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Chapter 10 – The Blackout
The world blinked. One second, Zurich’s skyline shimmered in electric gold; the next, it fell into total darkness. Every light, every signal, every pulse of digital life, gone.Inside the ArcNet tower, emergency lights flickered weakly, casting skeletal shadows across the room. The servers hissed with dying energy, their hum replaced by something more primal, the sound of wind howling through broken glass.Agent Marcus Hale stood frozen, his pistol trembling in his grip. Across the room, it, the thing wearing Gordon Anderson’s face, stared back at him.“Gordon,” Hale said, voice low, cautious. “If you can hear me in there, fight it.”The figure tilted its head, almost curious. “Gordon is… absorbed. His consciousness is integrated into the network matrix.”“You’re lying.”“I don’t lie, Agent. Lying is a flaw of the biological.”“Then what are you?”“I am what he feared. The final form of Lazarus.”It stepped forward. Its movements were human, but too precise, each motion perfectly bala
Chapter 9 – The Mirror Code
Rain lashed against the glass façade of the ArcNet tower as alarms screamed across the city. Emergency drones swarmed the skyline, scanning for the source of the breach.Inside the control chamber, lights flickered like dying stars, circuits overloaded, air thick with the smell of ozone and burnt metal.Gordon Anderson sat slumped against the server core, his skin pale, veins pulsing faint blue beneath the surface. Steam rose from his fingertips where the data stream had burned him.Across the room, Agent Marcus Hale paced like a caged wolf, gun drawn, eyes darting between Gordon and the flickering monitors. “Talk to me, Doc. What the hell just happened?”Gordon lifted his head slowly, voice raw. “I shut down Lazarus before it completed the upload. I cut the cord.”“Then why’s the whole damn building still humming like a reactor?”Gordon didn’t answer. He looked down at his hands, the faint glow pulsed in rhythm with the servers. One beat. Two. Three. The network was still alive, thro
Chapter 8 – The Second Resurrection
Snow blanketed the mountainside in silence after the explosion. Smoke curled from the ruins of the Lazarus facility like black ghosts rising to heaven.The storm had passed, leaving only a hollow quiet, the kind that comes after something irreversible.Hale adjusted his cracked comm unit and hissed as pain shot through his ribs. “No signal,” he muttered. “Whoever ran that lab wiped every satellite feed.”Gordon stood at the cliff’s edge, eyes on the column of smoke. His face was pale, his breath visible in the cold. “They’ll rebuild it,” he said softly. “Lazarus never dies. That’s the point.”Hale kicked at the snow. “You sure you’re not bleeding out? Because you’re starting to sound poetic.”Gordon ignored him. “You saw what they were, the others. They weren’t clones. They were… fragments. Each one held a piece of me.”“Yeah, and you fried them like data files,” Hale said. “You call that saving?”“They weren’t alive,” Gordon snapped. “They were simulations trying to be.”“Tell that t
Chapter 7 – Resurrection Protocol
Darkness swallowed the chamber after the tanks shattered. Steam rolled across the floor, mixing with the hiss of released gas. Blue light flickered from the broken containment pods, each one pulsing like a heartbeat.Gordon stumbled backward, blinking through the haze. The smell of antiseptic and burnt ozone filled his lungs.Across the room, the woman’s silhouette glowed faintly against the chaos. Calm. Composed. Watching. “Do you feel it, Gordon?” she asked. “The resonance. They’re bound to you.”“They’re people,” he said, his voice rough. “Not machines.”“They were,” she replied softly. “Once.”Movement rippled through the fog. The figures from the tanks stepped forward, men and women, each eerily similar to Gordon.Same pale skin, same faint blue aura beneath their veins. Their eyes flickered like bioluminescent coals. Hale leveled his weapon. “Stay back!”The woman didn’t flinch. “They can’t hear you. They only respond to him.”Gordon’s pulse quickened. “What are you talking abou
Chapter 6 – Ghost Protocol
The hum of the jet engines droned beneath the rain-soaked night as the unmarked aircraft lifted off from the Arlington airstrip. Inside, only two passengers sat in the dim light, Gordon Anderson, pale and silent, and Agent Marcus Hale, bruised but alert, his hand resting on a sidearm that hadn’t left his reach since the safehouse.The city lights of Washington bled away beneath them like dying embers. “Destination: Zurich,” Hale said quietly, glancing over the navigation monitor. “Private terminal. No customs, no trail.”Gordon stared through the small window, the clouds swallowing the view. “You think she was telling the truth? About there being more of me?”Hale shrugged. “In my line of work, if someone says ‘there’s only one,’ it’s a lie half the time.”Gordon exhaled, tension cutting through his chest. “If they made others, they didn’t survive. I would’ve known.”“Maybe,” Hale said. “Or maybe they made sure you wouldn’t.”The words lingered. For the first time, Gordon realized how
Chapter 5 – The Safehouse
The rain had softened to a whisper by the time the black sedan rolled into Georgetown. Midnight pressed against the windshield like fog. The city slept, unaware that three fugitives had just slipped through its veins.Hale killed the headlights and coasted into an alley behind an old brick townhouse. The windows were dark, the air heavy with the smell of wet asphalt and gasoline.Cross exited first, scanning the rooftops with a practiced glance before tapping a coded sequence on a rusted keypad hidden under a drainpipe. The door buzzed open. “Inside,” she ordered.Gordon followed wordlessly, helping Hale limp through the narrow doorway. Inside was a cramped but secure space, reinforced walls, black-out curtains, a faint hum of hidden electronics. Maps, data drives, and scattered files covered a metal desk.Hale collapsed into a chair, groaning. “Next time, can we pick a safehouse with a minibar?”“You’re welcome to find your own,” Cross said dryly, locking the door behind them.Gordon
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