All Chapters of HELL'S ARCHITECT: Chapter 21
- Chapter 30
45 chapters
Chapter 21. Reunion of Rivals
BOOOOM!The sonic shockwave slammed into Elios’s chest like an invisible sledgehammer.He was hurled backward, his spine crashing into the hood of a rusted sedan parked at the edge of the field. The windshield shattered into a thousand fragments. Elios coughed violently, the salty taste of blood flooding his mouth.“Bastard… fast as hell…” Elios cursed, forcing himself to rise on trembling arms.At the center of the field, the dust slowly thinned. Kael hovered there, ten centimeters above the ground. His golden armor, Paladin Armor MK-V Seraphim, hummed softly, surrounded by a transparent hexagonal energy field. The mechanical wings on his back beat lazily, shedding particles of light that made his eyes look like those of an angel sent to reap souls.“You look pathetic, Elios,” Kael said calmly, his arrogant voice amplified by external speakers. “You were once the finest soldier of my generation. And now? A vagrant with a rusted handgun.”“And you’re still an action figure with a serm
Chapter 22. Pirate Broadcast
The stench of ozone and burned wiring stung the air as Elios kicked the rusted steel door open.BLANG!The door slammed into the wall, rattling stacks of vinyl records and discarded motherboards on the shelves.The room was cramped, more like the cockpit of a wrecked aircraft than a broadcast studio. Moldy soundproof foam covered the walls, plastered with anarchist punk band posters and anti-Church stickers. At the center of the room, surrounded by a fortress of CRT monitors and an audio mixing desk bristling with colorful knobs, sat a skinny man with a mechanical arm.DJ Jax. The Voice of the Underground Resistance.Jax jolted in surprise, his oversized headphones slipping down to his neck. He had been seconds away from playing a Death Metal track when the barrel of Elios’s Peacemaker revolver pressed against his barcode-tattooed temple.“Kill the music,” Elios ordered flatly. Dried blood coated half his face, making him look more terrifying than any metal album cover in the room.Ja
Chapter 23. The Scapegoat
The giant screen at the intersection of District 9 flickered back to life. Black and white static vanished, replaced by the rotating golden emblem of Sanctum Veritatis, majestic against an artificial blue sky. Calming orchestral music, music engineered to psychologically lower heart rates, flowed softly from the city speakers.Elios and Vera crouched behind a pile of wet garbage in a narrow alley, staring at the screen while holding their breath.The face of the High Priest appeared. Not Bishop Valdos, but the supreme leader of the Church itself. An elderly man in white silk robes, crowned with a double tiara. His face was carved with wrinkles of manufactured virtue, polished by makeup.“My beloved children,” the High Priest said gently, his paternal tone clashing with the chaos that had just unfolded. “Tonight, our faith is tested. A blasphemous video has been spread by agents of darkness.”On the screen, clips of Elios’s footage replayed, now stamped with a massive red label: DEEPFA
Chapter 24. Prison Without Walls
Cold water reeking of rust was thrown in his face.SPLASH!Elios jolted awake, his lungs reflexively gulping air. The first thing he felt was not the cold, but a pulsing agony flooding his entire body, as if every nerve were throwing a dance party on a bed of nails.His blurred vision slowly sharpened.He was not in a police holding cell.He was not in the Church’s sterile white interrogation room.He was in a far filthier hell.The room was vast, its concrete floor slick with blood and grease. The ceiling loomed high above, crowded with iron chains and hanging meat hooks. Some of the hooks were empty. Others were not.Carcasses of cattle. Carcasses of pigs. And in a darker corner, carcasses of something that looked disturbingly human.“Ah, the Princess finally wakes from her beauty sleep,” a heavy, gravelly voice said.Elios tried to move his arms, but they would not budge. He was strapped tightly to an old iron chair bolted to the floor. His wrists and ankles were bound with thick i
Chapter 25. Blood Debt
The streets of Sector 9 felt longer than usual that night. Every step Elios took left a faint trail of blood on the wet asphalt, a trail that was quickly washed away by the merciless acid rain.Vera supported Elios on his left side. His body, usually upright and commanding, now hung heavily against her shoulder. His breathing was short and ragged, rattling like an old engine running out of oil. The fingers of his right hand, their nails torn out by Vargo, still dripped blood, staining the hem of Vera’s jacket red.“Hold on, Elios. Just a little farther,” Vera whispered, her voice trembling from physical exhaustion. She herself was battered, her neck bruised purple from strangulation, but the adrenaline from killing her first human earlier kept her upright.“I’m… heavy, huh?” Elios muttered, his eyes half-closed. “Just dump me in a trash bin. I’ll catch up later.”“Shut up. Don’t talk. You’re wasting oxygen,” Vera snapped, dragging him into a narrow alley behind a closed electronics fl
Chapter 26. The Haunted Harbor
Sector 13 did not stink of garbage like the lower city. It reeked of ancient death. The smell of salt, rotting seaweed, and iron corroded by seawater mixed with decades of chemical waste.A violent storm poured down mercilessly. Gale-force winds from the open sea lashed Elios and Vera’s faces, soaking their leather jackets within seconds.They stood atop a rusted harbor crane, staring down below.“Welcome to the Ship Graveyard!” Elios shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of waves smashing against the concrete docks beneath them.The sight before them was surreal. Hundreds of massive cargo ships, oil tankers, and half-sunken military barges lay piled together in the bay. They looked like the exposed bones of colossal iron beasts jutting from pitch-black water. Thick fog smothered the area, making distant navigation lights blink like ghostly eyes.“Doc said the submarine is at Pier 13,” Vera said, checking the coordinates on her tablet, carefully wrapped in transparent plas
Chapter 27. The Assault on Pier 13
The storm lashed Elios’s face like shards of ice. Thirty meters above the submarine’s deck, the wind howled so violently that the ancient crane groaned and swayed as if it might collapse at any second.“You sure this cable can hold?” Vera shouted, her voice nearly swallowed by thunder. She stared at the thick steel line stretched diagonally from the crane’s arm down to a stack of cargo near the submarine’s open hatch.“The cable’s solid,” Elios yelled back as he looped his leather belt around the steel cable to use as a makeshift slider. “My hands are what I don’t trust. But it’s this or we become fish food.”Below them, the Marine Paladin frogmen were growing more aggressive. They slammed rifle stocks into the submarine crew, forcing them face-down on the deck. One Paladin technician knelt beside an exterior panel, attaching a hacking device to the hull, trying to seize control of the navigation system.“They’re locking the systems!” Vera said, watching through her scope. “If that th
Chapter 28. Undersea Diplomacy
DUNG. DUNG.The muffled detonations of depth charges outside the hull sounded like giant hammers slamming against iron walls. Each blast sent violent tremors through the frame of the Ghost Ferry, shaking rust dust from the ceiling as steam pipes hissed in protest.Inside the cramped, oil-stinking torpedo room, Elios struggled to steady his battered body. Seawater pooled ankle-deep on the floor, mixed with hydraulic oil leaking from a damaged hatch.“Take us down to three hundred meters! Now!” Captain Nemo bellowed into a voice-tube intercom. “If we don’t, the pressure waves will crush us like a soda can!”He turned back to Elios and Vera. Cigar smoke billowed thickly, forming a gray halo around his scarred face. Behind him, two gorilla-built crewmen still aimed crude firearms at Vera’s head.“Alright, stowaways,” Nemo said, stepping forward, his iron boots splashing through filthy water. “My boat’s damaged. Three of my crew are dead on the dock. And now I’ve got a whole battalion of f
Chapter 29. Inside the Belly of the Whale
The world flipped upside down as the colossal jaws snapped shut.KRAAAKKK!The sound of metal grinding against diamond-sharp teeth was horrific, muffled by thousands of tons of seawater. Elios felt like an ant trapped inside a soda can being crushed by a giant hand.Total darkness.The only light came from the emergency indicators inside his exosuit helmet, blinking in frantic red, and the dim blue glow of bioluminescence lining the ceiling of the creature’s mouth.“WARNING: STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO LEFT ARM. PRESSURE LEAK IN LEG SECTOR. HULL INTEGRITY: 65%.”The dive suit’s AI spoke calmly, delivering news of impending death.Elios was slammed violently from side to side as the Leviathan shook its head in a frenzy, trying to swallow the “iron pill” lodged in its throat.“Ugh… smells like a fish market dumpster left out in the sun for a week,” Elios muttered, fighting nausea. The monster’s breath pierced his air filters. Stomach acid, rotting flesh, pure methane.He was not in the stomach
Chapter 30. Toward the Frozen Land
The sonar’s PING was the only thing separating life from death at this depth.PING… four-second pause… PING…Elios lay on a narrow cot in the medical bay of the Ghost Ferry. His body was wrapped in a silver thermal blanket that crackled softly every time he breathed. An IV drip carrying a cocktail of antibiotics and blood boosters flowed slowly into his vein, replacing the fluids he had lost in the freezing sea.He was not asleep. His eyes were fixed on the rusted metal ceiling, counting the bolts overhead. Forty-two bolts. Three of them loose.“You’re awake,” Vera’s voice broke his trance.The female agent sat on a folding chair beside the cot. She looked wrecked. Her usually precise bob was limp, a bandage crossed her cheek, and the dark circles beneath her eyes were as deep as the Mariana Trench. She held a data tablet with a cracked screen, its blue glow illuminating a holographic map.“I dreamed I was being chased by giant squids asking for parking money,” Elios rasped, trying to