Novels by paopaowrites

Lyra had never seen the Glass Cathedral up close—only in flickers of stolen memory or archived footage buried deep in rebel data nodes. From the outside, it was beautiful. Shimmering spires of fractured crystal stretched into the gray sky like frozen lightning, each surface catching slivers of sunlight and throwing them across the ruined city like shards of stars. But beneath its gleam, it pulsed with something older. Something that watched.They approached under the cover of the morning haze, climbing over collapsed overpasses and twisted steel bridges. The old transportation grids had long since fallen into disuse. The silence around the cathedral wasn’t natural—it was enforced. No birds. No machines. Even the wind moved more slowly here.Elias’s voice came through the comm again. “You’re two hundred meters from the outer shield. Keep your resonance levels low. The perimeter sensors don’t track heat—they track intent.”Kael arched an eyebrow. “Intent?”“They’re psychometric barriers

The night air was unusually still as Lyra crouched beneath the decaying remnants of a subway terminal. Her breath came shallow, the pulse at her throat fluttering like a trapped signal. A flickering overhead light revealed slanted graffiti on the crumbling walls: Truth isn’t erased. Just buried. Fitting. She traced the faded words with her eyes but didn’t stop. Every second mattered now.Elias had rerouted them through the old commuter network, a relic from before the Index had converted it into a sensory grid. The rails no longer carried trains—only data. Memory pulses. Surveillance threads. Ghosts.She turned back. Kael followed her, silent but tense, the corners of his mouth drawn into a frown that never left him. She didn’t need his words to feel the weight of his distrust. It pressed against her like smoke. She understood it. Even if she didn’t remember betraying him, she’d betrayed someone. Maybe everyone.“This way,” Elias’s voice buzzed through the comm-link in her ear. “South

The shriek of the alarm tore through the ruins like a blade, followed by the metallic whir of approaching drones. Lyra didn't hesitate. She tucked the memory core into her jacket's hidden pocket, drew her pulse-blade, and turned to Kael."East access tunnel," he said quickly. "Still stable if we move fast."Elias was already on the comms, fingers flying across his wristpad. "I'm jamming their first tier signals. Won't last more than sixty seconds.""That's all we need," Kael growled.The three of them sprinted from the amphitheater stage as the air shimmered—an Index assault drone phased through the ceiling, scanning. Lyra flung a shiv of code from her implant; the drone stuttered mid-air, sparks blooming like electric flowers before it dropped, twitching, to the ground.The tunnel beyond was cramped and foul with decades-old rot. Kael led the way, torchlight slicing ahead, while Lyra brought up the rear, adrenaline sharpening her senses. She could feel the memory core pulsing against

The sky above Wren Sector shimmered as dawn clawed at the horizon, casting pale gold through the fractures in the city's overhead dome. The outer sectors hadn't seen real sunlight in years—just filtered glow through reinforced glass, distorted by data fog and surveillance overlays. But today, something had changed.Lyra stood on a roof near the edge of the old industrial arc, watching the skyline pulse as the Index scanned for anomalies. Her hand was still wrapped in a makeshift bandage, blood seeping through the fibers from where the envoy had struck her.Below, Elias worked on decrypting the drive they'd salvaged from the Iris Vault. His brow was furrowed in that way he had when the code resisted him—not with complexity, but with familiarity. Like it wasn't meant to be understood by anyone but her."You recognize it?" she asked.He nodded. "Yeah. It's yours. But not written in your style."Lyra crouched beside him. The interface displayed an abstract pattern—circles within squares,

The tunnels roared around them—old wind ducts now pulsing with alarm resonance. Each turn Lyra took sparked faint glimmers of embedded glyphs—directions laid long ago by the founders of Sector Wren's resistance. It was a map hidden in heat and code, invisible to the Index unless you knew how to read the shimmer.Elias was a step ahead, moving like muscle memory led him. Lyra followed with her blade sheathed but ready, pistol primed. The echo of bootsteps behind them grew louder, less human with every beat."They're deploying Trackers," Elias called over his shoulder."Can you slow them?""Temporarily." He skidded to a halt at a conduit panel, jamming his fist into the control slot. Sparks jumped. A burst of light blinked through the mesh floor, and with a sudden whumph, half the corridor caved in behind them. Smoke filled the passage like breathless fog.Lyra coughed, pulling her jacket over her nose. "That'll buy us two minutes at best.""We only need one."They turned another corner

Virelia looked different from the rooftop.Up here, the angles warped. The city lost its symmetry—no longer a sleek utopia of mirrored towers and electric trains, but a crumbling mosaic of secrets, stitched together by power lines and lies. The dome above shimmered with programmed clouds and synthetic sunlight, but now Lyra could see the thin seams in its illusion.She crouched beside Elias on the grated platform of an old maintenance rig, wind curling past her hair like invisible fingers. Below, the world moved on—citizens in gray coats marching in regulated currents, unaware that a surveillance drone hovered three meters behind every tenth step."Tell me everything," she said. "Start with the ghost protocol."Elias leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "It's a failsafe buried deep inside the neural grid. Not part of the Index—not exactly. It was created by the original architects of Mnemosyne.""The project I helped build and then tried to destroy," Lyra muttered.He nodd