The streets of Istanbul buzzed with the rhythm of commerce, language, and deceit.
At the edge of the Free Zone, near a disused warehouse overlooking the Bosphorus, a man waited. He looked like a Belgian arms broker — mid-40s, receding hairline, sharp suit, dead eyes. He smoked slowly, watching the boats drift past.
He wasn't real.
He was Vekom's clone.
Inside his briefcase was a miniature EMP device, a passive-jamming module, and a retinal uplink to Vekom himself, who was watching from the safehouse in Medellín.
The buyer arrived precisely on time. A man in a charcoal gray coat, no bodyguards, no expression. His accent was clean, American—but could've been fake. He never gave a name.
"You're the supplier?" the man asked.
"I represent him," the clone answered.
They didn't shake hands.
The man handed over a tablet. No signal, no GPS. Just a local storage file with exact specs.
"We want drone clusters that operate on isolated AI protocols.We want rifles that can fire under wet, high-pressure, magnetic conditions.We want non-lethal crowd pacifiers, as well as lethal disablers.We want things that don't exist — or shouldn't."
"And if they exist?" the clone asked.
"Then you're getting your fifty million. Half now. Half on delivery."
No haggling. No threats.
Just a man with money, and a nation without a name.
Vekom watched in silence.
This wasn't about profit anymore.
This was an invitation.
Back in Colombia, the latest weapons drop in Iraq had gone without incident.
Vekom's Kurdish and Arabic clones reported that the gear was already in motion — some to rebels, others to private militias aligned with regional powers. The line between resistance and black ops was too thin to bother tracing.
The payment was processed in staggered crypto waves, bouncing through shell companies and sham NGOs.
System Update: +$12,000,000 Confirmed
Clones were now embedded across Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, and Erbil. The sandbox was expanding.
But so was the heat.
Pablo's tone had changed.
At their next meeting, he didn't bring Alonso. Just two silent gunmen and a cigar.
"I have a question," he said, blowing smoke. "Where are you getting your information?"
Vekom leaned back, blank-faced. "I read the paper."
Pablo laughed, but it was hollow.
"You knew about the raid before it happened. You supplied the counter-ambush gear before I even asked for it. That's not luck. That's... too much."
"Are you accusing me of something?" Vekom asked, sipping his drink.
"I'm wondering if you're human."
The silence stretched.
Then Vekom smiled.
"I'm not. I'm efficient."
Behind the scenes, more clones were spawning. Dozens now. Some walking the alleys of Bangkok, others shaking hands in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Warsaw.
The system had activated Space Transport Node Level 2 — a network of phantom routes using deep-sea cables, orbital signal pings, and wormholes that bent logistics time.
Weapons that took months to move now arrived in days.
Small-time arms dealers across Europe began to vanish. Some killed. Others absorbed into Vekom's growing supply chain — forced to work for a ghost they couldn't name, or disappear.
A silent monopoly of death.
And then, a problem.
The Istanbul clone never came back.
His retinal feed cut out 43 minutes after the meeting ended. His body was never found.
The buyer paid the initial $25 million.
But then the second half was delayed.
System Alert: "High-Risk Deal – Trust Breach Detected."
Vekom didn't flinch.
He just dispatched a new clone. Female, this time. Russian identity, with Israeli backstops. Same mission. New directive:
"Trace the chain. Find the flag. If they lie, erase them."
No one played with his rules and walked away.
Meanwhile, the clones that had discovered Pablo's secret vault were now transporting weapons from it — not to Vekom, but to his clients.
He hadn't told Pablo.
But now Pablo's weapons were fueling wars in Syria, Lebanon, Sudan.
It was an irony Vekom savored. The kingpin's own hoard, turned into global leverage.
System Log:- "Vault Redistribution Project Phase 2 activated."- "Resource value extracted to date: $5.6M (in gear and cash)."
Pablo didn't know yet.
He wouldn't, until it was too late.
At night, Vekom stared out at the city lights of Medellín. His face bathed in the glow of the system's interface, now vast, branching like a neural network with living cells across the world.
He thought of the man who had died back in Africa. Betrayed. Bleeding out in the dirt after his own crew turned on him.
He had wished for power over life and death.
Now he had it.
And still, the world kept asking for more.
More guns. More war. More silence.