A violent storm pounded the city of Metropolis without mercy, as though the heavens were trying to wash away the sins staining the asphalt that night. But for Elara, no rain could ever fall hard enough to cleanse the pain tearing through her chest.
The sharp stench of blood mingled thickly with the pungent odor of gasoline. Elara's vision blurred, obstructed by warm red fluid continuously streaming from her temple. The metal frame of her luxury sedan had been crushed, pinning her mercilessly behind the wheel. Her breathing sounded like the desperate creak of something breaking amid the silence of the deserted cliffside road on the edge of the city.
As the last remnants of her consciousness began to fade, the memories of what had happened only a few hours earlier spun through her mind like a broken tape.
The shareholders' meeting. The satisfied look on Adrian's face—the man who had promised to marry her next month. And standing beside him was Clara, Elara's half-sister, who had always hidden behind the mask of an innocent, helpless girl.
"Forgive me, Sis Elara," Clara's voice echoed in her head, accompanied by the vicious smile that had finally slipped free of her angelic disguise. "But Dad's company is far too valuable to be left to fall apart in your hands. Besides, Adrian likes me more. You're too... naive and boring."
Adrian hadn't denied it. The man she had trusted with all the assets and future of her family merely stared at her coldly, setting a gold pen on the mahogany table. "Sign this asset transfer agreement, Elara. Your family is already ruined. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."
They had planned everything years ago. The sudden bankruptcy of her father's company, the embezzlement scandal framed on her older brother, even the mysterious accident that left her mother lying in a coma at the hospital. All of it was a masterpiece of Adrian and Clara's treachery.
And when Elara had finally realized the truth that night and tried to flee with the secret recording evidence in her hand, a massive cargo truck without a license plate slammed into the right side of her car at a deserted intersection. The truck had no intention of braking. The steel monster kept pushing Elara's sedan until it broke through the guardrail, sending it plunging into a dark ravine with no witnesses.
Cold.
Elara felt the tips of her fingers beginning to go numb. Her eyes stared blankly toward the flickering streetlights in the distance, visible through the car window cracked into a thousand pieces.
"I... can't... die like this..." she whispered hoarsely. Fresh blood spilled from the corner of her lips each time she forced the words out.
A dense hatred, darker than the stormy night itself, exploded in her chest. She had been a foolish woman. A blind woman manipulated by love and a false sense of family. She had sacrificed her time, energy, and all her mother's inherited shares for them, only to be thrown away like trash once they had achieved their goal.
If there is another life... she screamed silently in agonizing stillness. I swear. I will strip away their pride. I will make sure they lose everything before they beg for a death that will never come!
Her consciousness faded along with her final breath. Absolute darkness swallowed her.
"Hah!"
Elara jolted awake. Her body flew off the bed, forcing her upright as she gasped for breath like someone who had just escaped drowning in an icy sea. Cold sweat drenched her forehead and neck. Her hand instinctively clawed at her chest, searching for the gaping wound left by the car's metal that should have pierced her heart.
Nothing.
Her skin was whole. Her silk pajamas were dry. Her heart pounded against her ribs, but she was breathing normally. The air around her felt warm and fragrant.
Elara's eyes flew wide. She swept her gaze wildly around the room in the dim glow of the bedside lamp. This wasn't the cold bottom of a ravine. This wasn't a morgue or a hospital. This was a bedroom with soft peach-colored walls and the deeply familiar scent of lavender candles. Her favorite oak wardrobe, a vanity covered with stacks of interior design documents, and a desk calendar.
Elara violently threw off her blanket and ran barefoot across the plush carpet toward the vanity. She stared at her reflection in the oval mirror. The face staring back at her was her own—but younger, without the exhausted eye bags caused by the weight of her family's mounting debts, without the despair that had gnawed at her throughout the past year. Her skin glowed, and her eyes were clear, reflecting a vitality she had lost long ago.
With violently trembling hands, she grabbed the phone lying beside the desk lamp. Its screen lit up, displaying digital numbers and a date that instantly caught in Elara's throat.
August 14, 2021.
Exactly five years ago.
The phone slipped from her grasp, making a muffled thud as it hit the thick carpet. Elara took a step back, but her legs suddenly lost their strength, and she slowly sank to the floor.
Five years. Was she dreaming? Or was she experiencing hallucinations before brain death? She pinched her arm hard enough to make it redden. Sharp pain stung her nerves. This was real. She had returned to five years earlier.
A time when her father was still healthy and vigorous, running the company from his executive chair. Her brother had not yet been caught up in the bid-rigging scandal, and her mother was still happily arranging roses in the glass garden behind the house. And most importantly... this was the time when Adrian had only just slipped an engagement ring onto her ring finger the month before.
Elara laughed. At first it was only a muffled chuckle in her throat, but it slowly grew into a bitter laugh that filled the silence of her bedroom. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes, soaking her cheeks. But these were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of insane euphoria and overwhelmingly pure gratitude.
Fate had truly given her a second chance. Somehow, the universe had heard her blood oath on the brink of death.
"Adrian... Clara..." Elara whispered to her own reflection in the mirror, her voice now cold as ice, stripped of every trace of innocence. "You'll never know what kind of storm is about to hit you."
She roughly wiped away her tears. Her gaze sharpened. She had to put together a counterplan immediately. If this was mid-August 2021, then tomorrow was the executive authorization day when Adrian would request early access to Elara's private trust account under the pretext of his first fraudulent investment proposal. She couldn't let history repeat itself. She had to set a trap—
Suddenly, an intensely sharp and unnatural pain pierced both her eyeballs.
"Argh!" Elara cried out, dropping to her knees as she covered her eyes with both hands. It felt as though thousands of microscopic needles charged with high-voltage electricity had been injected directly into the centers of her retinas. Hot, stinging, and throbbing violently.
Amid the darkness of her tightly shut eyes, a bright blue light suddenly exploded. It wasn't light coming from outside, but a glow radiating from within her own vision. Slowly, as her heavy breaths continued, the pain subsided, replaced by a cold mechanical sensation spreading through her optic nerves.
Elara slowly opened her eyelids. She blinked several times to bring her vision into focus.
In the empty air, precisely ten centimeters in front of her face, a curved holographic interface screen of neon blue hovered. Rows of binary code streamed rapidly from top to bottom, arranging themselves into lines of complex algorithms before finally stopping and forming text in a sharp futuristic font.
A purely synthetic, emotionless voice rang directly inside her head, yet it sounded perfectly clear.
[Host biometric initialization successful. Heart rate stable. Brain waves synchronized.]
[Welcome back to the starting point, User.]
[Absolute System Version 1.0 has been fully integrated with your visual cortex.]
Elara stood frozen, her breath seeming to congeal. On reflex, she tried to wave her hand and brush away the holographic text, but her fingers passed through empty air. The text had no physical presence; the graphics were projected directly onto her retinas, moving wherever her eyes looked.
"What... what is this?" she murmured, her voice trembling between awe and wariness. She was in her room, on Earth, in the midst of the modern yet rational civilization of Metropolis. This was not a magical world. Yet the technology now fused with her eyes surpassed the limits of any publicly known science.
[The Absolute System is an autonomous quantum data-hacking network,] the mechanical voice responded immediately, catching the frequency of her question. [Primary Functions: Hacking military-grade encryption, manipulating secondary digital information flows, and extracting hidden data from every server network in Metropolis. You have been bound as its sole absolute user.]
Before Elara's brilliant mind could fully process the absurd claim, the edges of the blue screen before her flashed bright red in a rapid rhythm. A huge warning symbol blocked her vision, accompanied by the low hum of an alarm in her ears.
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL WARNING!]
[Scanning local wireless signal waves has detected a communication anomaly targeting fatal asset losses for the Host's family.]
[Intercepting encrypted mobile phone conversations within a 5-kilometer radius...]
A small audio window opened in the upper-right corner of her vision, displaying a sound-wave graph rising and falling. The next second, the voices of two people she knew all too well shattered the predawn silence inside her head, as clear as if they were standing in the same room.
"...just make sure the odorless sedative is put in her father's tea tomorrow morning before the meeting. Elara's too naive to suspect her longtime servant. Once that temporary power of attorney is signed while he's only half-conscious..." It was Adrian's voice, casual, calculating, and utterly without remorse.
The holographic screen before Elara's eyes flashed again, displaying rows of data calculations processing variables at lightning speed.
[System Analysis Complete: Target designated Adrian Vance is preparing to execute his first fatal manipulation. The enemy's current probability of success is ninety]