All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 431
- Chapter 440
621 chapters
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The sun was barely a sliver on the horizon, painting the snow-dusted mountain range in tones of muted orange and silver. The wind was still, but within the valley, something stirred—an unease that vibrated beneath the stone and frost. It was the kind of quiet that didn’t promise peace—but warned of a storm yet to arrive.Samuel stood alone near the edge of the cliff, cloaked in a gray hood, his hands clasped behind his back. Beneath his boots, the ice had cracked into fine, spiderweb-like lines overnight. It reflected more than just the dawn. It reflected fragility.Behind him, Sarah’s voice broke the silence.“You didn’t sleep again.”He turned his head, meeting her eyes. She stood there in a long coat, hair braided, cheeks flushed from the cold. But her presence was different now. Stable. Anchored. There was a spark in her again—thanks to the mind tether they had survived together.“I couldn’t,” Samuel admitted. “I keep thinking about the next move. Spiral’s been too quiet.”“They’r
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Samuel’s energy flared like a supernova, surrounding him and Sarah with a cocoon of light and shadow. Across the Obsidian Bloom, the Gatekeeper Host emerged from the veil, tall and thin, with eyes like liquid void and tendrils of psychic energy coiling from his fingertips.He was wearing the skin of a man, but the presence within was ancient—wrong, as though something from beyond this dimension had been poured into a fragile, unwilling vessel.“Welcome, Samuel,” he said, voice a whisper and a roar all at once. “It’s been so long since I’ve looked upon my successor.”Samuel stepped forward slowly. “I’m not your successor.”“No? And yet you opened the Vault. You danced with the light of the Gate. You heard its whisper, and you didn’t run.”“I survived it,” Samuel growled. “That’s not the same.”Sarah stood at his side, her body trembling but her stance firm. “You used me,” she hissed. “You branded my soul when I was still a child.”The Gatekeeper Host smiled coldly. “We preserved you. H
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Snow fell in thick, wet clumps across the wreckage of Spiral’s heart. The once-glowing towers of obsidian and crystal now jutted from the mountain like broken fangs, steam hissing from their fractured cores. The world was silent—but not in peace. It was the kind of silence that came after a scream too loud to echo.Samuel stood at the edge of the cliff, arms crossed, cloak whipping in the wind. His skin still shimmered faintly, the residual glow of power not yet burned out. His thoughts, however, were elsewhere—buried beneath the weight of what had just happened, and what was still to come.Behind him, the dropship settled onto the snowpack. Joey emerged first, his left arm in a sling and blood dried across his jaw."You going to say goodbye to the crater or what?" he called out.Samuel didn’t look back. “It’s not the crater I’m staring at.”“What then?”“The sky.”Joey squinted. “Looks normal to me.”“It isn’t,” Samuel said. “Feel the air. Hear the stillness. That wasn’t just a victo
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At 3:07 a.m., a piercing alarm shrieked through Site Theta-7, jerking the entire Vanguard base into motion. Red emergency lights flashed down the corridor. Samuel was already awake when the alert came—he hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t slept in three days.He burst into the command room, where Aria was already typing furiously on the console, her face pale in the red light.“What is it?” Samuel demanded.Aria didn’t look up. “A signal just pinged from an old IMA beacon. Location: the heart of the Altai Mountains. Russia.”“Didn’t we disable all the old IMA sites?”“Yes,” she said grimly. “Which is why this one shouldn’t be active. And it’s broadcasting in Spiral’s frequency band.”Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “Repeat that.”“The Spiral isn’t dead,” she said, standing slowly. “You know that. We all saw the fractures. But this? This is a direct challenge.”Joey appeared at the doorway, holding a half-eaten protein bar. “You guys always start the end of the world without me?”“We may be
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The chill of the Altai Mountains clung to them like a second skin as the team hiked back toward the extraction zone. The remains of Spiral’s prototype lab lay buried behind them, swallowed by a controlled avalanche triggered by Aria’s timed charges. But something about the mission didn’t sit right.Sarah was the first to speak. “That woman… The Architect. She didn’t bleed. Did you notice that?”Samuel nodded. “She wasn’t human. Or… not anymore.”“She wasn’t a projection either,” Aria said, her breath clouding the cold air. “She had mass. Heat signature. But no soul field.”“No resonance at all?” Joey asked from behind, adjusting his gear. “That’s not even AI level. That’s something else entirely.”Sarah glanced sideways at Samuel. “What if she’s older than Spiral?”Samuel didn’t answer. His eyes were on the horizon—on the black ridge of ice ahead. Their extraction was waiting at the other side. But so was something else. He could feel it.They reached the ridge just before dusk. The s
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The mountain was quiet, unnaturally so.Not a whisper of wind. Not a bird in the sky. The silence of the world after a scream.They had emerged from the memory vault beneath the ice shaken, disoriented, and irrevocably changed. Sarah walked ahead, barefoot in the snow, her breath curling in the freezing air—yet she did not shiver. Her eyes still glowed faintly, twin beacons in the gathering dusk. Something had awakened within her, and it frightened everyone except her.Joey kept glancing back at her. “I’m just gonna say it. She’s giving me major creepy oracle energy right now.”“Shut up, Joey,” Samuel muttered, walking at her side. “She’s still Sarah.”“No,” Aria said quietly, trudging behind them. “She’s becoming someone else. The seal he passed to her—whatever Subject Zero was—it marked her. She’s in sync with the Vault now. With it.”Samuel stopped and turned. “With what?”“The Spiral,” Sarah said before Aria could answer. Her voice was calm, but it had an echo now, as if layered o
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Golden sunlight pierced the fractured sky, illuminating the shattered cliffside where Vanguard’s temporary base stood. Sarah sat by the edge of the mountain, her eyes closed, breathing in silence. A faint blue aura danced around her skin, flickering like dying starlight.Behind her, Samuel stood unmoving, arms crossed over his chest, the wind catching the edges of his coat. He had been up all night, standing guard not just for safety, but for clarity.The Spiral wanted in. And Sarah was the door.He didn’t know what that made him anymore—protector, key, or threat.Aria approached with careful steps, her boots crunching over thin ice. “She hasn’t spoken since last night, has she?”Samuel shook his head. “She’s talking. Just not with us.”Aria knelt beside Sarah and scanned her vitals. “Pulse is normal. Brain activity’s elevated. Theta and gamma spikes. She’s receiving something, or... resisting it.”Joey stood near the fire, sipping on something that smelled like burnt herbs and desper
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The last rays of sunlight filtered through the jagged mountain ridges, casting long shadows over the Vanguard camp. Samuel stood in silence, eyes locked on the still-glowing remnants of Arthur’s broadcast. The words echoed in his mind:"They’re not just trying to enter the Gate anymore. They’re trying to become it."“What the hell does that mean?” Joey asked, pacing furiously near the fire. “How do you become a gate? Is this metaphorical? Are we talking body horror? Mass possession? Cosmic assimilation?”“Calm down,” Aria said, her voice tense. “Omega Prism. That name’s not new. It was shelved years ago—on paper, anyway.”“Then un-shelve it,” Samuel said. “Now.”Aria pulled up a projection from her wrist device, filtering through encrypted files like flipping through pages of a cursed book.“Omega Prism was originally a contingency project,” she began. “Designed in case the original Gate couldn’t be opened through genetic keys alone. The theory was… if they couldn’t unlock the vault w
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Night had settled like a weight across the war-torn skyline of Sector 9, its silence oppressive after the chaotic destruction of the Omega Prism. Though the crystalline structure had been shattered and its energy resonance silenced, unease lingered in the air like gunpowder after a battlefield.Samuel stood atop the fractured concrete ledge overlooking the ruin. His body ached—cells still buzzing from the force he’d absorbed—but his mind was far from rest.Something was wrong.Not just the quiet. Not just the absence of Spiral drones or Vanguard casualties.But a presence.Watching.Breathing."Joey," Samuel said without turning. "Is Echo Protocol still operational?"Joey, adjusting a rebandaged arm, limped closer. "Yeah. Barely. Aria’s recalibrating the primary node. Why?"Samuel’s voice dropped. "Activate it. Full range. I want every psychic pulse, distortion field, and latent signature in the last six hours flagged."Joey froze. “Samuel… we just survived an Omega Prism core event.
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The dawn was a smudge of red on the snow-dusted horizon as the Vanguard mobilized.The Himalayas loomed ahead like sleeping giants—frozen, sacred, and ancient beyond measure. But beneath the surface of this natural fortress, something far more dangerous than cold or height awaited: the hidden path to the Mirror World.Samuel stood at the front of the convoy, his black coat fluttering in the frigid wind, his breath steaming in the pale morning light.Behind him, a lean group of Vanguard operatives checked their gear—relic-based climbing anchors, encrypted teleportation nodes, and psychic dampeners. All of them bore scars from recent battles. All of them knew they were marching toward a threshold that might erase them from existence.“Are you sure the coordinates are accurate?” Samuel asked, eyes locked on the holo-map projected from Joey’s bracer.Joey zoomed in on a ravine marked with layered red sigils. “This is as close as I could get, cross-referencing what we extracted from the Om