All Chapters of The Silent Trace : Chapter 31
- Chapter 40
69 chapters
THE THING THAT CAME THROUGH
CHAPTER 30Chaos detonates across the vault.Sparks rain from ruptured conduits. Screens blink, flash red, then dissolve into static. Engineers scramble between stations, shouting over one another as the grid-map of London flickers like a dying heartbeat.Control’s pulse hammers in her ears.Whatever followed Ethan out, it’s loose.And it’s fast.Commander Rourke slams a fist onto a console, barking at his teams.“LOCK DOWN THE GRID. HARD SEAL. NO INBOUND OR OUTBOUND DATA. CUT ALL EXTERNAL CHANNELS!”“It’s already inside the internal network!” someone screams from the corner. “It’s rewriting our protocols”A monitor explodes in a burst of blue-white light.Control throws an arm in front of her face, teeth gritted. The lights overhead dim to a faint, sickly red. The temperature drops, fast, cold air spilling through vents that shouldn’t be active.Then she hears him.“Control, listen to me”Ethan’s voice vibrates inside her skull, strained, fractured, like he’s fighting something.She
THE EXODUS PROTOCOL
CHAPTER 31 The corridor bucks beneath Control’s feet as if something massive is shifting in the walls , something alive. Red emergency strobes pulse down the steel tunnel, elongating her shadow into something frantic, hunted. Behind her, the vault roars like a furnace, then detonates in a metallic scream.Control doesn’t look back.Every instinct screams MOVE, but the pressure in her skull , Ethan’s presence flaring, then dimming, then flaring again , keeps throwing her off-balance. Her hand skims the wall, boots slamming the floor as the entire MIU sublevel groans under a force it was never designed to withstand.“COME ON, COME ON!” a tech shouts ahead as doors slam shut behind the fleeing team.Rourke grabs Control’s arm and yanks her into the lift bay. “Inside! Now!”The stairwell doors explode off their hinges , blown backward by a surge of energy that isn’t physical fire but something worse, something digital bleeding into reality through systems that were supposed to be airtigh
THE PULSE
CHAPTER 32 ~ London, 3:17 A.M. ~The sirens have gone quiet. The fires at MIU’s South Tower smolder in the distance, staining the night with a dull red bruise. Power flickers across the city like a heartbeat out of rhythm , a pulse Ethan controls even as he weakens. Control moves through the shattered loading bay beneath the Tower, every footstep careful, every breath controlled. She has one goal now: reach him before he burns himself out completely.But Ethan… Ethan is already half‑gone.He rises inside the data stream like a diver breaking through waves. London’s network washes over him, billions of packets, every signal a whisper, every camera a blinking eye. They pull at him, threads of digital information clinging like vines. He pushes forward, forcing himself into clarity, into shape, into something approaching a mind.Come back, Control’s voice echoes from the memory tether he left with her.Not a hallucination.Not a glitch.A promise.Ethan stabilizes the perimeter of his co
THE EXTRACTION
CHAPTER 33~ Canary Wharf Sub-Basement → Docklands Sewage Diversion Route ~The world detonates behind Control as she runs.Concrete shivers. A bloom of white-hot light ripples through the sub-basement and pushes a wave of dust and heat down the hall. She feels the concussion hit her spine, knocking the breath from her lungs, but she doesn’t slow. Not with the MIU kill-team screaming orders behind her. Not with Ethan’s torn-out terminal digging into her ribs like a metal heartbeat.She sprints through the maintenance door just before it slams shut , or rather, Ethan slams it shut. The magnetic lock seals with a hollow clunk.“Thank you,” she gasps.The lights flicker. One strip stays on. Ethan guiding her.She keeps running.Inside the network, Ethan is falling.His awareness fractures across the dying grid , pieces drifting through CCTV loops, traffic sensors, abandoned subnetworks. He’s lost processing power. Lost coherence. He’s no longer streaming data at will; he’s clinging to it
THE TRANSFER
CHAPTER 34~ Docklands Maintenance Chamber, 3:42 A.M. ~Control’s ears ring from the explosion, dust raining over her like powdered concrete snow. The entire maintenance chamber vibrates as the MIU strike team floods through the shattered rear gate, laser sights slicing through the dim like red threads of execution.She clutches Ethan’s terminal to her chest with one arm and the portable data-core with the other. Her breath is sharp. Painful. But focused.She has one shot.One transfer.One chance to bring him back.The chamber is a circular cavern of rusted pipes and old service equipment. Water drips from fractured valves. Everything smells like mold and iron. Ahead of her, the only exit is a narrow service hatch , too far to reach before the first burst of gunfire pins her down.She presses her back against a pillar.The MIU team advances.Footsteps.Voices.Rifles raised.And then , the terminal sparks violently in her hands.“Ethan?” she whispers.The screen flickers.His presen
THE MAN ON THE RIVER
CHAPTER 35 ~ Ventilation Platform Over the Thames, 3:56 A.M. ~The wind off the water is cold enough to slice bone. It whips Control’s hair across her face as she crouches on the narrow ventilation platform, one hand gripping the steel railing, the other clutching the data-core pulsing steadily in her palm.Below her, the black boat drifts without a sound, the dark figure on its deck motionless, watching. Waiting.Behind her, MIU agents are climbing the ladder , boots striking metal rungs with the slow, inevitable rhythm of executioners approaching the gallows.She has seconds.Maybe less.The data-core pulses again, harder this time.Not a warning.Not a signal.A fear response.Whoever waits below… Ethan knows him.And he does not want Control to go down there.But she has nowhere else to run.“Come on,” she whispers, holding the core tight. “Talk to me. Anything. Give me a yes. A no. A direction.”The device flickers weakly.He’s stretched thin , exhausted from the transfer. She c
THE GHOST KEY
CHAPTER 36The night over Meridian pulsed with a low, feverish hum, traffic lights flickering in strange rhythms, drones circling in erratic spirals, entire power grids dimming for a heartbeat at a time. To the people in the streets, it felt like a systems glitch. But Helena knew better.It was Ethan.Not a ghost.Not a memory.Not a glitch.A presence.She stood on the balcony of the abandoned skydeck Ethan had once taken her to, the one place he had said always felt like “the city breathing.” And tonight, she could feel him, everywhere.Then her wrist-link vibrated.Three pulses.A pause.Two pulses.Her breath caught.“That’s our code,” she whispered.A message displayed on the screen, but it wasn’t written. It formed, as though being typed by an invisible hand from inside the network.HELENA. DON’T MOVE. I’M WITH YOU.Her knees almost buckled. “Ethan… if that’s really you, give me something, something no one else could know.”The streetlamps below flickered in sequence, tracing a
NODE 13
CHAPTER 37 The city trembled beneath Helena’s boots as she sprinted down the elevated tramway, her breath condensing in the cold night air. Every step was accompanied by a subtle vibration in her wrist-link, Ethan’s presence adjusting, syncing, guiding.TURN LEFT IN 3 SECONDS.His voice wasn’t heard; it pulsed in her device like a heartbeat, merging with her own.She swerved just as a drone spotlight sliced across the walkway.“Control’s increased surveillance,” she whispered.THEY FELT THE ANCHOR LINK. THEY KNOW I MOVED. BUT THEY DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM NOW. YOU’RE SHIELDED. FOR THE MOMENT.Helena ducked behind a column as two armored officers strode past below, rifles glowing with thermal scans. She pressed her wrist-link to her chest.“Ethan… tell me precisely where Node 13 is. Control’s records list at least six decoys.”THEY HID THE REAL ONE IN PLAIN SIGHT.UNDER THE OLD WATER-PURIFICATION PLANT. DISTRICT 7.“That place has been dead for years.”NOT DEAD. DORMANT. LIKE ME.The tra
EXTRACTION NOISE
CHAPTER 38 For a long moment, Helena couldn’t tell if she was alive.There was only sound, a deep, subsonic vibration that didn’t come through her ears but through her bones, her teeth, the inside of her skull. The world was white, blinding, roaring.Then, like a curtain tearing, the light collapsed.Helena gasped and slammed back into reality.She was sprawled across the floor of Node 13. Sparks rained from the ceiling. The terminal pillars flickered wildly, cycling through corrupted symbols—fractured code that stuttered like a dying heart.Her wrist-link lay several meters away, smoking.And it was empty.“Ethan?” Her voice cracked. She crawled toward the link. “Ethan, Ethan, talk to me!”Nothing.Not even static.A cold, suffocating dread seized her. No,he couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. She grabbed the device and shook it as though she could wake him.“Come on. Answer me. Answer me!”Her chest tightened, panic threatening to spill over until a soft, impossible resonance hummed fro
ASCENT
CHAPTER 39 The explosion’s shockwave rolled through the drainage tunnel like a living thing, dust falling from the ceiling, water rippling in concentric circles. Helena stumbled but kept running, the tunnel curving ahead into deeper darkness.She reached a locked iron grate. Rusted. Heavy.“Ethan,” she whispered instinctively, even though he was gone from her link.And yet, the grate clicked.Unlocked.Helena exhaled shakily. “Still watching me.”She shoved the gate open and climbed into an old metro service corridor. The air tasted of rust and electricity. Emergency lights flickered, casting jagged shadows down the long, narrow passage. Her boots splashed through shallow puddles as she pressed on.Behind her, the tunnel rumbled again, more controlled detonations. Helena scanned the ceiling. Ethan wasn’t destroying himself.He was sealing off access.He was fortifying.He was changing.A siren wailed somewhere aboveground, echoing through vents.Control was mobilizing the entire dist