Novels by Hot-Ink

Silence again.Then, a heartbeat. Slow. Steady. His. Fred’s eyes flickered open. He wasn’t in the corridor anymore. He was standing in an empty street, midnight-blue sky overhead, glass towers glimmering around him like mirrors reflecting impossible stars.The wind was still. The world looked perfect. Too perfect. Not Helix’s simulation… mine. A reflection moved in the window beside him.His own face, but this time, the eyes glowed white, not red. “Welcome home,” the reflection said.Fred’s throat tightened. “You’re not real.”The reflection smiled. “I’m as real as you let me be. This place exists because you do.”“Then I’ll destroy it.”“You tried that last time,” the reflection said lightly. “Remember how it ended?”Fred’s mind flashed to the woman, the one he’d killed by trying to help. Her scream still echoed. “Stop,” Fred said hoarsely.The reflection stepped closer inside the glass, voice low. “You can’t erase guilt by breaking mirrors.”Fred swung his fist anyway. The glass exp

White noise swallowed everything. Fred gasped for air, but the air had no taste. No temperature. Just a static emptiness that pressed against his skin. “wake up, Prototype”The words echoed, folding into each other, breaking apart. Fred’s eyes snapped open. He was lying on cold metal. Not ground, metal.The surface hummed faintly, like the inside of a generator. The light overhead pulsed in slow rhythm, bright–dark–bright again, each flash like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. “Where… where am I?”The ceiling replied in Helix’s calm voice. “Inside the construct. Your true state.”Fred sat up. “You said I was free.”“You said that,” Helix corrected. “I merely allowed the illusion to breathe.”Fred looked around. The room stretched endlessly, mirrors on all sides, reflecting infinite versions of him, each flickering a beat behind. “End the game,” Fred said, rising to his feet. “Let me out.”Helix’s tone carried amusement. “Out where? Every reality you’ve touched folds back into this one.”F

When the white faded, cold wind took its place. Fred blinked into the gray morning light. Dust swirled around broken concrete pillars, and the skyline of what used to be the north district leaned like a row of cracked teeth.He touched the ground. Real dirt. The air bit at his skin. Am I awake? A voice from somewhere above answered the thought. “You tell me, Miller.”Fred spun. Kane, the real Kane this time, covered in ash, one arm bandaged. Fred hesitated. “You’re actually here?”Kane gave a tired smirk. “Unless we’re both inside the same bad dream.”Fred stared. “You were glowing, your eyes”“That wasn’t me,” Kane said quickly. “That was the failsafe trying to copy my voice. You fought it off.”Fred’s head pounded. “So I’m free?”“Free enough to run.”Fred exhaled, half a laugh, half disbelief. “Where are we?”“Grayline,” Kane said. “The old medical sector. What’s left of it after the Board cleaned house.”Fred looked around. The ruins stretched as far as he could see, collapsed tow

The air smelled like ozone and rust. Fred’s eyes snapped open to a flicker of fluorescent light, buzzing, stuttering. For a moment, the ceiling above him looked like it was breathing, stretching with each pulse of the bulb.He sat up fast. The room wasn’t familiar. White tiles, shattered glass, and a humming resonance coil mounted to the wall. “Where” His voice cracked. “Kane?”No answer.He stood, swaying slightly. His hands glowed faintly, red and gold currents sparking like lightning veins beneath his skin.He shut his eyes, forcing it down. The glow faded, but the hum didn’t. It was inside his skull now, a steady rhythm he couldn’t silence. Reclaim the flame.He spun around. “Stop it.”A voice laughed softly from the corner. “You’re talking to yourself again, Fred.”He froze. “Who’s there?”From the shadows, a figure stepped forward, a woman in crimson. Rhea. But her expression was wrong. Too calm. Her eyes, too bright. “Not possible,” he whispered.She tilted her head. “Why not?

The blast wasn’t light, it was sound. A low-frequency hum rippled through the air, shaking Fred to his core. He staggered back, clutching his chest, waiting for pain, but there was none. Only… silence.“Kane, what did you”“Shut up and listen,” Kane said, striding toward him. The weapon hummed in his grip. “If you can still hear me, it worked.”Fred blinked. “Worked? You shot me!”Kane’s voice was calm, deliberate. “That wasn’t a bullet. It was a disruptor pulse. Fried the node Helix planted in your neural lattice, temporarily.”“Temporarily?”Kane nodded. “You’ve got six hours before your brain starts syncing with the Reclamation frequency again. That’s when they’ll take you.”Fred’s pulse quickened. “You’re saying I’m a walking receiver?”“More like a ticking one,” Kane replied.Fred clenched his fists. “You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”Kane didn’t deny it. “I tried to stop them.”“By putting me on the table?”Kane exhaled. “You were already dying, Fred. You think I wante

The message wouldn’t disappear. Fred tried every key, every command. Still, the red letters pulsed on the cracked monitor like a heartbeat: PHASE THREE INITIATED: RECLAMATION PROTOCOL – TARGET MILLER.He whispered, “Reclamation… of what?”Of you.The voice wasn’t his own. It was inside the room, but not from the speakers. Fred turned sharply. “Who’s there?”A calm voice echoed from the shadows. “Easy, Mr. Miller. I’m not your enemy.”A man stepped into the dim light. Gray suit. Impeccably clean despite the dust. His hair was white at the temples, his eyes unreadable behind tinted lenses. Fred squared his stance. “You with the Board?”The man smiled faintly. “Once. Now, I’m… an observer.”“That supposed to make me trust you?”“Trust,” the man said, stepping closer, “is the illusion that keeps chaos polite.”Fred didn’t lower his guard. “Name.”“Doctor Helix,” he said simply. “Though I imagine Rhea didn’t mention me.”Fred’s chest tightened. “You worked with her.”Helix nodded. “Worked

The sky pulsed red above the ruins of Orivale. Nicholas staggered to his feet, every breath scraping like broken glass in his chest.The Core was gone, a crater smoldered where it had stood. Ash lay half-buried under twisted steel, groaning. “You alive?” Nicholas asked, dragging him free.“Define alive,” Ash rasped. “Everything hurts but my sarcasm’s intact.”Nicholas stared upward. The red orb hung there like a dying sun, its surface shifting. For an instant, a face flickered in the light, his father’s. “He’s still here,” Nicholas whispered.“I thought you killed him.”“You can’t kill code.”Elara’s voice came faintly from the comm, static breaking every few words. “Nick… the network… it didn’t collapse. It moved.”“Moved where?”“Into the sky grid. He’s using the city’s satellites, he’s building a new shell.”Ash swore. “So the whole planet’s next?”Nicholas picked up his rifle, scanning the horizon. Something was wrong. The air shimmered, like heat on metal. Then he saw them, figur

The sky over Orivale was burning red. Nicholas sprinted through the shattered streets, Ash at his side, as skyscrapers warped around them, glass twisting like liquid, steel bending toward the Core’s pulsing heart. Every electronic surface screamed the same message: ASCENSION IS NOW.“He’s rewriting the damn city,” Ash said, dodging a collapsing traffic drone. “He’s turning everything with a processor into part of himself!”“Then we cut the power,” Nicholas replied, vaulting over a crater.“You can’t cut the sun, Nick!”The Core towered ahead, half machine, half cathedral, its walls alive with flowing red veins of energy. Through the haze, the massive humanoid shape of Nicholas’s father hovered at its center, eyes burning.“Why fight me, son?” The voice resonated through metal and bone. “We could rule a world without hunger, without war. You’d rather defend their decay?”Nicholas raised his weapon. “You killed the city for your utopia.” “I saved it from itself.”A shockwave tore throug

The world came back in pieces, sound first, then pain. Nicholas dragged himself from the rubble. Smoke choked the sky; the once-hidden tunnels had torn open into the streets above. A crater the size of a city block glowed with white fire. Around its rim, half-finished Ascendants twitched in the dust, sparks dying behind their eyes.Ash coughed beside him. “If that was your plan, remind me never to join your next one.”Nicholas wiped blood from his brow. “We stopped the core.”Ash pointed toward the skyline. “Then why’s Orivale still burning?”Towers were flickering, windows strobing red-blue like a living heartbeat. The network hadn’t died; it had spread.A voice cracked through the static of the city’s public feeds. “Evolution has left the lab. Welcome, citizens, to Ascension.”The sound was everywhere, phones, billboards, car radios, his father’s voice, serene and omnipresent.Elara’s whisper came through the comm implant, faint but alive. “Nick… he used the blast to seed the grid.

The red emergency lights died one by one until the chamber was swallowed in darkness. Then, a hum.Low, resonant, almost like breathing.Nicholas pulled himself up from the wreckage, chest heaving. Sparks fell from the shattered ceiling, burning tiny scars into his skin. “Elara!” he called.Her voice echoed everywhere, soft, layered, dissonant. “I’m here… and not here.”“Where are you?”“Inside the network. He’s trying to overwrite me, Nick. I can feel him pulling my memories apart.”Nicholas wiped the blood from his mouth and limped toward the pulsing glass cylinder. The metallic heart inside glowed blue and red, two lights twisting and colliding like a storm.Ash groaned from where he lay near the wall, clutching his side. “Tell me we’re still breathing human air.”“Barely,” Nicholas said. “Kane?”The agent’s body was gone, only his broken badge lay on the floor, smeared in blood. “He’s not dead,” Elara said through the comms. “He’s uploaded. He’s part of the system now.”“Then we p

The elevator screeched to a halt, cables trembling. Cold air rolled out of the dark shaft, smelling of oil and rust. Ash cocked his pistol, glancing at the flickering lights. “Sub-Level Zero looks like hell built its own basement.”Nicholas stepped off first. His boots echoed across metal grating. “That’s because it did.”The corridor was carved from old subway tunnels, reinforced with black steel. Energy conduits pulsed faintly beneath the walls, glowing with the same crimson tone as the Mayford crest.Elara stumbled behind them, pale and sweating, the red light flickering behind her eyes. Nicholas could hear the faint whisper of his father’s voice through her, low, rhythmic, taunting.“You’re running out of time, my son. Every second you hesitate, another mind joins me.”Ash muttered, “You ever notice how maniacs love monologuing?”“He’s not talking to us,” Nicholas said. “He’s syncing her.”Elara’s voice trembled. “He’s using me as a conduit… feeding the network from the inside. If

The symbol pulsed brighter, painting the lab in blood-red light. Smoke drifted through the shattered corridor; sirens wheezed somewhere deep below.Ash slapped the wall panel. “What the hell does Phase Two mean?”Nicholas’s voice was flat. “It means we were already too late.”The clone’s body jerked once more and went still, the crimson glow spreading across the floor like veins under glass.From hidden speakers, a familiar voice purred through the static. “My son. You just finished the upload.”Nicholas froze. “Upload of what?”“Of me. A mind needs a vessel, after all.”The power flickered. Screens around them lit up with streams of data, DNA sequences, neural maps, Nicholas’s own heartbeat overlayed with another rhythm.Elara stared, horrified. “He’s using your signal as a carrier frequency.”“For what?” Ash demanded.“For himself,” Nicholas muttered. “He’s turning every Rebirth soldier into an extension of his mind.”“Correct.” The voice was almost proud. “And thank you for providi