2025-12-02 00:37:16
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CH. 120 — The Regent
The man stepped forward into the light.For a fraction of a second, Adrian thought he was looking at a reflection—some trick of the vault, some final psychological test designed by the Imperium. The posture was wrong for a mirror, though. Too alive. Too deliberate.Same eyes.Same steady, measuring calm.The same thin scar beneath the jawline, half-hidden in shadow.Adrian’s instincts detonated—not in alarm, not in threat—but in recognition so deep it bypassed thought entirely. His body reacted first. Muscles aligned. Breathing slowed. Heart rate stabilized as if a missing rhythm had finally returned.The man spoke his name softly, and it landed like a key turning in a lock.“Adrian… we have very little time.”The voice wasn’t commanding. It wasn’t gentle either. It carried something far older—certainty without arrogance, authority without cruelty. A voice that didn’t need to raise itself to be obeyed.Adrian took one step forward before he realized he’d moved.“Who are you?” he asked
CH. 119 — Beneath the Ruins
The world does not slow down for the dead.Adrian doesn’t bury Selene.There is no grave, no marker, no words spoken over her body. The safehouse is already ash by the time the sun rises, and Imperium satellites will be watching the blast radius for signs of ritual or mourning. He learned long ago that grief is a signal. Signals get you killed.So he moves.Purpose replaces pain with a brutal efficiency that feels almost merciful.He strips Selene of anything useful before the fires fully take the structure—an old data sliver embedded in her wrist, a cracked comm bead, a thin metal disk etched with frequencies that shouldn’t exist anymore. Ghost-level fragments. Things she carried not to survive, but to pass on.Zara watches him from a distance, wrapped in smoke and shock, saying nothing. She’s learned that when Adrian goes quiet like this, words bounce off him. His eyes are open, focused, cold—but not empty.Not yet.Hours later, deep underground, Adrian assembles the fragments.He d
CH. 118 — The Last Whisper
The first shot came through the window before the alarms finished waking up.Glass didn’t shatter—it imploded, collapsing inward in a silent bloom of razor shards. Adrian’s instincts flared white-hot, a spike of certainty screaming down, left, now. He moved on reflex, twisting, dragging Selene with him as the second round punched through the wall where her head had been a heartbeat earlier.Too late.The sound arrived after the damage—crack, sharp and clinical, the signature of a long rifle firing from distance. Not the Black Choir. Not Vaelor. This was cleaner. Colder. Imperium elite.“Contact!” Zara shouted, already firing back, her rounds chewing into the far building across the street. “Sniper team—rooftop and west!”The safehouse detonated into chaos. Lights blew. Sprinklers screamed. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling like ash.Selene sagged in Adrian’s grip.He felt it before he saw it—the sudden, wrong weight, the way her body resisted gravity a fraction longer than it shou
CH. 117 — The Truth She Never Told
The safehouse smelled like antiseptic and old dust—too clean, too still. Adrian stood by the narrow window, watching the street through cracked blinds as rain traced thin lines down the glass. Every drop felt loud. Every shadow felt intentional.Behind him, Selene lay on a metal table, her breathing shallow, uneven. Zara worked with trembling hands, sealing wounds, injecting coagulants scavenged from half a dozen raids. It wasn’t enough. They all knew it.Adrian felt it most of all.His instincts wouldn’t shut up.Something was coming.“You’re losing her,” Zara whispered, voice tight with fury and fear.Selene’s lips curved faintly. “I was lost a long time ago.”Adrian turned. His face was unreadable now—no rage, no softness. Just focus. That frightened Selene more than any threat the Imperium had ever made.“How long?” he asked quietly.Selene’s eyes flicked to him. Still sharp. Still calculating, even now.“How long what?”“How long have you been running from them.”A weak laugh esc
CH. 116 — Blood on the Doorstep
Dawn arrived without warmth.The safehouse sat half-buried in fog, a concrete shell squatting at the edge of the industrial district where the city forgot itself. Broken rail lines rusted nearby. Windows were bricked over. No signals. No names. Just silence—and the constant, low hum of Adrian’s instincts, never fully asleep anymore.Zara noticed it first.Not the sound. The absence of it.Birds should have been waking. Wind should have rattled loose metal. Instead, the world held its breath.Adrian was already standing when the first alarm flickered to life.He hadn’t been resting. He hadn’t been pacing either. He stood near the reinforced door, head tilted slightly, eyes unfocused—as if listening to something no one else could hear.“Someone’s here,” he said.His voice was calm. Flat. That frightened Zara more than panic ever could.Selene had warned them once: when his instincts stop sounding urgent, that’s when he’s most dangerous.Zara reached for her weapon. “Choir?”“No,” Adrian
CH. 115 — Escape as a Weapon (Barely Human)
The marble hall was dying.Not collapsing—dying—as if the structure itself understood it had failed its masters. Fire blossomed along the gilded ribs of the ceiling. Alarm sigils burned crimson across the walls, their harmonic wails clashing with the deeper thrum of containment engines spinning up beneath the floor.Adrian stood at the center of it all.Calm.Too calm.Bodies lay scattered around him—Vaelor guards in fractured silver armor, limbs bent at impossible angles, weapons crushed as if by invisible hands. The air shimmered where sonic nets had torn apart, their frequencies screaming into nothing as his instincts tore through them like paper.He didn’t breathe hard.He didn’t rush.He moved—with purpose.Another squad burst through a collapsing archway, gravity-laced rifles snapping into firing position. Adrian’s vision split—not into fear, but into paths. Dozens of them. Branching possibilities blooming and collapsing in the space between heartbeats.Left step. Drop shoulder.
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