Novels by Josephine Puri

Pain came in waves.Jake drifted in and out of consciousness, the cold floor biting into his skin like judgment. The system worked without mercy, sealing wounds just enough to keep him alive, but not enough to dull the agony.⟦System: Stabilization – 23%⟧⟦Warning: Infection Risk Rising⟧“Yeah, I know it!” Jake rasped, teeth clenched.The safe room was barely worthy of the name. A forgotten maintenance chamber buried beneath an abandoned transit line. No cameras. No signals. Just concrete, dust, and the distant hum of the city above—alive, ignorant, hostile.He forced himself upright.The data chip glowed faintly in his palm, warm like a living thing. Proof. Leverage. A blade aimed straight at Richard’s throat.Jake didn’t smile.He knew better now.Victory never came clean.Three hours later.The city’s upper sectors shifted into heightened alert. Checkpoints doubled. Drones flew lower, their red optics slicing through the night like searching eyes.Richard Gregorry stood in the cent

It didn’t rain that night.The air was too dry instead, carrying the smell of metal dust and ozone—a sign that defensive systems were active across several sectors of the city. Jake limped through a narrow underground corridor, each step sending sharp pain through ribs that had yet to fully heal.⟦System: Recovery – 41%⟧⟦Alert: Excessive Activity⟧“I know,” he muttered. “Enough.”He stopped in front of an unmarked steel door. Three soft knocks. Two beats. One final tap. An old pattern, known only to those whose lives depended on secrets.The door opened halfway.Arkon waited inside.The room was vast, cold, lit by harsh white lights that left no shadows to hide in. Six armed men formed a half-circle. No extra chairs. No drinks. This was not a meeting—it was a trial.“You’re back,” said Arkon.“With a broken body and unreasonable courage,” Jake replied.He stepped in. The door closed heavily behind him.“I come with progress,” Jake continued, “and a deadline.”Arkon raised an eyebrow.

Night was never truly silent for Jake.He just chose which sounds were worth hearing.In a narrow, dimly lit room, the walls were covered with layers of data never visible on official networks: personal relationship graphs, hidden debt logs, deliberately fragmented transactions designed to slip through audits. All of it formed a single map. Not Richard’s map of power, but its fractures.⟦System: Intelligence Consolidation – Active⟧⟦Status: 73% Complete⟧Jake sat still, his back pressed against the cold metal chair. His face remained difficult to remember, not because it was disguised, but because he had long learned to erase himself.Richard had an inner circle that looked tidy.But his enemies were scattered, small, divided, and hating each other.And that was Jake’s advantage.“Small groups are hungrier,” he murmured. “And the hungry listen.”The first name appeared.Not a high ranking official. Not a general. Just a former regional logistics chief, whose career had collapsed witho

Clara sat on a white wooden bench, her simple dress swaying gently in the breeze. In front of her, Franz toddled across the grass, chasing soap bubbles, his laughter breaking freely into the air. He was barely two years old—too young to understand the world, too innocent to know that every step he took was calculated by a high, level security system.“Careful, Franz,” Clara laughed softly, rising to catch her son as he nearly tripped.There was no tension on her face. No trace of threat. Just a mother and her child beneath the morning sun.And that was precisely why the scene felt wrong.From the building across the courtyard, on a floor officially listed as abandoned, the unregistered figure stood behind darkened glass. He used no binoculars. No enhanced optics. He simply watched—with a patience that felt unnatural.⟦System: Protected Subjects – Maximum Level⟧⟦Advisory: Passive Observation Recommended⟧His gaze followed Franz calmly. Small steps. Erratic patterns. Laughter that did

“Sir,” the chief analyst’s voice cut through the silence. “We’ve rechecked the official’s resignation. No legal pressure. No suspicious transactions. No threats.”“Nothing visible,” Richard replied without turning. “That’s exactly the problem.”On the holo display, authorization pathways shifted slowly, one new route opened, one old protocol quietly lost redundancy. Not fatal. But enough to alter decision flow in a crisis.Richard knew this well. Changes this subtle were made by only two kinds of people—amateurs who didn’t understand the consequences, or professionals who knew exactly what they were touching.And this was no amateur.At 02:17 a.m., silent alarms activated at three separate points. No sirens. No public notifications. Only a faint vibration on the wrists of a select few.Richard was already awake before the first signal came in.“Report,” he said.“Legacy archive access disturbance. Not a breach. More like… an inspection.”“Inspection by whom?”“No identity trace. Camer

Richard Gregorry had started dreaming again.Not nightmares. Not memories. Just fragments without faces...empty rooms, doors that never quite closed, and footsteps that stopped just before they could be heard.He woke before dawn, sitting upright, breathing steady. His internal clock had never failed him.“Another bad dream?” Clara asked, half awake, her voice worn with fatigue.“It’s nothing,” Richard said gently. He smiled, kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep.”Richard didn’t believe in omens.But he believed in statistics.And the statistics pointed to one thing: disturbances were rising—slowly.Not enough to qualify as a threat.Too precise to be coincidence.The Security Tower entered its morning rush as Richard walked through the glass corridors. People straightened faster than usual. Not out of fear out of conditioned habit.“Division meeting in thirty minutes,” he said flatly. “I want all reports simplified. No interpretations.”“Including the network anomalies?” the chief