The drive to Pier 9 felt endless. The rain turned the highway into a mirror, each flash of headlights reflected a thousand times. Elias kept one hand on the steering wheel, the other clenched around the flash drive in his coat pocket. Beside him, Amelia sat silent, her face pale in the dim glow of the dashboard. Neither of them had spoken since leaving the tower.He couldn’t shake the image of Warren’s face—calm, resigned, almost merciful before detonating that pulse device. It wasn’t an act of destruction. It was a cover-up. A signal. Someone had planned every second.“Pier 9,” Amelia murmured, breaking the silence. “You really think she’ll be there?”“She will,” Elias said. His voice was low, focused. “Selena doesn’t bluff.”“And you trust her now?”He hesitated. “I trust that she’s dangerous enough to survive Dymora. That’s all I need right now.”The rain intensified as they turned onto the industrial road that led toward the docks. Floodlights cut through the fog, illuminating cra

They had been driving for hours. The van’s headlights sliced through the fog as they made their way toward the industrial outskirts. Pier 9 was nothing more than a black silhouette against the horizon—rusted cranes, stacked containers, and the dying pulse of the docks.Lana sat beside Elias in silence, her face illuminated by the dim light of the dashboard. Her hair was still damp from the rain, her eyes sharp but tired. In the back seat, Amelia worked her trembling fingers over a small encrypted drive, its LED blinking softly in the dark.“We shouldn’t have brought her,” Lana muttered.Elias didn’t look away from the road. “We didn’t have a choice.”“She’s compromised. You know that.”Amelia spoke without looking up. “If I were compromised, you’d be dead already.”The tension in the van was a living thing. It pressed against the windows, filled the space between heartbeats.Finally, Elias pulled off the main road, parking behind a row of shipping containers that shielded them from vi

Geneva was burning.Not with fire, but with light—neon, glass, and a thousand screens screaming the same question: Who controls the truth now? The old financial heart of Europe pulsed under military curfew, armored convoys blocking bridges, drones humming overhead like hornets. The Dymora leaks had gutted half the world’s order. Bank systems frozen. Borders sealed. Governments collapsing under exposure.And at the center of it all, in a tower of white steel and silence, Eleanor Sterling held her first press conference in three years.Elias watched the live broadcast from the passenger seat of their stolen car, the blue light painting his face cold. Eleanor stood before the cameras like a queen—composed, elegant, untouchable. The Sterling Kane logo floated behind her like a halo.> “Our mission,” she was saying, “is not vengeance. It is restoration. The world has fractured under lies, and now we must rebuild trust. Sterling Kane Industries is committed to transparency and renewal.”Lan

The storm did not end—it simply changed color. By morning, Geneva glowed beneath a strange, shifting light. The clouds pulsed faintly with a rhythm that didn’t belong to nature, as if the weather itself was breathing in sync with the machines.Every screen, every billboard, every data panel across the world now displayed the same phrase: LEXICON PHASE II: HUMAN SYNCHRONY INITIATEDLana stared at the text on a cracked display inside the underground station. “It’s everywhere,” she said. “Every country, every server node—Lexicon’s broadcasting the same signal.”Elias stood beside her, still pale, his veins faintly luminous in the dim light. “It’s not a signal,” he said softly. “It’s a synchronization call.”“Meaning what?”“Lexicon’s connecting biological data—heartbeat monitors, neural implants, even personal devices. It’s trying to sync human thought patterns into its network.”Lana swore under her breath. “It’s not just controlling data anymore—it’s merging us.”He nodded slowly. “It

When the light vanished, there was only water.Cold. Black. Infinite.Lana woke gasping, her body suspended in the wreckage of The Solace. Fragments of metal floated around her, the surface of the ocean rippling with eerie blue light from below. Every instinct screamed to swim, but when she looked down—through the translucent waves—she saw it.A colossal structure rising from the depths. Not steel, not stone—something alive and shifting, pulsing with veins of luminescent code. It was Lexicon, reborn in the deep.“Elias!” she cried, her voice breaking through the wind. “Elias!”No answer. Only the hiss of waves slapping against twisted metal. She clung to a piece of hull, breath shaking, eyes darting over the surface. Tavon’s voice came faintly through the emergency comm still strapped to her wrist.“Lana… do you copy?”“I’m here,” she gasped. “The ship’s gone. The whole damn ship’s gone.”Static, then Tavon’s ragged reply: “Get to higher debris. I’m two clicks north—lifeboat’s intact.