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CHAPTER 201: ECHOES THROUGH GLASS
The rooftop above the Marlow District Communications Hub shimmered with cold rain. Lightning split the night sky in silvery arcs, brief glimpses of a city stretched too thin—scars of war, flickering screens, distant sirens. Luka crouched by the rusted antenna relay, his breath fogging in the wind, and his hand tight on the encrypted receiver Vesper had cobbled together hours ago.Below, the communications hub burned. Flames licked at the edges of shattered windows, the O.S.A. data-center gutted after a swift strike led by Arden’s ghost unit. But the fire was only the beginning."Talk to me, Vesper," Luka muttered into the receiver. “Tell me there’s a hole we missed.”Static. Then Vesper’s voice came, thin and sharp. “You didn’t miss it. They just buried it. Deeper than we expected. Second network, parallel infrastructure. Every construct you hit tonight was a decoy.”Luka cursed under his breath. “So what the hell did we shut down?”“Smoke and mirrors. They wanted you to hit it. Meant
CHAPTER 200: BENEATH THE SIGNAL
The old subway station at Eastpoint had long been abandoned—its rusted rails swallowed by darkness, its walls lined with the sediment of a forgotten city. But tonight, it pulsed with electricity, humming with something too alive to be infrastructure. Something wrong.Luka stood at the edge of the platform, his coat still soaked from the rain. The air reeked of metal and ozone. Above them, the signal repeaters blinked with a strange rhythm—like a heart out of sync with its own body.Arden was crouched over a battered terminal pulled from an old server rack, his gloved fingers tapping in tight, mechanical bursts. “It’s not just a signal hijack,” he muttered. “It’s deeper. They rewrote the OS...rewrote everything.”Alessia stood close, arms crossed, eyes sharp. “Define ‘everything,’ techboy.”Arden turned, his face paler than usual beneath the dim lights. “Every connected node—cell towers, surveillance drones, traffic lights, grid monitors, you name it—has been overrun. It's not a blacko
CHAPTER 199: THE PALE FLAME
The city didn’t sleep anymore. In the early hours before dawn, the skyline of smoke-choked towers stood like tombstones over a battlefield that hadn’t stopped bleeding. Sirens were fewer now...not because the danger had passed, but because the ones left to answer them were either dead or fled. Luka stood on the edge of the waterfront, staring out at the ruins of Dock 17, where Carrick once ruled with fear and fire. It was all ash now...his father, the Foundation, even the old rules that kept blood in neat, understandable boxes. Now there were only ghosts. And something worse rising in their place. Behind him, Alessia approached, her coat catching the wind, her hair tied back in a sharp braid. She didn’t speak immediately, only joined him in silence as the city groaned beneath its own weight. “You saw the data from Mirelle’s servers?” she asked finally. Luka nodded. “All of it. Project ARCADIA, their other ‘constructs,’ the simulation labs... the children.” He didn’t need to
CHAPTER 198: WHAT SURVIVES THE FIRE
The storm passed, but silence didn’t follow.The city had begun to breathe again...but unevenly, like lungs half-collapsed under decades of weight. The broadcast towers had gone dark. The invisible lines that once pulled strings from the Foundation’s ghost-throat now lay in tangled heaps. Data markets shuddered. Military contracts bled out. Politicians’ phones rang and rang and rang.But Luka didn’t hear any of it.He sat in an empty train car moving on a decommissioned loop, deep beneath Sector Twelve. His right hand was bandaged, trembling. Burned by the surge, the nerve damage hadn't faded. Maybe it never would. Marek had offered treatment. Luka had refused. Pain, now, was part of the price.Across from him sat Vesper, arms folded, expression unreadable.“You’re not talking,” Luka said eventually.Vesper studied him. “Neither are you.”He let out a dry laugh. “I’ve been trying to find the right words.”“For what? Victory?” Her tone sharpened. “Because if this is what winning feels
CHAPTER 197: GREAT FORGE
The entrance to Furnace One was buried beneath a condemned waste treatment facility at the edge of the city’s industrial graveyard...a place long forgotten by zoning committees and law enforcement. Rusted gates, concrete husks, and gutted machines marked the surface. But beneath, deeper than sewers and metro tunnels, was the real skeleton: a blacksite that hadn't appeared on any satellite scan for the last twenty years.Luka crouched by the stairwell as the rest of the strike team assembled in silence. Marco checked his gear twice. Vesper wore a mask of studied calm, though her fingers tapped against her thigh in tight rhythm. Arden and two ex-Foundation defectors, Juno and Marek, scanned the schematics they'd reassembled from a scrambled cache weeks ago."You’re sure this is it?" Luka asked quietly.Marek nodded. “It's the mouth of the serpent. Once we go in, the systems inside will know we’re coming.”“No silent entry?” Marco asked.Juno gave a humorless grin. “Not unless you can te
CHAPTER 196: THE TANGLED CROWN
The city bled information. Screens flickered in pawn shops and penthouses alike. Talk radio hosts screamed theories, back alleys buzzed with disbelief, and the dark web ignited like a struck match. Mirelle’s secrets...her simulations, her fabricated minds, her predictive constructs...were out. Not leaked. Not rumored. Broadcast. And in the midst of it all, Luka Gale stood in the shadow of a crumbling viaduct, hands clenched around a burner phone, listening to silence on the other end. The Foundation hadn’t responded. Not yet. But he knew what silence meant. Preparation. Retaliation. The coiled breath before the storm. “You really did it,” Vesper murmured beside him, her voice taut with something between awe and dread. “You reached into the dragon’s throat and stole a tooth.” “I didn’t do it to make a point,” Luka muttered. “I did it because they were playing god with us.” She tilted her head. “You think gods don’t bleed? That’s cute.” A black SUV pulled up, tires cracking g
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