Chapter 10: Touch Your Head!
Maine immediately caught on to what Arthur wasn't saying.
His gaze dropped to the table, then slowly back up. "I can't stop now," he muttered, his voice low but resolved. "I have to make it big. Become someone who can't be ignored."
Arthur took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled, then ground it into the concrete with his boot.
In the gloom of the warehouse, his sharp eyes locked onto Maine's. Though the memories that flickered behind his gaze weren't truly his, they ran deep—embedded into the bones of the body he now called home. Echoes of lives lived, friends lost, promises broken.
"Famous or infamous," Arthur said quietly, "makes no difference. But if I told you this Silan Westin implant is just another corpo experiment—what then? You install it, you become another puppet in a lab coat's playbook."
Maine didn't respond immediately. His jaw clenched. Then, with a growl, he slammed his fist onto the steel table. The echo rang out, followed by a dent that hadn't been there a second ago. His cybernetic arm buzzed softly.
"Goddamn corpos," Maine muttered. "Always the same game. New names, same leashes."
He hurled a crate into the far wall, where it exploded into a mess of old cables and debris.
Arthur watched silently.
He didn't need to say more. Maine wasn't an idiot. He'd already seen the pattern—he just didn't want to admit he was falling into it again.
And still, Arthur could tell... Maine was going to use the implant. Not out of ignorance, but because he had to. For men like Maine, power was the only way forward—even if it came with a death clock.