The beast can be the system. The second Bill Gates said the vaccine would have scannable identification tech inside it, it met every criteria of a mark you can’t buy/sell without. And any Christian trying to get super esoteric and pretend that doesn’t meet the criteria but some attitude or thought or some other bullshit is, is just in denial. Actively denying that fact and going along with it is easily enough to meet a prophetic definition of worshiping the beast. (System).