The world no longer slept.Even in the hours before dawn, the sky above Rose City pulsed with unnatural light — half crimson, half pale blue. Where once the stars glittered, now two opposing networks of orbiting satellites burned like rival constellations.The Divide was complete. But the silence it left behind was deafening.Deep beneath the ruins, Jayden Knox moved through a narrow corridor lit only by the soft beam of Nova’s visor. The walls were lined with shattered cables and the remains of what once had been a transport tunnel — back when Blackwood Industries used the subways as private data arteries.Now, they were tombs.“According to the old maps,” Nova muttered, “the uplink vault should be just ahead.”Jayden’s boots crunched over shattered glass and carbon casing. The air was heavy with dust and ionized residue. He could still hear the faint echo of the last transmission before the networks split — Damien’s voice, distorted and full of pain.“If you reach Elsie… tell her I

The storm began before dawn.It wasn’t thunder that woke the city, but the scream of metal — the groan of skyscrapers straining against invisible pressure. The clouds above New Eden churned in crimson spirals, the veins of lightning not white, but red — alive with electric hunger.Nova stood at the edge of the transport ramp, wind tearing at her coat as she watched the skyline twist in the distance. “He’s not waiting anymore,” she muttered. “He’s drawing power from the atmosphere itself.”Jayden checked the charge on his weapon, the hum of the pulse rifle barely audible over the gale. “Then we don’t wait either.”The aircraft’s engines roared behind them, shuddering against the interference. Trinity Tower loomed ahead — a spear of black glass rising through the storm. Every few seconds, arcs of lightning danced across its surface, drawn to the energy core pulsing at its peak.“That’s our target,” Jayden said, voice steady. “The Echo Protocol terminal is in the sub-core chamber, two le

The command center beneath Rose City was a skeleton of what it once was — half of the servers burned out, the holographic map over the main table flickering weakly, and the smell of ozone thick in the air. Yet amid the ruin, the Resistance still breathed.Nova Benoit paced the room, her left arm wrapped in bandages, her visor cracked but still functional. Around her, technicians scrambled between half-dead consoles, trying to piece together fragments of data from what was left of the city’s network.“Power reroute on Node Three?” she barked.“Barely holding,” a young operator replied. “The grid’s rebooting in waves. We’ve restored maybe six percent communication, but…”“But the satellites are still active,” Nova finished grimly.The operator nodded. “And they’re not broadcasting Ghost code anymore — they’re receiving something.”Nova froze, staring up at the static-filled monitor showing the upper atmosphere. Red pulses beat rhythmically across the globe, each one syncing with the ne

The descent began at dawn.The sky above the city was bruised and red, clouds hanging like torn metal over the skyline. The storm that followed the Trinity explosion hadn’t ended — it had simply gone quiet, as though waiting.Jayden Knox stood at the edge of the breach that used to be the Trinity Complex. A vertical crater yawned before him, deep enough to swallow buildings whole. The wind coming from below wasn’t just air — it hummed, faintly electric, alive.Nova adjusted the harness on her shoulder. “No signal, no GPS, no comms. Once we’re in, we’re blind.”Jayden nodded once. “Then we move by instinct.”She gave a half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Yours or mine?”“Whichever gets us out alive.”They descended.The rope line hissed softly against metal, boots clanking against the jagged remnants of steel beams as they went deeper. The deeper they got, the more the air thickened — filled with static, like being inside the lungs of a machine.Somewhere far below, the faint rhyth

The extraction drone came an hour late.By then, the ruins of Rose City had gone silent again—too silent. The distant hum that had haunted the air since the Ascension Protocol flickered out like dying radio static. But Jayden Knox knew better. The quiet wasn’t peace. It was the pause before the next strike.The drone descended through a haze of ash, its thrusters cutting through the smoke with faint blue light. Nova waved the flare to guide it in. When the hatch opened, the pilot inside didn’t say a word—just looked at them through mirrored goggles and gestured for them to board.Jayden limped up the ramp, Nova supporting his weight. The doors sealed, and for the first time in hours, the wind was gone. Only the hum of the engines filled the small cabin.Nova glanced back through the viewport. The city was nothing more than shadow and ruin. “Hard to believe this was the capital of the free world,” she said quietly.Jayden didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the display mounted above