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LOCATION: VOSS TOWER, 8TH FLOOR
CITY: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
DATE: JULY 15, 2025 | TIME: 8:00 AM
Elliot Voss—titan of industry, architect of the future, and a man known around the world for his unshakable ethics—chose July fifteenth as his final day on Earth.
It was no coincidence. Fifteen years earlier, on this same date, he had lost both his wife and daughter in a car accident. The day that took everything he loved. Everything that had driven him forward. The drunk driver who killed them had at least shown the grim decency to die in the crash as well. But that was cold comfort. In the days that followed, Voss spiraled into a grief so deep he thought he might never surface again.
It took him nearly a year to climb out.
He had always believed he was building the future for Elanor and Madeleine. After they were gone, he had to find a new reason to go on. At first, it felt like he was just completing a plan already in motion—a momentum of decisions he’d made long ago, converging toward an inevitable goal. But in time, he came to believe something else. That this future—this new world—was exactly what Elanor and Madeleine would have wanted him to build.
Even if they wouldn’t be there to see it.
In the end, losing your purpose for a single year after a loss that catastrophic was better than most. But it didn’t matter. Because the day after the accident in 2010, Elliot Voss had made a silent vow: the moment his work was complete, he would follow them.
That he would go on his terms.
To offer his body—literally—as the final piece of the project wasn’t just poetic. It was perfect. Fitting. Not a single molecule left behind. Only a legacy that would echo through the centuries.
That morning, on the eighth floor of Voss Tower, Elliot Voss prepared for his final salute to humanity. Grim and Brick were with him, and of course, Mallory.
He had told no one else the date he had chosen.
In the end, he wanted only these three. Graham Thorne and Mason Briggs—who had guarded his life and taken on his demons more times than he could count. And Mallory. His protégé. The same age, almost to the day, as Madeleine. The inheritor of his legacy. And now, the burden.
Dr. Elise Draven and Vanessa Cho waited in the adjacent room, monitoring the equipment that would track every vital sign, every neural flicker, every atom of data as the nanites began their gruesome work of dismantling a great man molecule by molecule, learning everything they can in the process.
Voss took one last look at the main room. The familiar hum of servers. The soft glow of medical instruments. The quiet dignity of a life’s final act. He hadn’t intended to speak. He had planned to enter the chamber in silence.
But the moment called for more.
He turned toward them.
“Everyone, if I could have your attention for just a moment.”
The room quieted immediately.
“I’m not one for grand speeches, as you know. Honestly, I intended to just walk into that room”—he pointed to the inconspicuous door at the far end of the chamber—“and begin.”
He turned to the windows, letting his eyes drift over the skyline of San Francisco.
“But I think there’s something worth saying after all.”
A beat.
“Thank you. For honoring my decision. For not arguing with me.” He glanced at Mallory, smiling faintly. “At least, not too much.”
He chuckled softly, and a few others smiled. But then his voice dropped, lower and slower.
“As most of you know, I lost my wife and daughter on this day, fifteen years ago. They were my heart. My reason for everything. And when they were taken from me…” His voice caught. A single tear slipped down his cheek, then another. “…I decided I would follow them. As soon as the work was done.”
He exhaled, and suddenly laughed—loud, raw, and real.
“Took me long enough, right?”
Grim and Brick chuckled. Mallory, already at his side, placed a hand on his shoulder, steady and warm.
He accepted a tissue from her and wiped his face.
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“Not everyone gets to choose what they die for,” he said, his voice clear again. “Fewer still get to choose when they die. Or how. I’ve been granted all three.”
He looked down, then up again.
“But more important than choosing how I die… is that I got to choose what I lived for. And I chose this. I chose you. All of you.”
He turned slowly, taking them in—one last time.
“Thank you. Not just for today. But for taking the reins and leading humanity into what comes next. My hands are tired. I am tired. But I’m ready. This is the price, and I’m glad to pay it.”
A final pause.
“If I’m able… I’ll be watching.”
He gave a simple nod.
And then Elliot Voss turned and walked to the side room. Grim and Brick followed, closing the door gently behind him.
Inside, Voss removed his clothing and laid down in the chamber, assisted by the two men who had protected him for a lifetime. When he was in place, the seal engaged. The privacy array activated—frosting over the glass, leaving only a window to his face.
Grim opened the door once more. Mallory entered. She placed her hand against the glass, just above where his rested on the other side.
Five weeks earlier, Voss had taken Vitalyx. Four weeks ago, he followed with a modified version of Rejuvenex—designed to heal but not restore youth. He had waited. Made peace. Prepared.
Now, the moment had come.
And Elliot Voss—titan, father, visionary—was ready to let go.
Mallory gave a signal to Elise in the other room, and with the press of a button, the curtain began to fall on a great man’s life.
Inside the chamber, the lights dimmed. A soft, shifting blue glow began to pulse along the perimeter, casting subtle reflections across the frosted glass. From the upper corners of the sealed unit, a colorless, odorless vapor began to hiss into the space—silent and slow, like mist rolling into a valley at dawn.
It wasn’t anesthesia. It wasn’t sleep.
It was something engineered in-between.
A neural-preserving sedative, developed in secret by Elise’s pharmaceutical team, formulated to keep Elliot Voss conscious—technically—but gently unmoored from his body. His higher-order cognition would remain active. Memory, reflection, language centers—all untouched. But the body’s connection to pain, to panic, to fear? Silenced.
His mind would drift in a liminal dreamstate—quiet, aware, and serene.
As the vapor reached full saturation, his breathing slowed. Monitors displayed everything in real time: steady heartbeat, stable vitals, smooth neural waveforms undisturbed by the process beginning to unfold.
Then, the second signal was given.
The nanites—dormant until now—began to stir.
From reservoirs embedded in the chamber walls, they emerged in staggered waves. Microscopic and silent, they did not tear or claw or burn. They flowed—across skin, through tissue, down into the molecular seams. Not machines. Not parasites. Archivists.
They recorded everything.
Electrical impulses. Synaptic chains. Micro-patterns of brain chemistry. They mapped his DNA not just strand by strand, but contextually—cross-referencing genetic potential with lived experience, tracking the evolution of a single life down to the cellular echo.
Nothing was wasted. Nothing was lost.
They would consume him. Yes. But with purpose. With reverence.
It would take days. Slowly, layer by layer, the body of Elliot Voss would be rendered down into code. The culmination of a lifetime’s work—offered willingly, completely.
Not because he had to. But because he chose to.
As Voss’s eyes closed with the slow infusion of the sedative gas, the glass of the chamber frosted over completely.
Graham Thorne and Mason Briggs took their seats—one on either side of the chamber. And they waited.
In vigil.
In the military, respect was demanded. Required. But Voss had taught them that respect meant more when it was earned—not through rank or reputation, but through quiet conviction. Through the way a man lived.
Voss had never drawn a blade or fired a shot in anger, yet he carried the ethos of a warrior. Because sometimes, being a warrior wasn’t about combat. It was about resolve.
And no one they had ever known had more of it than Elliot Voss.
Grim and Brick had witnessed death thousands of times, but this… this was different. Never had they stood vigil for someone who embodied the deepest meaning of the word.
They sat like guardians—unmoving, unwavering—protecting a great man from anything that might disturb his final passage.
Ancient and stoic.
Powerful and silent.
They waited. And watched.
Mallory stood in silence for a few minutes, eyes on the faint outline of his face through the fading window. Then she turned and left the chamber. She had planned to get some work done that day—maybe even dive into the succession files again—but it didn’t feel right anymore.
Instead, she did what Voss would have told her to do.
She took the elevator to the garage, slid behind the wheel, and drove home. Her apartment felt too quiet, but the city outside still buzzed like nothing had happened. She opened a bottle of wine.
Then another.
By the time night had fallen on this momentous day, she’d worked her way through nearly four bottles. Not out of sorrow. Not really. She’d come to terms with Voss’s death. Or at least, the part of her that needed to seem composed had.
She would miss his presence, of course. A great man always leaves a massive shadow behind him.
But that wasn’t what was keeping her awake.
It was the other thing. The electric hum under her skin. The countdown ticking in the back of her mind.
The world was about to change. And she would be one of the first to cross into that new future.
She couldn’t shake the thought.
Finally, she picked up her phone and dialed Vanessa—still at Voss Tower, watching the nanite feed. It rang a few times before the line clicked.
“Mallory,” Vanessa said softly. “How are you holding up, dear?”
Mallory paused.
How am I holding up?
I don’t even know…
“I know I can’t sleep,” she finally said. “And I’ve definitely had enough to drink that I don’t think I can tell you much more than that.” A pause. “Honestly… I could use some company. Is there anyone who can cover the lab for a few hours? I don’t think I want to be alone tonight.”
She heard the smile in Vanessa’s voice before she spoke.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
She hung up the phone, handed off her station to a trusted colleague, and headed out into the San Francisco night.
It was a good night to be with someone you cared about.
And who did she care about more than Mallory McInnis?