Chapter 142Adrian couldn't hold it in anymore. He threw his head back and laughed. It was a booming, genuine roar of laughter that shook the room."Oh, Lena," Adrian wiped a tear from his eye. "You are truly a magnificent lunatic.""Release me!" she demanded. "Kill me like a man, you brute!"Adrian stopped laughing and a wicked, incredibly arrogant smile spread across his face."Kill you?" Adrian tsked, shaking his head. "No. Death is too easy. Death is messy. It leaves blood on the floor. And we both know how much you hate stains."Adrian walked over to her and placed a hand on her forehead."System," Adrian commanded. "Access the cybernetic neuro-processors in the target's cortex."[ ACCESSING... ][ FIREWALL BREACHED. ADMIN OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. ]"What are you doing to me?!" Lena panicked, her eyes darting wildly."I'm instituting a new protocol," Adrian smiled viciously. "I call it the Cinderella Protocol."[ WRITING NEW DIRECTIVES TO HOSTILE CYBERNETICS... ]"I am locking you out

Chapter 144Joe grabbed his pulse rifle. "Adrian, you can't stop a meteor! We have to evacuate!""You can't evacuate five million people in four minutes, Joe," Adrian said softly. He didn't run. He didn't panic. He simply closed his eyes and inhaled. He felt the foundation of the city. He felt the three geothermal nodes he had bonded with. He felt the infinite, humming reservoir of the Earth's raw kinetic energy beneath his feet. "Lena," Adrian said, his eyes snapping open. They weren't just glowing, they were incandescent, burning with the power of a City God. "I want a fresh cup of coffee waiting for me when I get back."Before the housekeeper could reply, Adrian vanished. He didn't break the sound barrier; he shattered it. The sonic boom shattered the remaining windows in the East Wing as he launched himself vertically into the stormy night sky. [ SYSTEM SKILL: UNRESTRICTED FLIGHT. ][ POWER SOURCE: FOUNDATION NODES ACTIVE. ]Adrian tore through the atmosphere, ascending faste

Chapter 146 The room was noisy when he entered. Joe was pacing a hole into the concrete floor, his pulse rifle slung over his shoulder, while Cora Vance was typing so fast he could barely see her fingers over the keyboards. "Tell me you saw the broadcast," Joe nearly shouted as Adrian walked in. "Tell me you just told the World Council to go take a flying leap.""I told them the city is closed for renovation," Adrian corrected, setting his espresso cup down on a server rack (earning a muffled shriek of agony from Lena upstairs, who undoubtedly sensed the impending water ring). "I also deflected their kinetic bombardment rod into the Dead Sea. The Spire is secure. Julian is taking a nap."Cora didn't cheer like he expected. She didn't even look away from her monitors. Her face was illuminated by the harsh red light of dozens of error warnings flashing across her screens. "Adrian," Cora said, her voice tight with a terrifyingly cold panic. "You shouldn't have hung up on them."Adri

Chapter 148Adrian didn't attack her with gravity. He attacked her with the city itself. Beneath the estate, the massive municipal power cables surged. Millions of volts of raw, unfiltered electricity ripped out of the ground. The metal pipes, the rebar in the concrete, the ambient electromagnetic field of the entire sector, all of it bent to Adrian’s absolute will. A cage of pure, blinding blue lightning erupted from the earth, surrounding Seraphina. She gasped, trying to fold space to escape, but the massive electromagnetic surge scrambled her orbital connection. The violet fractals shattered like glass and the electricity lashed out, wrapping around her black armor, binding her limbs with chains of pure, superheated plasma. She screamed, an actual, vocal scream that tore through the air as the electricity grounded her spatial technology, frying her internal dampeners. Adrian casually floated up into the air, hovering eye-level with the captive Arbiter. She was suspended in

Chapter 150[ REROUTING KINETIC OUTPUT THROUGH SPIRE ARRAY. ][ WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC INTERFERENCE DETECTED. ][ DISTANCE TO TARGET: 1,200 MILES. ][ REQUIRED POWER OUTPUT: CATASTROPHIC. ]"Give it everything," Adrian roared and thrust his right hand directly toward the sky. Miles away, the tip of the Spire ignited with a blinding beam of solid, golden gravity. It shot upward like a spear of pure physics, piercing the contracting violet dome and tearing straight through the exosphere. Up in Low Earth Orbit, Aegis Satellite Prime, a multi-billion-credit space station the size of an aircraft carrier, was dutifully projecting its hard-light beam downward to crush the city. Suddenly, an invisible, unstoppable force wrapped around its titanium hull. Down on Earth, Adrian’s boots cracked the marble of the porch. His knees buckled slightly under the sheer, unimaginable strain of reaching into outer space. The muscles in his arm bulged and his skin was radiating waves of heat. "Adrian!"