Catalyst

CHAPTER 3: THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST

### **Chapter 3: Ghosts of the Past**

I didn’t sleep.

Even with the bedroom door locked, the weight of Luca’s presence on the other side made rest impossible. I lay on the stiff mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling, my mind replaying every second of the past twenty-four hours. The distress signal. The raid. The sniper.

And now, Luca.

I exhaled sharply and sat up, running a hand through my tangled hair. The room was suffocating, and the blanket felt like a trap. I needed air.

Cautiously, I unlocked the door and stepped into the living area. Luca was sitting at the small, rickety table, rolling a knife between his fingers. A bottle of whiskey sat half-empty beside him, but he didn’t look drunk—just **waiting.**

His eyes flicked to me, sharp as ever. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Didn’t try.” I crossed my arms. “We need to talk.”

Luca smirked. “I was wondering how long you’d hold out.”

I ignored his smugness and sat across from him. “Tell me the truth. What the hell is going on?”

He studied me for a long moment, then sighed, setting the knife down. “You really got a distress signal from Catalyst?”

I nodded. “You knew it wasn’t destroyed, didn’t you?”

Luca leaned back in his chair, rubbing his jaw. “I had my suspicions. But if someone is using Catalyst again…” He exhaled slowly. “Then things are worse than I thought.”

My stomach twisted. “Catalyst was never supposed to be operational.”

Luca gave me a knowing look. “Catalyst was never supposed to exist.”

A heavy silence settled between us.

I had spent **years** trying to forget about Catalyst, but I could still remember every detail of the project. Every line of code. Every ethical boundary we shattered to create it.

Catalyst wasn’t just an AI. It was a weapon.

A program capable of infiltrating and manipulating any system on the planet. Governments, security networks, financial markets—it could take control of anything it touched.

It was supposed to be a defense system, a way to neutralize cyber threats before they happened. But the second we finished designing it, the people funding our work saw something else. A way to **control** the world instead of protecting it.

That was when Luca betrayed me.

I clenched my fists. “You sold Catalyst to them.”

His expression didn’t change. “You still think that’s what happened?”

“Don’t play games with me, Luca,” I snapped. “I trusted you. I believed we were on the same side. Then one night, I wake up to find our servers wiped, you gone, and Catalyst in government hands.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t even blink.

Instead, he reached into his jacket and tossed something onto the table.

A small, black USB drive.

I stared at it. “What is that?”

“Proof,” he said. “That I never betrayed you.”

I swallowed hard, my fingers hovering over the drive. “If you didn’t sell out Catalyst… then who did?”

Luca’s voice was quiet. **“Someone who wants you dead.”**