Liam woke up to a flatline of fluorescent buzz. His one good eye blinked against the sterile glare above, off-white ceiling, a patch of peeling paint, and a brown water stain blooming like the sun. The heart monitor beeped steadily, mechanical and uncaring.
His mouth was raw, tongue thick and dry. When he swallowed, the taste of old blood clung to his throat, bitter and metallic.
A thin plastic tube tugged at his arm, pumping something cold into him. He shifted slightly. Pain bloomed behind his forehead like a bruise pressed from the inside.
He was in a hospital.
No flowers. No visitors. No familiar voices waiting to greet him.
An empty chair sat in the corner.
The window was cracked open just enough to let in a strip of grey light, filtered through city dust.
His leg was wrapped in something hard and unbending, cast or brace. Ribs pinched tight, like he'd been vacuum-sealed. Below the waist, everything ached or buzzed with numbness.
He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a dry rasp.
The door creaked open.
A nurse walked in, mid-thirties, hair tied back, eyes rimmed with sleep. She barely looked up.
"Oh. You're conscious," she said, voice flat. "Vitals are stable. The doctor will sign you out in a few minutes."
"Wait…" His throat burned. "What… what happened?"
She skimmed the chart like she was reading the weather.
"Car crash. Found unconscious. No head trauma. You've got internal bruising, cracked ribs, and a broken leg. Lucky you had a seatbelt on."
He searched the haze in his memory for wreckage. Tires screeching. Impact. Nothing. Just the cold weight on his chest like something had pressed him down and left him there to freeze.
"Any family?" he asked.
She shrugged. "None listed. You had one visitor, the day after you came in. No name, didn't stay long. Haven't seen them since."
His breath caught. "Was it a man? My uncle?"
"Didn't say. Camera footage glitched that night." She said it like it was routine. Like that kind of thing just happened.
His jaw clenched.
Right.
"What about my phone? Wallet?"
"Nothing was on you. No ID. Cops found the car stripped near an underpass. You were dumped a few feet away."
"Dumped?"
His fingers twitched under the blanket. Slowly curling. Slowly shaking.
She scribbled something down and placed the clipboard at the foot of the bed.
"Doctor will be in soon. You're being discharged today."
She said it like it was good news.
Four hours later, they wheeled him out.
No family. No lawyer. No car waiting at the curb. Just the wind and the pale sprawl of the city sky.
The nurse handed him a paper bag, half-crumpled, filled with generic painkillers, a single protein bar, and gauze. "Take it easy," she said, then turned and walked back inside.
He stood there on crutches, hospital blanket draped over his shoulders. The world looked the same, but something in it had shifted. It felt… meaner and colder.
The sidewalk felt too wide.
He dragged himself toward the nearest bus stop. Each step rattled his ribs and sent fire licking up his leg. By the time he collapsed onto the bench, his vision was swimming. Hunger gnawed at him, sharp and constant.
Across the street, a massive screen flickered to life.
MADDOX INDUSTRIES: POWERING THE FUTURE
There he was.
Kieran.
Smiling like he'd just inherited the world.
Polished suit. Practised grin. Investors surrounding him like vultures mid-feast.
A voice-over kicked in. His cousin's voice.
"Sometimes tragedy clears the path for innovation. I'm proud to carry on my family's legacy."
Liam stared until his fists ached around the metal grips of the crutches.
Tragedy? That's what they were calling it?
The last memory he had was a call from Kieran. He was tensed, sounded urgent, Uncle Warren was stepping down, he'd said. They needed to talk.
They met in a private lot. Dark and quiet.
Then, darkness.
No flash, just oil, wind and steel.
And then nothing but silence.
He'd been gone three days, maybe more.
Long enough for Kieran to clean the house.
The bus rattled him to the edge of downtown. Same buildings, same streets. Different weight in his chest.
He passed the tower where his name used to mean something, Maddox Tech. Security at the front door gave him a once-over like he was a drunk who'd wandered too close.
He didn't stop.
Didn't have the strength to.
The university wasn't much better.
His dorm was gutted. The door marked with a red property seized sticker. He didn't peel it off.
He borrowed a cracked phone from the hospital's lost and found bin. Sat on the campus steps and began scrolling.
No messages, no missed calls.
His name had been reduced to a line in a sanitized press release:
LIAM MADDOX IN STABLE CONDITION AFTER VEHICLE INCIDENT. MADD0X INDUSTRIES WISHES HIM WELL. LEADERSHIP TRANSITION TO KIERAN MADDOX UNDERWAY.
Transition.
That was their word.
Like he'd just stepped aside, like he wasn't the heir, like he hadn't bled for it.
That night, he crashed in the basement of a guy he barely remembered from high school. Worn couch, leaky pipe overhead. Blanket that smelled like mould and cigarettes.
The guy didn't ask questions. Just gave a nod and went back upstairs.
Liam lay there in the dark, staring up at the water stains on the ceiling like they might spell out a reason. The hum of the fridge was louder than it should've been. Pain meds kept his bones from screaming, but not his head.
His father had died two years back. Heart failure, they said.
Liam never believed it.
Uncle Warren had stepped in like some noble stand-in.
Now Warren was out and Kieran was in.
And Liam?
Lying in the basement of someone else's life.
He closed his eyes and saw it again, Kieran's face in that last meeting. The grin that didn't touch his eyes. The handshake that lingered too long.
"You're not ready for this, cousin. Let the real players take the board."
The next day, his car lost control.
No coincidence, not a chance.
He spent the next two days dragging himself between public libraries and fast-food places, stealing Wi-Fi and printing records. Digging, piecing together the holes.
His bank accounts? Locked.
Enrollment? Erased.
ID? Flagged.
It was surgical.
Someone didn't just ruin him. They scrubbed him.
By the third night, all he had was a flip phone, the same hospital clothes, and a spiral notebook stuffed with headlines, scribbled names, and angry red circles.
At 1 a.m., he sat alone in the corner of an empty laundromat. Machines quiet. Lights buzzing. No one left but him and the ghosts in the dryer glass.
His hands shook slightly as he opened the notebook.
He wrote one name at the top.
Kieran Maddox and underneath it, one word.
Payback