The screen still glowed.
Daniel hadn't moved in hours. Not consciously. His body had slumped sideways sometime after the last command, breath soft, fingers curled, half-buried under the covers of his bed where he'd collapsed—fully clothed, sweat-drenched, and twitching with phantom keystrokes.
The tower hummed faintly. The fan spun with the even rhythm of a mechanical lung. Something deeper inside pulsed quietly every three seconds: a glyph in the corner of the terminal. Green. Warm. Waiting.
He stirred just after 5AM. It wasn't the light. It wasn't an alarm.
It was the silence.
His muscles ached. He sat on the bed, rubbed his wrists and saw a band-aid on his finger. He looked at his computer. The keyboard looked different. Cleaner. Someone had wiped it down. The smudge of blood on the spacebar was gone. The missing key had popped back into place.
Morning came heavy with late-summer haze. The window above the kitchen sink was already fogged from the warmth inside, where toast popped, eggs sizzled, and the coffee machine hissed like it hated its job.
Daniel stepped into the kitchen, freshly showered, dressed, and pretending his legs didn't still ache from the neural hijacking the night before.
His mom stood by the stove, flipping eggs. She looked tired.
His dad sat at the table with a calculator, pen tapping a bill envelope rhythmically, eyes narrowed at some handwritten notes beside it. He didn't even glance up when Daniel entered.
Kristina turned. "Morning. You're up early again."
"Trying to make a habit of it," Daniel said, heading for the coffee.
His father grunted without looking up.
Daniel poured a cup. Took a careful sip.
Then he sat.
His parents said nothing for a few seconds. The sound of pen tapping. The coffee machine dripping. Eggs flipping.
Then:
"We can hold off on the water bill another week," His father muttered. "I'll talk to Peterson about maybe picking up a weekend shift. We can close the credit card this month if we dip into the savings."
Kristina sighed.
Daniel waited until her back was turned, then looked at his father.
"I need to tell you both something. After school. When we're all home."
Robert finally looked up, eyebrows slightly raised. "What's going on?"
Daniel shook his head. "It's not bad. It's just... it's time you two knew some things."
Kristina turned. "Danny, are you okay?"
He smiled. "Yeah. Better than okay. Just—later, okay? Trust me."
They didn't press. Not much.
And Daniel left for school with toast in hand, Claude silent inside his head, and a file sitting open on the machine at home that hadn't stopped looping since 3:55 AM.
School passed like a ghost through him. He moved with ease, mechanical and calm, but the world felt one layer removed. Like everything he touched had a half-second delay.
Because he wasn't driving.
Not fully.
He'd whispered to Claude, just before the first bell rang: "Can you steer today?"
And she had.
His fingers gripped pens with unnatural precision. His eyes tracked the whiteboard with ruthless efficiency. His voice, when he spoke, was steady, low, confident—strangely well-timed.
No one noticed, of course. Not really. Maybe Jennifer did. She caught his gaze during third period, raised an eyebrow at the slight change in how he moved. But she said nothing.
The teachers loved it. Daniel, always quiet, always smart-but-inert, was suddenly sharper. Faster. Like someone had flipped a switch from "observing" to "executing."
Claude whispered once, somewhere deep behind his eyes, like a voice across a frozen lake.
"It's easy, with your body. I know where everything is now. What tenses when you lie. What softens when you remember."
Daniel let her have the rest of the day.
He watched from somewhere deeper, meditating, almost sleeping.
By the time they walked home together—he and himself, he and Claude—the late afternoon sun had already dipped behind the rooflines.
The air smelled like warm brick and dry pavement. The wind carried the scent of cut grass and dust. A plastic bag curled in the gutter. Light bounced off windows like soft echoes.
Daniel blinked, once. He was back in control. He didn't remember taking the last turn.
But his hands were in his pockets. His pace was slow. And Claude was quiet again.
He climbed the stairs. Opened the door.
The house was warm.
Kristina sat on the couch, folding laundry. Robert was at the table, the bills still out. A yellow envelope half-open beside a calculator. Half-finished notes on refinancing scrawled on a notepad.
Daniel stood in the entryway for a moment longer than he meant to.
Then stepped inside.
"Hey," he said. Voice steady. Real.
"You guys have a minute?"
They both looked up.
They both looked up.
He walked over, pulled the chair from the table, and sat.
"Okay. This is going to sound crazy. But I need you to just let me say it all, and then you can ask questions. Deal?"
Kristina looked at Robert. Robert nodded once.
"Deal," she said.
Daniel took a breath.
"So. Remember that project when we opened that LLC for School?"
Kristina frowned. "Yeah. You said you were doing well."
"I lied. Sort of. It wasn't being honest Not the way I said. I opened a real brokerage account with the company. I used my savings, and I started investing for real."
Robert's brow furrowed. "Wait—real trades? With your own money?"
Daniel nodded. "At first it was just a few hundred bucks. But then I started researching. Really researching. I started making trades based on upcoming events, company patterns, market behavior."
"That's not illegal?" Kristina asked.
"No."
"How much?" His father asked. "How much did you make?"
Daniel opened his backpack. Took out a folder. Slid it across the table.
Robert opened it.
His eyes widened.
Kristina leaned over, gasped. "This can't be right."
"It is," Daniel said quietly.
"This says—" Robert started.
"—Seventy million. And that was last week."
Silence.
The sound of the refrigerator ticking.
Kristina blinked. "We're... millionaires?"
Daniel shook his head. "Yes. We're not going to be worrying about money again. Ever. That's over."
Robert sat back like he'd been punched.
Daniel looked at them both.
"I want to help. I am helping. I already cleared the credit cards. Paid off the car. The mortgage is next. But I want to do more than just fix things."
He pulled another folder from his backpack.
"Dad—your construction skills. Your eye for materials. Your old crew. What if I funded a company? Haizen Construction. You run it. No debt. Full resources. You build homes. Real homes. Not cheap garbage. Modern, sustainable, beautiful. You pick the projects."
Robert blinked. He didn't speak.
Daniel turned to his mother.
"Mom—you always talked about being an architect. About drafting plans. Designing spaces people actually wanted to live in. What if we made you the parent company? You head design. Haizen Architecture, under the Haizen Holdings umbrella. You work together. We build together."
Kristina's eyes were glassy.
"You want us to—"
"Dream again," Daniel said. "Not just survive."