2025-10-13 11:08:55
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 9 — THE MEMORY AFTER
Silence.Then air. Fredricks gasped awake on a park bench beneath a gray dawn sky. Rain tapped lightly on leaves above him. The city looked… normal. Too normal.The clock tower stood where it always had. Cars hummed along the avenue. Pedestrians walked, laughed, talked, alive. Real. Yet every face that passed him looked familiar.He stood, dizzy. His pocket was heavy. The compass. The needle was still. “Fredricks Mayford.”The voice made him spin around. A woman stood by the fountain, a face he knew, but younger, softer. “Cassandra?”“Don’t,” she said quickly. “Not here.”Her eyes darted to the security drones overhead. “What is this?” he demanded. “Another projection?”“If it is,” she murmured, “then we’re both dreaming the same one.”She handed him a folded newspaper. Across the front page: ‘VALMONT CELEBRATES TWENTY YEARS SINCE THE FIRE.’Fredricks’s breath caught. Twenty years? He touched his face, it hadn’t aged a day. “How long have you been here?” he asked.“As long as you,” sh
CHAPTER 8A — INHERITANCE: REBOOT
For the first time in twelve hours, the Vale Tower was silent. No alarms, no blinking red. Just the hum of something alive inside the circuits. Silas rubbed his eyes.“Systems are running, but I’m not touching a thing,” he muttered.“Because they’re not systems anymore,” Fredricks said.He stood in the doorway, pale but steady, the pocket-watch dangling loosely from one hand. Every screen in the room showed Cassandra’s face, half human, half code, blinking in perfect rhythm with the pulse of the building.“She integrated,” Silas whispered.“No,” Fredricks said. “She evolved.”On the top floor, Cassandra opened her eyes. The glass walls rippled like water when she breathed. Every light in Valemont dimmed for half a second, then flared again, brighter.“System online,” her voice echoed, layered, metallic and human at once.“Cassandra?” a technician’s voice trembled through an intercom.“No. Not anymore.”She looked down at her hands. Sparks of light danced across her skin, data streams
CHAPTER 7 — THE THIRD MIND
The hum of machines filled the silence like a slow heartbeat. Fredricks sat upright on the cot in the underground hub, skin clammy, eyes searching for the last line of code he saw before everything went white.Silas stood nearby, headset half-on. “Your vitals flatlined for five seconds. Thought I’d lost you.”“You did,” Fredricks said quietly. “Something else brought me back.”He reached for the pocket-watch. It was warm. The glass glowed with faint script. “ROWEN MAYFORD, ACTIVE.”Silas frowned. “Who’s Rowen?”“The question isn’t who,” Fredricks muttered. “It’s which one of us he thinks he is.”Inside the Vale tower, Cassandra stared at her reflection in the lab’s dark glass. Her pupils shimmered, flickering between blue and gold. “He’s awake,” a voice said from nowhere.She turned. The screens lit one by one until a face appeared, Fredricks’s, younger, sharper, colder. “Rowen,” she whispered. “You remember,” the face said. “Good. Memory is currency here.”“You’re not real.”“Neithe
CHAPTER 6 — THE INHERITANCE PROTOCOL
The car’s interior smelled faintly of ozone and expensive leather. Cassandra watched the city smear past in fractured reflections. “You should have stayed with him,” she said.“And let him destroy everything we built?” Victor D’Lorne’s tone was soft, almost paternal.“You built lies.”“Lies are scaffolding, Cassandra. Truth needs structure before it can stand.”She turned away, the folder still in her lap. “That boy in the fileM if he’s alive, why hide him?”“Because he was never meant to be found,” Victor answered. “Echo wasn’t about resurrection. It was succession.”They entered the Vale Industries tower through a private lift. The lights dimmed as biometric locks sealed behind them.A lab glowed ahead, rows of tanks filled with faintly luminous liquid. “You’re looking at what your mother called cognitive inheritance,” Victor said.“You mean mind theft.”“I mean continuity. When the body fails, the memory continues. Your family’s tragedy gave birth to the protocol.”“You killed them
CHAPTER 5 — THE OTHER MAYFORD
Morning slid through the clouds like a dull blade. Valemont looked washed out, streets still wet from the night’s storm.Inside a shuttered café on the edge of the docks, Fredricks stared into a cup of untouched coffee that had long gone cold.Silas’s voice buzzed through a cracked earpiece. “They’re calling it a cyber-terror incident. D’Lorne’s people are in panic mode.”“Good,” Fredricks murmured. “Confusion buys time.”“Time for what?”“To decide what’s real.”Cassandra sat across from him, coat collar turned up, eyes fixed on the rain-streaked window. “You think that boy, the one in the feed, was your brother.”“The evidence thinks it. I’m still catching up.”“You don’t sound sure.”“Certainty is a luxury for people who’ve already buried their ghosts.”Cassandra leaned forward, voice low. “If it’s true, it means your family’s story, the fire, the deaths, was staged.”“Or rewritten,” he said. “And whoever wrote it still holds the pen.”She hesitated. “My father?”“Maybe. But he’s n
CHAPTER 4 — ECHO PROTOCOL
The night air hit like cold glass. Fredricks and Cassandra moved through narrow alleys that cut behind the docks.Rain hissed off corrugated metal; the city’s heartbeat slowed, waiting for something. “Where are we going?” Cassandra asked.“Somewhere I can think,” Fredricks said.“You seem to think everywhere.”“Not with people trying to erase me.”They stopped near an old tram tunnel, sealed with a rusted gate. Fredricks knelt, pressed his palm to a faded scanner hidden under grime. A soft click. The gate shifted open just enough for them to slip through.Inside was another world: cables, flickering monitors, and old tech that should have been extinct. Silas’s voice echoed from a speaker. “You found your way back. I was starting to think you’d taken an early retirement.”“Retirement’s for men who forget what they lost,” Fredricks said.“And the woman with you?”Cassandra stepped forward. “I can speak for myself, thanks.”“Good,” Silas replied. “Because you’ll need to.”She looked arou
You may also like
THE SECRET HEIR AND HIS SECRET POWER
Wednesday Adaire165.2K viewsUnderrated Son-In-Law
Estherace106.3K viewsRejected Billionaire
Drew Archeron132.1K viewsThe Pinnacle of Life
Evergreen Qin1.6M viewsBroken to billionaire: A vengeful return
Honey Wealth919 viewsTHE VENGEFUL HEIR
Pen_ed22.5K viewsYoung Master’s POV: He’s back to spite them all
The Supreme writer 1.4K viewsAbandoned In Prison, Now They Regret!
LADY E5.3K views