Chapter 8: Collateral Damage

Chapter 8: Collateral Damage

The name ‘Elias Vance’ echoed in the digital silence of the apartment. It was a ghost, a specter, a name he hadn't seen queried by anyone but himself in years. Marcus had found him. The search of the alumni database was the final footstep, the sound of the hunter breathing on the back of his neck.

For one paralyzing moment, Eli’s world shrank to the dimensions of his high-backed chair. He was no longer a phantom pulling strings from the safety of the web; he was a name on a list, a physical target. Every shadow in his apartment seemed to lengthen, every mundane sound from the street below amplified into a potential threat. He was exposed.

But Marcus didn't come. Not yet.

The initial shock subsided, replaced by a cold, hyper-focused dread. He hadn't been found, not precisely. Marcus had his name, but he didn't have his location. Not yet. The alumni database only listed his last known address from six years ago—a college dorm room that had long since been bulldozed. It had bought him time. But how much?

Eli’s mission had been reduced to a single, primal objective: watch the wolf. His crusade against Croft Innovations, the stolen ledger burning a hole in his encrypted hard drive, all of it was secondary. This was now a desperate, real-time duel of surveillance.

He pushed his skills to their ethical and legal limits, and then far beyond them. He was no longer just monitoring public databases. He was actively tracking Marcus Thorne. He compromised the GPS on the burner phone Croft had provided him. He flagged the new, limitless credit card, setting an alert for every transaction. He burrowed into the city’s network of traffic cameras, writing a complex script that used facial recognition to ping him whenever Marcus’s face appeared on a public feed. He was violating a dozen federal laws an hour, building a web of surveillance around his tormentor that would have made a government spy agency proud. He had become the very thing he despised: an invisible, prying eye.

The digital breadcrumbs painted a portrait of a man growing more desperate and more feral with each passing hour. Credit card transactions for coffee at 3 a.m., gas station purchases on the far side of town, a single night in a seedy motel. Marcus was a caged animal, pacing relentlessly, fueled by Croft’s ultimatum and his own boiling rage.

Then, the pattern of his searches changed again. He wasn't just looking for names anymore. He was looking for addresses. Old addresses. He was cross-referencing the yearbook with property records, looking for people who were still tethered to their past, people who hadn't run as far or hidden as well as Eli.

A new tripwire chimed, softer this time, but infinitely more sinister. Marcus had run a credit check on a man named David Chen.

Eli’s blood ran cold. David Chen. He remembered him vividly: a quiet, brilliant kid who had been two years ahead of them in the computer science club. David had been another of Marcus’s favorite targets—not for physical abuse, but for a more cruel, intellectual brand of torment. Marcus would steal his code, mock his projects, and belittle his intelligence. David was a ghost from their shared past, a mirror of Eli’s own experience.

Eli’s tracking showed Marcus’s burner phone moving, a single red dot on the city map, crawling with purpose. It was heading towards the address from the credit check—the small software development firm where David Chen now worked as a lead programmer.

This was it. The digital hunt was about to become brutally physical.

Panic seized Eli. He wanted to shut it down, to look away. This wasn't his fight. He had his own survival to worry about. But he couldn't. He was the one who had stirred the hornet's nest. He had thrown the rock. Now he had to watch where it landed.

His fingers trembled as he typed, his actions driven by a horrifying compulsion. He located the corporate park where David worked, identifying its network architecture. Their security was pathetic, a consumer-grade firewall protecting their entire system. He slipped through it like smoke through a keyhole, gaining access to their internal servers. He found what he was looking for: the live feeds from the security cameras.

He brought up the feed for the rear parking lot. It was grainy, the timestamp in the corner blinking a steady, indifferent rhythm. He watched as David Chen—older, heavier, but with the same nervous slump to his shoulders—walked out of the back door, carrying a briefcase.

A moment later, a sleek, black sedan pulled into the alley, blocking his path. Marcus Thorne stepped out. He looked different than he had in the polished photos on the Croft Innovations website. The expensive suit was rumpled, his hair was unkempt, and his face was a mask of raw, predatory hunger.

Eli could only watch, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. There was no audio, only the silent, jerky pantomime of violence. He saw Marcus grab David, slamming him against the brick wall. David’s briefcase clattered to the ground, spilling papers across the asphalt. Marcus was shouting, his face inches from David's, his expression contorted with rage. David shook his head, his hands raised in a useless gesture of surrender.

Marcus wasn't listening. He drove a fist into David’s stomach. David doubled over, gasping. Marcus grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up. He was asking questions. Eli knew with chilling certainty what they were. Who is it? Who’s the hacker? Who from our past is smart enough to do this? Who hates me this much?

David was just a programmer. He knew nothing. His terrified denials only seemed to fuel Marcus’s fury. The assault escalated. It was swift, brutal, and devoid of any emotion save for pure, frustrated rage. After a final, sickening blow, Marcus dropped him. David crumpled to the ground, a broken heap on the cold pavement. Marcus stared down at him for a moment, his chest heaving, before getting back in his car and speeding away.

The alley was still again. The only movement was the wind scattering the papers from the broken briefcase. David wasn’t moving.

Eli stared at the screen, a cold sweat breaking out across his entire body. The image of the unmoving figure was seared into his mind. This was his fault. This was the consequence of his righteous crusade, the price of his revenge. This was collateral damage.

He was faced with a terrible, paralyzing choice.

He could stay silent. He could wipe the logs of his intrusion, sever the connection, and disappear back into the shadows. It was the safe choice, the logical one. Staying a ghost meant staying alive. But David could be dying. His silence would be a death sentence, an act of complicity that would make him no better than the monster he was fighting.

Or he could intervene. He could make an anonymous 911 call. But the police would investigate. They would pull security footage, question witnesses. And Detective Isabella Rossi, the sharp, stubborn cop who was already profiling him, would be at the center of it. Another perfectly precise, anonymous tip about a crime connected to Marco Gallo would not go unnoticed. It would be another breadcrumb, another piece of the puzzle that led directly back to him. It would confirm her suspicion of a "digital ghost" pulling the strings.

His gaze flickered between the live feed of the suffering man and the dark, empty command prompt on his other screen. Every second that passed was a second David might not have. The ghosts of his past had risen, and now the life of an innocent man rested on the trembling fingertips of a ghost in the present.