The Ghost In Your Machine

Chapter 1: Static Between Us

The tower breathed with neon and smoke, alive in ways it shouldn't be. It pulsed like a dying heart, lit from within by filaments that flickered and hummed, refusing to extinguish. Outside, Hell crawled along its usual rhythm—loud, vile, grotesque. Inside, the rhythm was curated, sliced into feeds, devoured by hungry lenses.

And at the center of it all sat Vox.

He watched the city, the stages, the sleaze-streaked sins of pride, lust, and vanity. He watched the scandals play out in real-time—the deals, the betrayals, the acts that would never be spoken of again. But more than all of that, he watched him.

Valentino.

It wasn't an obsession. That's what Vox told himself on loop, a mantra stitched into the static of his mind. It was intel. Precision. The edge you needed in a place where loyalty was as cheap as flesh and even easier to tear through. It was about control.

Control, yes. That's all it was.

He sat on his throne of chrome and glass, nested deep in his surveillance room like a god. The room whirred and glitched, every wall filled with monitors stacked in asymmetrical towers. Each screen flickered with a different slice of Hell, but most of them—too many of them—were tuned to one channel: Valentino.

Val, in his studio, throwing a tantrum, cursing out a cameraman whose hands trembled just enough to earn his wrath. Val, slouched over a velvet couch, his wings curled like lazy shadows, one of his four hands flicking ash from a cigarette, its smoke curling through the thick air. Val, leaning in too close to someone else's mouth, whispered poison sweet words, causing the recipient to flinch, as if the whisper burned. And those eyes—those goddamned eyes—flicked toward the camera, as if he knew.

Are you watching this?

Of course, Vox was watching. He always was.

His faceplate glowed faintly with reflected light, fractured by many images. His expression was unreadable. Occasionally, he'd reach out with a needle-sharp claw to fine-tune a knob, rewind a clip, isolate a sound bite—every word. Every laugh is too loud. Every sneer that cut deeper than it should have. Every moment, Val slipped up and let the mask crack. He archived it all. Every image capturing that lethal beauty—Val's expression, polished and poisonous—preserved like a relic of devotion, too precious to forget. All of it labelled, dated, filed away meticulously.

That was the power of being a machine.

But even machines had limits. Even machines remembered pain.

Because behind every analytic and snide chuckle as he watched Val slip into yet another scripted seduction, there was a flicker—something Vox refused to name. A ghost in the code. Something that made his signals distort every time Valentino whispered someone else's name.

Sometimes he wondered what it would take to make Val look at him that way. Not with suspicion. Not with that damn smugness. But with something tangible. Something unscripted.

Sometimes he wondered what it would take to make Val focus on him, without the games or anyone else, not with suspicion or smugness, but with something real. The static buzzed louder, his hands clenched, wires whining. He never let Val see how badly he wanted to be the only one.

The static in his head buzzed louder when he imagined it. His hands clenched, wires whining.

He told himself he wasn't obsessed.

He was in control.

But even machines get tired of being mocked.

Even Gods crave love.