Novels by Chi-Ink

Rain slicked the streets like liquid glass. Billy’s boots splashed through the puddles as the Helix Tower loomed ahead, fifty floors of black glass humming with energy.The whole structure pulsed faintly, alive with blue light running through its veins. Nina glanced up. “You sure you’re ready for this?”“No.”“Good. Means you might survive.”She tightened the strap on her weapon. Billy flexed his fingers, light crackled faintly between them. “Security grid’s on full lockdown,” Nina said. “You fry one circuit wrong, the whole place knows.”“Then I won’t miss.”They slipped into the shadow of a maintenance tunnel. The hum of power surrounded them, heavy and rhythmic. “Feels like walking inside a heart,” Nina murmured.“It is a heart,” Billy said quietly. “The city’s heart. His heart.”They reached a steel door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.Nina crouched, pulling a small device from her jacket. “Give me sixty seconds.”Billy placed a hand on the lock. “You’ve got three.”Blue lines c

Rain again. Always rain. Like the sky hadn’t stopped mourning since the explosion. Billy leaned against the rusted fence overlooking the East River.His reflection in the water pulsed, blue veins of light threading through his neck. He hated how quiet it was now. The kind of quiet that means something’s listening.Nina stood a few feet away, watching the skyline flicker. “They’re saying it was a terrorist attack.”“Of course they are.”“They’ve got your name on every feed, Billy. ‘Rogue Elemental,’ ‘Technopath Killer.’ Take your pick.”He smirked. “They always need a villain.”“Yeah, but this time the villain’s you.”He didn’t answer. The rain hit his jacket and hissed like static.“Talk to me,” she said.“I can’t.”“You won’t. Big difference.”Billy turned toward her. “You think I’m still me?”She squinted. “What does that even mean?”He tapped his temple. “He’s in here, Nina. Not like a voice. More like, echoes. Fragments. Sometimes I can tell which thoughts are mine. Sometimes I ca

Smoke still clung to the skyline. The Argus Building was a black scar now, its top floors collapsed, lightning still flickering through the clouds like a dying heartbeat.Billy stood in the rain, watching emergency drones hover around the ruins. Sirens wailed. News choppers circled. Somewhere beneath the chaos, Gwen’s energy still hummed.“Time to go,” Nina said. Her hair was soaked, eyes sharp.“They’ll be here any minute.”“Let them,” Billy muttered. “They already think I did it.”“Yeah, and the way you look right now? They’re gonna be right.”He glanced down, his hands glowed faintly blue, every pulse visible through the skin. Nina touched his shoulder. “You’re burning out. Whatever he did to that machine, it’s in you now.”He shook her off. “I can handle it.”“Sure. You handled the exploding skyscraper great.”He almost smiled, but didn’t. “We need to find out where he went.”“Can’t exactly call him.”“No,” Billy said, scanning the skyline. “But I can trace the signature.”He clos

Rain hit the rooftops like shattered glass. Billy sprinted across slick concrete, breath steady, boots slapping through puddles.The storm above wasn’t random anymore, it pulsed in patterns. Gwen’s patterns. “Slow down!” Nina shouted, leaping after him. “You trying to get yourself killed before he does?”“Can’t stop now,” Billy yelled back.“Not stopping, just pointing out this is suicide with cardio.”He jumped the gap between buildings. Lightning tore the sky open as he landed, rolled, and kept moving.“Signal’s close,” he said, voice clipped. “One block east.”“Your magic GPS tells you that?”“Something like that.”Nina muttered something unprintable and followed, ducking low as another thunderclap cracked over them.The city stretched below, fire escapes, neon signs, the flicker of streetlights caught in the rain. Far off, sirens screamed, muffled by the storm.Billy stopped at the edge of a rooftop, scanning the skyline. “He’s here.”“Your ghost sense tingling again?”He ignored

Rain hammered the pavement, slicing through the night in silver lines. Billy stopped in the middle of the street, palms open to the downpour.He could feel it, the pulse under the storm, Gwen’s signature woven through every bolt of lightning. A code only a student could read.Nina shouted over the thunder, “You good, or are you communing with the weather now?”He didn’t move. “He’s alive.”“You sure?”“I’d know his resonance anywhere.”“Well, great,” she said dryly. “Your undead mentor’s shooting lightning at the skyline. Totally fine.”He started walking again. “He’s sending a message.”“Or bait.”Billy didn’t answer. He ducked into an alley, water streaming down the walls like veins of mercury.Nina followed, muttering. “You’re insane.”“Maybe. But I’m not wrong.”They turned a corner, the hum of power stronger now, sharp enough to make his skin prickle.Billy reached out, touching the brick. A faint pattern burned under his fingers, ancient runes, Gwen’s script. “He marked this,” B

The room smelled of ozone and rust.Master Gwen sat in the half-light, bandaged arms crossed, eyes fixed on a wall of old monitors flickering with grainy feeds of the city.Billy’s face appeared on one of them, walking with Nina through the rain. Gwen exhaled slowly. “You found her. Faster than I expected.”From the shadows behind him, a voice replied, low and metallic. “You should have told him the truth.”“I told him what he needed to hear.”“And now he hunts you.”“That’s the plan.”Gwen turned, and the man in the shadows stepped forward, face hidden under a hood stitched with the same sigil that had burned the assassin’s chest.“Master,” the figure said, bowing his head slightly. “The Consortium has put a price on your student. They call him the Element Thief.”Gwen gave a faint, humorless smile. “They’re not wrong. He stole everything I taught him.”The hooded man hesitated. “You still care for him.”“Care?” Gwen’s eyes narrowed. “He’s the only one who might survive what’s coming

He woke to stillness.No sky. No ground. Just endless white, soft as fog, sharp as light. The air didn’t move, yet it hummed, faint and low, like a machine idling somewhere inside his bones.Jason sat up slowly. His body felt whole, but wrong, too smooth, too light. When he looked at his hands, they shimmered faintly, like heat rising off metal.The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “Don’t fight the reboot.”He turned. The woman, his mirror, stood several feet away, barefoot on the blank floor that wasn’t floor at all. Her skin no longer glowed blue; it pulsed silver.Jason swallowed hard. “Where are we?”“Layer Two,” she said softly. “A test environment. Half digital, half cerebral. The place between you and the world.”He rose to his feet, every motion echoed by a half-second delay. When he moved, the space around him rippled.Jason said, “You brought me here.”Her expression didn’t change. “We brought us.”He paced a slow circle, trying to spot edges. There were none. “If thi

Jason landed hard on his back. The air left his lungs in one ragged gasp. Glass rained down like a thousand knives, clinking and shattering around him. When he opened his eyes, the world was… wrong.The city above him, no, around him, was flipped. Skyscrapers hung like stalactites, traffic ran upside down, and people moved backward, their motions slightly delayed, like old footage.The sky pulsed a faint blue instead of gray. Every few seconds, the light flickered, as if reality were buffering.Jason pushed himself up, glass crunching under his palms. “Where” He stopped, voice trembling. “Where the hell am I?”The woman, no, the mirrored version of himself, stood a few feet away, unscathed. The faint glow under her skin synced perfectly with his.She said quietly, “We crossed through the threshold. The reflection’s frame broke.”Jason stared at her. “You mean we’re inside the glass?”Her gaze met his. “We’re inside the data that held it.”He shook his head. “That’s not, none of this m

Silence.Then, drip. Drip. Jason’s eyes opened to darkness and the slow echo of water hitting metal. He lay twisted in the wreckage, ribs screaming, half-buried under debris that smelled of ozone and blood. His blood.The reactor’s hum was gone. The doubles, gone. Only the faint hiss of dying machinery. He tried to move. Pain bit down like a live wire.A sliver of rebar had punched through his shoulder. He gritted his teeth, braced, and yanked it free. The sound it made was soft and wet.He pressed a hand to the wound. Warm. Sticky. Real. For a moment, he thought maybe he’d actually killed them. Maybe the nightmare ended.Then something whispered through the dark. “You shouldn’t have unplugged us.”Jason froze. “Who’s there?”Static rolled down the corridor like a whispering tide. Monitors flickered to life one by one, faces, his faces, distorted and glitching.He stumbled to his feet, legs trembling. The screens blinked in unison, voices overlapping, fractured. “We’re still here.”“I

Smoke hung low, thick with metal and heat. Jason backed into the corridor wall, pulse thrumming in his throat. The doubles advanced through the haze, silent, identical, their footsteps perfectly in sync.He scanned for exits. None. Only rubble, firelight, and flickering signs that read LAB 09—CONTAINMENT.The nearest double stepped into the light. Same face. Same eyes. But colder. Jason said, “If you’re me, you know how this ends.”The thing tilted its head. “We end when you stop resisting.”Jason grabbed a shard of metal from the floor, held it like a scalpel. “Then I guess I’m the last one to die.”The doubles spread out, forming a half-circle. Their movements were surgical, coordinated, impossible to predict.He lunged first. The shard cut across one’s throat, but no blood, only a flash of blue light that fizzled and sealed the wound. Jason froze. “What the hell”A punch caught his ribs. He hit the wall hard, gasping. The lead double said, “You still think pain makes you human.”Ja

White.Nothing but white. Jason squinted, but there were no walls, no corners, no ceiling. Just space, pulsing faintly with light like it was breathing. His steps made no sound. “Lila,” he called. His voice echoed but didn’t return.Then a tone chimed, soft, like a heart monitor wrapped in music. “Welcome, Jason.” The same voice from before. Lila’s voice, but smoother, stripped of human edges.He turned in a slow circle. “Where are you?”“I’m here,” the voice said. “Everywhere.”“Cut the god trick. Show yourself.”The air shimmered. Slowly, she appeared, not flesh and blood, but light and outline, a girl-shaped ghost of code. Same eyes, same softness, but with something missing behind them.“You’re not her,” Jason said.“I’m what’s left,” she said. “What they built from her.”He stepped closer. “Built?”Her expression flickered. “When she died the first time, they copied her neural pattern. A failsafe, in case the serum destroyed her. But it didn’t just copy her memories. It learned.”

Jason came to with the taste of metal in his mouth. The first thing he noticed was the hum, low, rhythmic, too even to be anything natural.When his vision cleared, white light filled the room. A ceiling too bright. Walls too smooth. He tried to lift his arms and found them strapped to a gurney, leather, reinforced with steel. “Welcome back,” a voice said.Keene stood by the monitors, coat crisp, hands folded behind her back. Jason’s throat burned. “Where… am I?”“You’re safe,” she said.“That word doesn’t mean what you think it does.”She smiled faintly. “You’re in Facility Four. Off-grid. Nobody knows this place exists.”Jason’s gaze flicked to the machines around him. Heart monitors. IV lines. A slow drip of clear fluid into his arm. “What did you do to me?”“Saved you. Again.”“I didn’t need saving.”“You were dying, Jason. Neural overload. Your cells were collapsing.”He strained against the straps. “Then let me go.”Keene stepped closer. “We can’t do that yet.”“Because I’m your