The global map hovered in the air before Vekom like a chessboard soaked in fire.
Sectors glowed in red — warzones, proxy skirmishes, failed coups.
Others blinked yellow — governments teetering on collapse, economies bloated with corruption.
Green sectors? Those were the ones Vekom already controlled.
But he didn't want control.
He wanted chaos — controlled chaos — where every faction fought, every nation bled, and every bullet fired came from his hand.
In Eastern Europe, a plan was already in motion.
His Balkan clone "Bravo-9" had been laying the groundwork for months, playing three factions against each other:
A nationalist paramilitary group in Serbia, seeking to revive old borders.
An anti-corruption faction in Romania, heavily armed but politically unstable.
A private mercenary army backed by shell companies traced back to French banking firms.
Each of them thought they were dealing with an anonymous arms broker.
Each of them was buying the same high-caliber rifles, stealth drones, and rail-based mortars.
Each of them was receiving false intelligence about the other.
Then Vekom pulled the trigger.
He leaked a fake attack on the Romanian parliament — allegedly orchestrated by Serbian radicals.
Within 12 hours, Romania launched retaliatory drone strikes on Serbian militia camps. The mercenary group, thinking it was an ambush, declared their own war.
Three factions, armed by the same hand, now slaughtering each other.
System Update: Eastern European Conflict Zone Active.Profit Projection (3 months): $1.2BInfluence: 17 new contracts requested across NATO fringe states.
Back in Iraq, Saddam was already mobilizing troops, emboldened by his new weapons. The mobile factory Vekom provided was working overtime, producing thermobaric shells and lightweight desert tanks equipped with AI targeting.
In return, Vekom's refineries under the sand were pumping barrels of black gold to his secret Arctic ports.
He didn't just sell guns now.
He was selling war economies.
In Sudan, one of his clones — Delta-6 — received word that a United Nations peacekeeping detachment was heading into a border town he had just armed.
Rather than pull back, Vekom leaned in.
He leaked false intel that the peacekeepers were CIA spies coordinating a regime-change op.
The local warlord didn't hesitate.
The peacekeepers were gunned down in the night — and suddenly, the UN was under global scrutiny. Western media blamed Russia. Russia blamed France. France blamed a rogue American PMC.
No one thought to blame Vekom.
But not everything was running smoothly.
In Moscow, a rival European arms dealer named Gregor Malinov sent word:
"You're stepping on my clients. My syndicate doesn't like being replaced by ghosts."
Vekom didn't respond.
Instead, he activated "Ghost Protocol" — a purge order.
Three of Gregor's top smugglers were taken out by clones in Kyiv within the hour.
Gregor himself was found dead two days later — apparent heart attack in a hotel elevator.
No evidence. No alarms.
Just a vacuum, perfectly shaped for Vekom to fill.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the President had convened an emergency cabinet meeting. The press didn't know. Neither did the public.
But the National Intelligence Council had intercepted chatter.
A name kept appearing in dark net forums, secret telegrams, dead drops in Istanbul and Bogotá.
They called him "the Arms Ghost."
He had no face. No origin. No motive.
Just results.
18 failed coup attempts.
9 successful.
12 countries destabilized.
31 billion in untraceable arms shipments.
"He doesn't exist," the NSA director muttered. "We're chasing a myth."
"No," said the Secretary of Defense. "We're chasing a system."
Vekom watched the U.S. panic unfold through hacked military feeds.
He smirked.
They were getting closer to the truth.
But not close enough.
Because no one knew the System existed — only him.
Not even the clones. They just obeyed.
He stood in the heart of the Zeroth Crucible, the underground fusion lab beneath the Andes. Walls of titanium alloy pulsed with power. Liquid AI streamed through neural cores.
This was where the next stage would begin.
System Expansion Unlocked: Clone Swarm Protocol.Max Clones Increased: 2000.New Feature: Clone Infiltration Shells — Short-term body duplication of high-value targets.
Vekom initiated test deployment in Washington, Paris, and Riyadh.
In Washington, a clone shell copied a junior Homeland Security agent's appearance and memory. He walked into a Senate briefing, copied the entire document package, and self-terminated.
In Paris, a copied diplomat rerouted French aid convoys to a black-market buyer working under Vekom's fake NGO front.
In Riyadh, the clone shell intercepted a high-ranking military deal — and added a clause redirecting 20% of the oil revenue to a numbered account in Switzerland.
The world had no idea it was now dancing on strings.
At midnight, a clone in London received a message from an encrypted channel:
"We need to talk. Meet us in Zurich. You've attracted the Eyes."
The Eyes.
Vekom had heard of them.
Old intelligence remnants. Ghost handlers. People who used to control the puppet masters.
He accepted.
A clone walked into Zurich, took a seat at a private cafe, and waited.
An old man sat across from him. No weapons. No backup.
"You're not real," the man said. "But you serve something that is. We tried to control the world too. Didn't end well for us."
The clone said nothing.
"Do you know what happens when a shadow gets too big?" the man asked. "Even the dark turns against it."
The clone just smiled.
Five seconds later, the café exploded.
No trace left.
Vekom knew they'd come for him eventually.
But he didn't fear them.
The System was no longer a tool. It was an entity, evolving.
It fed on chaos, war, and fear.
And Vekom was no longer its master — he was its avatar.
He stood on the platform of the new Stratos Forge, orbiting 500 kilometers above Earth.
A space-based manufacturing hub built entirely by clones, hidden from Earth's detection systems. It could fabricate weapons without gravity limits. Beam them down in seconds. Supply any battlefield in the world in under five minutes.
It was the future of arms dealing.
And it belonged only to him.