All Chapters of Project Echelon: The Debris Wars: Chapter 51
- Chapter 60
108 chapters
Chapter 51: What Adrian Won't Admit
The world felt too quiet, —quiet in the way a battlefield feels after the last blast fades, when the ringing in your ears is louder than the wind and what’s left behind is only smoke, broken steel, and the weight of everything that almost happened.Lyra sat on the ruined deck, Adrian’s head resting against her shoulder, his breathing shallow but steadying one fragile inhale at a time. The storm winds toyed with strands of his hair; she brushed them back gently, letting her fingers linger longer than she meant to.His pulse fluttered at his throat.A little weak and slow.The fact alone made her exhale a shaky breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.Below the fractured railings, the ocean slapped against metal scraps that had once been a deck. Remnants of the prototypes sank like stars going out. The fog had already dissipated, thinned to pale wisps chased away by ordinary wind—no signal, no pulse, no resonance riding within it.For the first time since stepping aboard this vesse
Chapter 52: What the Government Already Knows
The hallway groaned around them as Lyra helped Adrian forward, each step slow and deliberate. The emergency lights pulsed dimly against the metallic walls, painting their path in faint, fractured red. Every vibration of the ship seemed amplified, echoing the fading tremors still running through Adrian’s body.He wasn’t fully conscious, caught somewhere between instinct and exhaustion, blinking hard as though trying to force the world into focus.“Just a little farther,” Lyra murmured.Adrian nodded weakly. His weight leaned heavily on her, but he lifted his feet, determined not to be carried. Determination was the one thing the signal hadn’t taken from him.Behind them, floodlights swept across the deck. The hum of government drones rose like a swarm about to descend.Lyra quickened her pace.“Do you think they saw us?” Adrian whispered, words thin and breathless.“They will soon,” she said. “We need to—”The ship shook under a sudden impact. It wasn’t violent, but enough to rattle lo
Chapter 53: The Line They Will Not Cross
The armored officers fanned out across the ruined corridor, their boots clicking sharply against the metal floor. Lyra felt the vibration through her knees as she shielded Adrian with her body, the restraints biting painfully into her wrists. The drones hovered above, awaiting instruction like predators held back only by protocol.The woman leading the squad stepped forward, visor sweeping over the scene with an unreadable precision. She was calm—too calm—and that terrified Lyra more than the rifles.“Dr. Vance,” the woman said, “You are obstructing a containment procedure.”Lyra didn’t move. “He’s destabilized. You’ll kill him if you take him now.”“That is not your concern.”“It is exactly my concern,” Lyra snapped. “I’m the only one who’s kept him alive this long.”The commander paused. The visor hid her eyes, but Lyra felt the woman’s attention sharpen like a blade turning toward her.“I expected you to prioritize scientific integrity,” the commander said. “Not sentiment.”“It’s n
Chapter 54: The Break Line
The alarm didn’t sound like any standard security protocol. It wasn’t a siren—it was a pulse. A hard, vibrating thrum that shook the walls like the heartbeat of something mechanical waking up.Lyra felt it through her ribs before she heard it.“They’ve already found us,” she breathed.Adrian didn’t answer. His jaw clenched as the sound hit him harder than anyone else. The resonance buried under his skin reacted instantly, flashing heat along his nerves, brightening in his veins like an exposed filament.He stumbled. Lyra grabbed his arm.“Adrian—”“I’m fine.”But he wasn’t. His pupils were blown wide, his pulse erratic. The resonance inside him wasn’t stabilizing—it was overheating.The pulse shook the corridor again, this time followed by a hiss—a pressure release. Metal shifting. Vents opening.Adrian froze.“They’re deploying aerial units.”Lyra’s stomach dropped. “Inside the tunnels?”“They don’t need space,” he rasped. “They’re micro-drones.”A sound like a swarm echoed behind th
Chapter 55: The Hollow Circuit
The tunnel swallowed them as they moved—half-stumbling, half-running—Adrian leaning heavily on the wall while Lyra kept one hand hovering at his back, ready to catch him if he slipped. The faint tremors of the bulkhead behind them slowly faded, replaced by something worse:Footsteps.Slow. Even. Intelligent.Adrian heard them too. His spine stiffened, resonance flickering faintly beneath his skin like distant lightning.Lyra didn’t speak. Words would’ve wasted breath they didn’t have.They pushed forward as the passage angled downward, the temperature dropping sharply. The corridor widened into an older section of the facility—rusted pipes, exposed conduits, and metal panels etched with serial numbers from decades before Echelon’s expansion. The lights here were dim, humming with weak, failing energy.Lyra slowed as she reached a split in the passage. One path was narrow and steep, air thick with coolant vapors. The other was wide, sloping gently into darkness.She looked at Adrian. “
Chapter 56: When the Next Closes
The hatch slammed shut above them with a clang that reverberated through Adrian’s ribs. For one breath—there was only silence and the distant echo of the Phase Hunter’s claws scraping against steel below.Lyra doubled over, dragging air into her lungs. Adrian leaned heavily on her shoulder, the resonance inside him flickering erratically, still recovering from the chase.“We need a way out,” she gasped. “Before that thing tears through—”Floodlights exploded across the platform.Harsh white beams swept the surface in blinding sheets, cutting through the fog, turning everything flat and colorless. Shadows jumped across the metal. The temperature dropped as a wall of rotor wash blasted them from above.Lyra froze.Adrian’s pulse stalled.A helicopter. Not military gray.Government white.Then a second.Then a third.Lyra’s grip tightened on Adrian’s arm. “No—no, no—Adrian—”“Don’t run,” he whispered, voice thin. “They’ll shoot.”She swallowed hard, panic clawing up her throat. “They wer
Chapter 57: Operation Breakpoint
The storm had been building for hours.Mira stood at the edge of the abandoned comms tower, the metallic wind slicing across her face as the sun sank behind clouds the color of molten iron. The world felt unreal-Her breathing froze for a beat.Adrian and Lyra were gone.Taken.Even now, hours after the emergency beacon from Lyra’s lab had gone silent, Mira’s brain refused to settle. She replayed the last transmission again and again—the sudden blaring alarm, Adrian shouting her name, Lyra’s voice cut short by a harsh electric crackle.Then nothing.Every instinct she had told her the same thing: they were alive. Somewhere under government lock and sedation, but alive.And Mira wasn’t going to lose them. Not after everything they’d fought through. Not after the Debris Wars. Not after surviving Echo-9.She refused to let this be the end.Behind her, footsteps crunched on gravel.Rourke, Kapoor, Sira, and Delta-unit Nine approached—her team, her people. All of them equally ready to burn
Chapter 58: The Corridor of No Return
The alarms howled like something alive.Red emergency lights pulsed in the ceiling, washing the metal walls with a strobe of blood-colored flashes. Mira steadied Adrian against her, leaning into the strength she didn’t feel but had no choice except to project.“Move,” she ordered, her voice low but threaded with steel.Rourke sealed the door behind them. “That might buy us ten seconds.”“Ten seconds is enough,” Mira replied.Delta-unit Nine took point, its metallic frame adjusting into combat stance, limbs unfolding into reinforced armor plates. “Drone patrols converging from Levels B1 through B3. Forty-one seconds until first contact.”Kapoor grimaced. “Forty-one seconds is not enough.”Lyra, shaky but conscious, pushed off the wall and steadied herself. “Just get us out. I can handle a little running.”Mira didn’t argue—she didn’t have time to—but she watched Lyra closely. If Lyra’s knees buckled, if her vision blurred, if her breath faltered, Mira would intervene without hesitation
Chapter 59: The Weight of Silence
Wind hammered the skimmer as it cut across the night, altitude shifting with each pocket of turbulence. The cliffside facility shrank into a smear of lights behind them until even those disappeared beneath clouds.Inside the cabin, silence pressed heavier than any alarm.Mira sat on the floor between the two bunks, knees braced, back straight, her hands steady even though her pulse refused to settle. Lyra lay unconscious on the right bunk, shallow breaths rising and falling beneath a thin thermal blanket. Adrian lay on the left, half-propped, his eyes shut as the sedatives slowly bled out of his system.Sira paced. Rourke flew in complete focus, the stick shifting beneath his hands as he maneuvered through low-altitude flight corridors. Kapoor worked over a communications jammer, wires and circuit nodes scattered around her lap like a metallic nest.No one spoke.Not until Adrian stirred.Mira leaned in immediately. “Adrian?”He didn’t wake fully—just flinched, breath hitching, the se
Chapter 60: The Silence That Follows
The skimmer cut across the night sky like a wounded blade.Inside, the dim emergency cabin lights cast soft amber bands over the cramped interior, illuminating the exhaustion carved into every face. Mira kept one hand braced on the metal bench as she leaned over Lyra, checking her pulse again.Steady. Weak, but steady.Lyra’s breathing was shallow, drifting somewhere between unconscious and dreaming. Mira had already checked her pupils twice, run a field scan, and reset her neural levels—the energy burst had drained her nearly to collapse.A soft groan pulled Mira’s attention sideways.Adrian.He blinked up at the ceiling as if trying to piece reality together one fragment at a time. Sedation fog still clung to him, but his eyes were at least focusing now—tracking the faint strobe of lights, tracing the shape of Mira’s profile leaning over Lyra.“Mira…?”His voice was scratchy, raw.She moved to his side instantly. “Hey. Easy. You’re awake.”He blinked again, slower this time. “What…