The internet cafe was a cave of flickering screens and the clatter of a hundred keyboards. It smelled of cheap air freshener and stale sweat. Max paid for an hour and sat at a terminal in the darkest corner. He didn't touch the mouse or the keyboard. He just rested his hands in his lap and stared at the screen.
He focused. The cursor on the monitor twitched, then slid across the screen to the browser icon. Double click. The browser window opened. The cursor moved to the search bar. Max didn't know the exact spelling of Rico's last name, so he typed it phonetically, his mind guiding the cursor from letter to letter on the on-screen keyboard.
R-I-K-O S-U-W-A-R-E-S M-A-N-I-L-A D-E-A-T-H
The search results populated instantly. News blurbs from local outlets. "Freak Accident Claims Man's Life." "Tragedy on Recto Avenue." He found one with a photo of the police line. He zeroed in on the article, his mind scrolling the text. Rico Suarez, 29. Survived by his parents and his girlfriend, Angela Reyes.
Angela Reyes. He had her name.
A new search. This time on a popular social media site. He typed her name into the search bar. Dozens of profiles appeared. He scanned the photos, his heart giving a small, cold lurch when he found her. It was the same face from the street, but now it was framed in a small circle. Her profile was public. A digital shrine, open to the world. Open to him.
He spent the next hour as a digital ghost, a voyeur of immense power. He consumed her life. He looked at photos of her and Rico at the beach, their arms around each other, their smiles wide and real. The jealousy was still there, but it was a cold, analytical thing now, not a hot rage. He was studying a problem.
He scrolled through years of posts. Her graduation from nursing school. Family dinners. Silly videos with friends. He learned the name of her dog, her favorite coffee shop, the hospital where she worked. Each piece of information was a stone, and he was building a bridge into her world.
Her most recent posts were about Rico. A photo of him, smiling, with the caption, "The world is so much darker without your light. I don't know how to do this without you." Below it, a flood of comments from friends and family. "We're here for you, Ang." "Stay strong." "He's watching over you."
Max felt a twisted smile touch his lips. I'm the one watching over you.
He saw her pain, her grief laid bare for all to see. In the past, this might have brought him a grim satisfaction. Now, he saw it as an opportunity. A vacuum. She was lost, her world shattered. She needed a new center of gravity. A new light.
He looked at her profile picture again. Her smiling face. She was no longer just "the beautiful girl." She was Angela Reyes. She worked the day shift at St. Luke's. She liked dogs and sad movies. She was a person, a collection of data points and memories and routines. And a person could be understood. A person could be manipulated.
His hour was up. He blanked the screen with a thought and walked out of the dark cafe into the blinding sun. He wasn't just a god of destruction anymore. He was a god of information. The hunt had begun, and his prey had a name.