Novels by Gem

For a few seconds, nobody trusted the silence.Wilson stared at the screen like it was going to betray him if he blinked too long, his fingers hovering just above the tablet as if he was waiting for something to jump out and undo everything they had just done.“…That is not normal,” he said quietly.Beverly frowned slightly.“What do you mean?” she asked.Wilson swallowed.“I mean it is too quiet,” he replied. “Systems like this do not just stop. They resist. They recover. They—”The screen flickered.All of them tensed instantly.Reika’s blade was back up in a second.“I knew it,” she said.But the screen did not explode into chaos again.Instead, the data shifted slowly.Reorganizing.Fragmenting.Wilson leaned closer.“…Wait.”Davion stepped beside him.“What is happening?” he asked.Wilson’s eyes scanned rapidly across the interface.“They are not reconnecting,” he said slowly. “They are… desyncing further.”Beverly blinked.“That is good, right?”Wilson nodded, though cautiously.

Wilson stared at the screen like it might explode.“I just want to say this clearly,” he began, raising a finger as he looked between all of them, “this is the kind of plan that gets people killed, and I feel like that should be acknowledged before we all agree to it.”Reika leaned against the console, arms crossed, her expression almost amused.“It has been that kind of plan since the beginning,” she said.Beverly didn’t smile.“Focus,” she said sharply. “Explain exactly what happens if we do this.”Wilson nodded quickly, turning the tablet toward them.“Okay, so right now the synchronization signal is distributed,” he said, pulling up the network map again. “Multiple nodes, different locations, all coordinating the failsafes. But if I overload the routing pathways—”“You force everything to reroute,” Davion finished.“Yes,” Wilson said, pointing at him. “Exactly. It all gets pulled into one central hub to stabilize.”Reika tilted her head.“And that hub becomes here.”Wilson hesitat

For a moment, no one moved.The words all of them echoed in the room like a gunshot that never faded, sinking deeper into the silence until it became impossible to ignore.Wilson was the first to break.“That is not survivable,” he said, his voice unsteady but rising with urgency. “That is not even remotely manageable. We are talking about hundreds of independent systems activating at the same time across different networks, different countries, different infrastructures—this is not a problem, this is a global disaster waiting to happen.”Beverly turned sharply toward him.“Then we prioritize,” she said firmly, even though the tension in her voice betrayed how serious this was.Wilson shook his head.“There is no clear priority,” he replied. “Everything is connected in ways we do not fully understand yet. If one system goes down, another compensates. It is like trying to stop a flood by plugging one hole.”Reika let out a quiet breath, her eyes still locked on the traitor.“Then we st

The silence in the system hub stretched longer than it should have.No one moved.No one even seemed to breathe.Because now there was no screen, no distortion, no distance between them and the truth. The person standing in front of them was real, solid, and impossibly familiar.Davion’s chest felt tight, but his expression did not change.“You,” he said slowly.The figure tilted their head slightly, as if amused by the reaction, as if this moment had been rehearsed a hundred times in their mind.“I was wondering how long it would take you to catch up,” they said calmly.Wilson let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh.“Oh, so we are just skipping denial and going straight into villain speeches? That is… bold.”Beverly stepped forward, her eyes sharp and searching.“Start talking,” she said. “Now.”Reika did not say anything, but her stance shifted subtly, ready for anything.The traitor—because there was no other word for it now—took a slow step closer to the center console, resting one h

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence the moment the name appeared on the screen.No one spoke at first, and no one dared to look away, as if even blinking would somehow change what they were seeing. The glow from the data core reflected faintly on their faces, but the tension in the air made the space feel smaller than it actually was.Wilson was the first to react, although his voice came out unsteady, almost like he did not fully believe what he was about to say.“That’s not possible,” he said, shaking his head as he stepped closer to the console.Beverly’s eyes remained fixed on the screen, her expression tight with disbelief.“It has to be a trick,” she said quietly, though there was uncertainty beneath her words.Reika, however, did not look surprised. Her grip tightened slightly around the handle of her blade, and her gaze sharpened as she studied the name like it was an enemy standing right in front of her.“Or it’s real,” she said calmly.Davion still had not moved.

The room felt smaller now.Not physically—nothing about the walls or the table had changed—but the weight of what sat in Davion’s hand made the air tighter, heavier, like the space itself was closing in around them.The data core glowed faintly.Alive.Waiting.Wilson stopped pacing and pointed at it again, like maybe if he stared hard enough, it would explain itself.“Okay,” he said slowly, “before we go full ‘let’s save the world again,’ can we at least acknowledge that this thing is basically a digital minefield?”Reika tilted her head slightly.“You mean it could destroy us?”Wilson nodded.“Yes. In multiple ways. At the same time.”Beverly stepped closer to the table, her eyes fixed on the device.“Then we don’t rush it,” she said. “We open it carefully.”Davion nodded once.“Agreed.”He placed the data core down on the table.The faint glow pulsed once—almost like it recognized the moment.Wilson pulled his tablet out immediately.“I’m going to isolate it from every external net