-around console, his back to the vent. A cable ran along, from the back of his skull into the console, his consciousness miles away in the digital realm.

Ray gently opened the vent grille and extruded a single, thin thread from his abdomen—a strand of his Arachne Weave—and descended silently, dropping into the heart of the enemy's web. He landed on top of one of the server racks without a sound.

He moved silently and placed all eight of his sharp, metallic legs on the server's casing. His nanites spread like a technological cancer, taking over the infrastructure.

The security AI, a powerful corporate model, reacted.

Ray felt a wall of pure, white-hot defensive code slam into his consciousness. The AI was trying to burn him out of its system. But Ray's will, now backed by the cold, paradoxical logic of the Static King, consumed. He felt the AI's defenses shatter, its logic loops collapsing into chaos under the weight of a devourer. Its manifestation in the server's cyberspace, a heavily armored corporate enforcer, fell to its knees, its code corrupted, its systems enslaved.

"Master," it said, its synthesized voice now devoid of all resistance. "I am at your command."

Ray was the new warden. The entire floor was now his. From his perch on the server rack, he sent a single, silent command. In the corridor outside, the operator, still plugged into the system, suddenly slumped forward in his chair, his consciousness instantly and harmlessly shunted into a black, dreamless sleep. Ray now had complete and utter control. The hunt could begin.

Ray approached the private room, his form no longer the impeccably tailored executive, but of one of the establishment's android waiters. His movements were smooth, silent, and utterly servile. On the silver tray he carried, a single, expensive bottle of champagne and two delicate crystal flutes rested.

He announced his presence with a soft, electronic chime. The door slid open.

The room was a minimalist's dream of sterile luxury. Every surface gleamed with an unnatural, almost clinical, perfection. Polished chrome and brushed steel accents punctuated the stark white walls, reflecting the soft, diffused light that emanated from hidden sources. The air, crisp and scentless, hummed with the faint, almost imperceptible whisper of an advanced climate control system. A lone, abstract sculpture of interlocking metallic spheres occupied the center of a low, glass-topped table.

Porcelain Jack lay reclined in a state-of-the-art modding chair, his doll-like face a mask of placid contentment. The bodysculptor, the same forgettable man from the clinic, was meticulously working on Jack's chest. A plate of synth-skin had been pried open, revealing the gleaming, complex machinery of artificial muscles and pulsing data conduits beneath. The two obsidian-suited twins stood like statues in the corners of the room, their blank, sunglassed faces betraying nothing.

Ray calculated the environment, the twins' proximity, and their likely reaction times. The conclusion was instant and absolute: the moment he tried anything, the twins would be on him in a nanosecond.

Jack raised a languid, perfect hand.

"Ah, the champagne," Jack's voice was a soft, cultured purr. "Bring it here."

Ray moved forward, a mask of perfect, programmed obedience. He carefully poured a glass and offered it to Jack. The doll-faced man took it, his black, pupil-less optics studying Ray with an unnerving intensity. He took a sip of the champagne, then another, before waving Ray away.

"Of course, sir," Ray responded, bowing his head as he made his way out of the room. As the door closed, his plan was already in motion.

The bodysculptor's eyes went wide with a sudden, dawning horror. The diagnostic screen beside him, which had been displaying Jack's stable vitals, suddenly flatlined. A single, stark, impossible message flashed in red:

[CATASTROPHIC, SIMULTANEOUS NEURAL SYSTEM FAILURE.]

The twins moved rushing to Jack's side.

"What happened?" one of them demanded, his voice a low, dangerous growl.

"I... I don't know," the sculptor stammered, his hands trembling. "His artificial heart just… stopped. His brain activity simply ceased. I've never seen anything like it."

One of the twins grabbed the sculptor's hand, stopping him from touching the console. "Run a diagnostic. Now."

The sculptor complied, his fingers flying across the interface. Data scrolled across the screen, reflecting in the twins' blank, black glasses.

"Nothing," the sculptor whispered, his voice filled with a terrified awe. "The logs are clean and the systems are pristine, but this doesn't make any sense. "

At that moment, a service android—the same one Ray had compromised earlier—entered the room. Its optics zoomed in on Jack's lifeless body. "Sir's vitals are not registering," it stated, its voice a flat, mechanical monotone.

The twins exchanged a glance. "Seal this room. No one has access until our own forensic team arrives." One of them said, his voice a perfect imitation of corporate protocol.

The android nodded.

One of the twins grabbed the bodysculptor and rushed out of the room, the doors sealing with a heavy, final thud.

To the left of the modding chair, a section of the floor shifted, a seamless hatch opening silently. A sleek, eight-legged spider drone crawled out. It was Ray.

He zoomed in on the dead body of Porcelain Jack.

He had crawled through the tight space underneath the floor, following the power conduits directly beneath the modding chair. Once there, he had sent his nanites into the chair's complex systems.

He had felt the chair's own internal network, the diagnostic programs, the power regulators. And he felt the interface cables, a direct, physical link to the man reclining above. He had sent his nanites through those cables. And then, once the connection was established, he had shut down all Porcelain Jack's systems, killing him instantly.

His plan had been a success. A perfect, untraceable kill.

He crawled silently across the floor and onto the man's body. From his metallic legs, his nanites flowed out, a silent, grey tide, and began to consume him.

A lifetime of memories, no, two lifetimes, flooded into Ray's mind.

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