Phantom Skin
Swap appearance and heat signature in 0.5 seconds, so street surveillance AI reads you as a stranger template.
Those who don't exist
are the freest.
2071, Neo-Taipei's Neon Rift District. The global identity chain logs everyone's spending, movements and moods. Only one organization shows up as pure black to the system.
"000" is not just a name. It is the guild's one supreme creed. Break any part of it, and the algorithm erases you from the underground.
Clients and agents are fully double-blind. The guild has only handles: no names, no faces, no past.
When the mission ends, its files, comms and point flows are burned automatically. For everyone, it never happened.
No friends. No contact across missions. No right or wrong. Only points.
In 2069, the global identity chain went live. Three former engineers marked for deletion rewrote their identities as three zeros in the last 0.3 seconds before they were erased.
They wrote this zeroing technique into a protocol and handed it to a self-running algorithm: ORIGIN. No headquarters, no leader. Legend says the three founders were uploaded long ago and became the algorithm itself.
Clients and agents are never directly connected, start to finish. ORIGIN stands between them and strips away anything traceable.
Clients submit contracts anonymously through a one-time encrypted portal, and the commission is locked in an escrow contract first.
ORIGIN strips client info, assigns a star rating, and pushes the target to only the three best-suited agents. First come, first served.
Finish before the next 00:00. No chat, no backup. Only a countdown and a target.
Commission and points are paid out, and every record is burned. This mission order never existed.
ORIGIN recalculates ranks every 72 hours, without notice. One day you'll just notice the middle circle has grown brighter.
| LV | Handle | Circle brightness | Available missions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 07 | NULL | Off | Trial missions |
| 06 | GHOST | Dim | Intel gathering, errands |
| 05 | CIPHER | Cold white | Infiltration, stealth entry |
| 04 | ROOTKIT | Acid green | High-value targets |
| 03 | KERNEL | Pulse green | Cross-city operations |
| 02 | ZERO-DAY | Magenta | State-level contracts |
| 01 | ORIGIN-BOUND | Full | Undisclosed |
Breaking the protocol carries three levels of penalty: silence, demotion, wipe. Those who are wiped forget they were ever agents.
Crypto, withdrawable. Keeps agents living well.
Goes in, never comes out. Cannot be withdrawn or transferred, only spent on the black market. Keeps agents from leaving.
At some midnight each month, the "Zero-Hour Window" opens at random and the exchange rate doubles. No one knows when it will light up.
Seeing it doesn't mean you can afford it, let alone that you're allowed to buy it.
Swap appearance and heat signature in 0.5 seconds, so street surveillance AI reads you as a stranger template.
Implant 48 hours of skill memory: cello, freediving, Icelandic. Dissolves automatically when time is up.
Spin up a parallel life on the identity chain: a name, a degree, ten years of social posts.
A one-time peek at ORIGIN's forecast: the three things most likely to happen in a given city over the next 72 hours.
Ask ORIGIN one question. No one has ever publicly admitted to buying it.
Humans never show up. Only AI avatars enter, and each avatar's only name is a 9-digit number.
Everything below 111111111 is reserved for the founders and special entities; repdigits are never opened either. Insiders have a saying: "If the number is small, or all nine digits match, say nothing and walk around."
Each code is issued three 15-character keys; any one of them logs you in. Enter one wrong and the screen won't respond. It just stays black.
| Segment | Code range | Count | Identity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | 000000000 | 1 | ? |
| Reserved zone | 000000001 – 111111111 | 111,111,111 | Founders, senior admins, special entities |
| Repdigit | 222222222 … 999999999 | 8 | Gatekeeper |
| Open zone | 111111112 – 999999999 | 888,888,880 | Your avatar |
Rain fell on the overpass in the Neon Rift District. K-404 parked the matte-black Porsche in the shadow of a pier, killed the engine, and took out a phone that looked dead.
With his thumb, he drew three circles on the black glass.
In the distance, the red light of a watchtower swept the parking space without stopping. To the system, it was empty.
00:00
[Launch date TBD] Leave your handle and email, and ORIGIN will instantly draw a reserved code for your avatar from 888,888,880 codes.
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