Novels by Happiness Wagbara

Chapter 10: The Alliance and the Bug in the Wall By midday, the safe house was crowded. Cole had sent Jules to reach out to three of Morrow’s top lieutenants—Kael, Rian, and Jax—the men Veyra had named as the most likely to turn, the ones who’d found out Morrow planned to sacrifice all his lower-level operatives to power his final merge with the core. They arrived one by one, hard-faced men with guns and scars, all of them carrying ledgers and hard drives of their own, all of them angry enough to burn Morrow’s empire to the ground. Cole stood by the fireplace, the core map spread out on the wooden table in front of him, listening as the men laid out their plan. Kael, the oldest, a man with a white streak in his black hair and a cold, calculating gaze, was the first to speak. “Morrow’s got a server farm ten miles west of the city, in an old missile silo,” he said, tapping a spot on the map. “Everything’s there: all his financial records, all his communications with the stewards, the

Chapter 9: The Scout and the Long-Lost Aunt The black SUV rammed the back of the van, sending them swerving across the road, Cole slamming into the door. Jules cursed, yanking the wheel hard, fishtailing around a sharp bend in the mountain road, trees whipping past the windows. The SUV stayed right on their tail, ramming them again, harder this time, the back window shattering, glass raining down on the duffel bag of ledgers. “Hold on!” Jules yelled, slamming on the brakes at the last second, turning the van sideways across the road. The SUV tried to swerve around them, but it was too late. It slammed into the van’s side, spinning both vehicles into the ditch, metal screaming, airbags exploding. Cole’s head hit the dashboard, stars exploding in his vision. When he came to, Jules was already kicking the van’s door open, pistol raised, firing at the SUV. The SUV’s doors flew open, and a woman stepped out, tall and lean, her silver hair pulled back in a tight braid, a scar slicing thr

Chapter 8: Silas’s Ledger and the Black Feather First light painted the pine trees pink when Cole and Jules pulled up outside Silas Voss’s waterfront warehouse, the van hidden behind a stack of rusted shipping containers. Silas was Morrow’s top money launderer, the man who’d turned the core’s fake debts into millions in clean cash, funneling it through shell companies and offshore accounts for twelve years. He was also, according to the fragments Cole had siphoned from Rook, the man who’d doctored the hospital’s inflated bill for his mother’s surgery, who’d flagged the Trenton family file as high risk to force Cole into the system. “Silas has six armed men inside, plus two on the roof,” Jules said, loading a fresh magazine into her pistol, her voice flat, businesslike. She’d barely spoken to him on the drive over, her eyes darting to his left arm every few minutes, like she expected the claws to pop out again. “We go in quiet, take him down fast, get everything he’s got on Morrow’s

Chapter 7: The Safe House’s GhostsThe van rumbled down a rutted dirt road half an hour outside the city, its headlights cutting through pine trees so thick they swallowed the moonlight. Cole sat in the back, his mother’s head resting in his lap, her skin still cold to the touch. The wooden core box sat wedged between his boots, humming so softly only he could feel it, a low thrum that matched the burn of the crooked bird tattoo snaking up his bicep.[Corruption level: 44%. Split binding instability rising. Core sync with secondary host Cade Morrow: 12% and climbing]The text glowed at the edge of his vision, sharp as a shard of glass. He’d tried to ignore it for the whole drive, tried to focus on the steady rise and fall of his mother’s chest, but Morrow’s words kept looping in his head. She knew. She let you walk into that alley.“Almost there,” Jules said from the driver’s seat, glancing at him in the rearview. Her voice was softer than usual, stripped of its usual edge. The fight

Chapter 6: The Split BindingThe blue light from the box seared Cole’s eyes, the 60-second countdown ticking in his head like a metronome of death. Morrow’s laugh echoed over the estate grounds, wild and triumphant, as the light coiled up his arms, wrapping around his chest like glowing chains. Cole knelt on the cool grass, the crooked bird tattoo on his forearm burning so hot it felt like someone was pressing a hot iron to his skin, his vision blurring at the edges from the pain. His mother lay still beside him, her breath shallow, the faint beep of a portable heart monitor someone had wheeled out with her cutting through the chaos.[Merge progress: 12%. Stolen genetic sample incompatibility detected. Merge efficiency at 41%][Corruption level: 37%. Warning: Proximity to forced merge accelerating marker spread]The warning line cut through the fog of pain in Cole’s head. Morrow’s plan wasn’t perfect. He’d used a stolen sample, probably old blood or hair from his father’s belongings,

Chapter 5: The Exchange Trap“Hello, Cole. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”Morrow’s voice was almost polite, like he was greeting a guest at a dinner party instead of cornering a kid in a dusty storage unit with a dozen armed men at his back. He held the phone higher, the screen glowing bright enough for Cole to see his mother’s face, pale and still, tubes snaking down her throat. The heart monitor line beeped steady on the feed, a thin, fragile sound that felt like it was echoing directly in Cole’s chest.Cole kept his hand closed around the wooden box in his jacket pocket, the worn wood warm against his palm. The faint lines of the crooked bird tattoo snaked further up his forearm, a cold, constant reminder of the corruption spreading under his skin. Jules shifted slightly in front of Hale and Lila, her hand resting on the pistol at her hip, her eyes never leaving Morrow.“Let her go first,” Cole said, keeping his voice steady even as his pulse hammered. “Then you