Novels by Afsheen

"You think I would kneel just because you threaten my best friend’s life?” Axel muttered sharply beneath his helmet. His voice was swallowed by the roar of the motorcycle engine he was forcing past its safe limits on the empty streets of Vancouver. At the corner of his vision, the system interface flickered wildly, spewing unstable strings of code. The junk data injection he had executed at the apartment earlier had worked. The system now appeared overwhelmed, like an old computer forced to process thousands of commands at once.[SYSTEM ERROR: EMOTIONAL DATA ANOMALY][CALCULATION PROCESS DELAYED]A faint smirk curved Axel’s lips. The crushing pressure that had gripped his chest slowly began to ease. The overload had not destroyed the system, but it had bought him time. He leaned his bike at an extreme angle as he tore around the curve toward the central hospital district.“You can read statistics, but you cannot write destiny,” Axel hissed. A new warning appeared, the text unstable, a

Morning on the outskirts of Vancouver greeted Axel with a dull ache in his joints. He woke on the thin mattress of the rented apartment without looking toward the mirror. The laptop on the table was still on, lines of code glowing from the analysis he had done the night before. Axel rose quickly and pulled on a thick jacket to conceal his frail body. He left the laptop and his phone locked inside the room. Today, he would do one thing forbidden by his new logic. He would move without a digital plan.Axel’s steps carried him to a small coffee shop on the corner of a run down street. In front of the door, a middle aged man was kneeling beside an old car that had broken down. Smoke rose from the open hood. The man wiped his oil smeared face with an expression of despair. Axel stopped right beside him without making a sound.“Need help?” Axel asked shortly.The man looked up and studied Axel’s aged face with hesitation. “The engine’s completely dead. I have to deliver this catering order

The air on the fourth floor of the parking structure suddenly froze, as if time itself had been violently pulled by an invisible gravity. A transparent shockwave erupted from Axel’s body at the exact moment the tip of Goran’s black stone knife touched the skin of his neck. The gaunt man was flung backward, his body slamming into a concrete pillar hard enough to send cracks spidering across its surface. His strange knife flew free, clattering across the damp cement floor before disappearing into the darkness.Axel did not fall. He stood rigid, but inside his head, the sound of bones cracking echoed in rapid succession, like dry branches snapping one after another. His joints were forcibly hardened. He could feel the hydration beneath his skin evaporating, leaving behind wrinkled, lifeless tissue. The calcium in his bones shrank dramatically. He stared at his hands as the skin slackened, its pigment fading into a pale gray within seconds.[DEFENSE MODE ACTIVE][COST: 5 YEARS OF REMAININ

Morning at Vancouver General Hospital felt like a broken simulation. Axel woke with nausea churning his stomach. He tried to sit up, but his joints felt stiff, as if the hinges of his bones had rusted solid. He glanced at the mirror on the wall. His white hair looked even more real under the cold neon lights, emphasizing the lines of aging now permanently etched into his face.He reached for his phone on the bedside table. The GPS coordinates to an old downtown parking structure were still blinking. The message felt like a knife pressed against his throat.“Axel? Where are you going?”Arlo’s voice broke the silence. His friend entered carrying coffee, his eyes red from lack of sleep. Arlo froze when he saw Axel forcibly pulling the IV line from his arm.“I have to go, Arlo. Something urgent came up.” Axel said shortly. His voice was heavy, far deeper than it used to be.“Urgent? Look at yourself! You just cheated death!” Arlo slammed the shopping bag onto the table. “Elara refuses to

The hospital lights felt like they were burning Axel’s retinas as he slowly opened his eyes. The sharp stench of antiseptic and the soft hum of the ventilator beside his bed were the first things to greet him. His head felt heavy as lead. Every time he tried to move his fingers, an unfamiliar stiffness and joint pain struck him, pain that had no place in the body of a man in his early thirties.In the corner of the room, a small muted television displayed the local news, a bold headline stretched across the screen:“"PIER WAREHOUSE TRAGEDY: HUMAN TRAFFICKING SYNDICATE EXPOSED.”The image shifted, showing Gerry with his face mangled, and the Boss tightly handcuffed by the Vancouver police. The reporter looked animated, then the footage cut to blurry amateur video capturing the moment the hostages were freed.“Xel? You’re awake?”The voice was hoarse, cracked by tears. Axel turned his head slowly. His mother, Lena, sat beside the bed, gripping his hand tightly. Behind her stood Elara an

[Temporary Health: Active. Duration: 23:59:59.][Remaining Lifespan: Classified.]Axel no longer cared. He pushed his motorcycle through the freezing Vancouver night, heading toward the isolated outskirts of the harbor. Behind him, two black SUVs pursued at high speed, an elite escort unit he had hired at the cost of one year of his life. They were not just men in suits, they were killing machines sent by an entity that knew no mercy.The old warehouse on the northern pier loomed ahead. Axel stopped, the engine growling low before cutting out. He dismounted, his body feeling unnaturally light, an effect of the Temporary Health deceiving his nervous system.Inside the warehouse, the stench of diesel and rust greeted him. Gerry stood in the center of the room, casually flipping a folding knife with a mocking grin. In a leather chair behind him sat the Boss, the loan shark who controlled the harbor’s black routes. But Axel’s eyes locked onto only one thing, his mother, bound to a wooden