2025-11-20 23:17:30Smoke swirled through the shattered remains of the compound, thick enough to sting Adrian’s eyes. His heartbeat was still hammering from the blast—too loud, too fast—but the moment he heard the crunch of boots approaching, everything inside him went still.
Survival over panic. Instinct over memory.
Three men in black tactical gear moved between the flaming debris. Their rifles swept in slow, precise arcs.
“Clear sector three,” one hissed into his comm. “Target might still be alive.”
Target.
Adrian pressed his back against a broken concrete pillar, breathing through his teeth. He didn’t know who they were, but every bone in his body screamed they weren’t here to rescue anyone.
He heard a second voice—sharper, impatient.
“Orders are confirmed. Kill on sight. The boss says he caused the explosion.”
Adrian’s stomach twisted. Caused it? Me?
Another explosion of memory-less void hit him—he didn’t even know what happened ten minutes ago. But blaming him? That meant someone wanted him erased.
The closest hitman stepped over a burning plank, scanning the rubble. His shadow crawled across Adrian’s hiding place.
Too close.
Way too close.
Adrian felt something—an instinctive ripple through his nerves. Not fear. Something violent, something cold, something calculated.
The hitman leaned forward.
Now.
Adrian snapped out from behind the pillar and rammed his elbow into the man’s throat. The hitman gagged, dropped his rifle, and stumbled back. Adrian didn’t hesitate—he grabbed the man’s head and slammed it into the jagged edge of a broken wall.
The man went limp, blood streaking down the concrete.
Adrian froze, staring at the body.
His first thought wasn’t shock.
Or regret.
It was: How did I know exactly what to do?
The other two hitmen whipped around.
“Contact! Contact! He’s still here!”
Bullets tore into the rubble, shards flying. Adrian ducked behind a fallen steel girder, panting, adrenaline roaring through him.
“Spread out,” one growled. “He doesn’t leave this place alive.”
Adrian grabbed the dead man’s pistol. His hands weren’t shaking—they were steady. Too steady, like they’d done this a thousand times.
What kind of man am I?
He peeked out.
The hitmen were closing in from two sides.
He had three bullets in the pistol.
Three breathes.
Two enemies.
One way out.
Adrian exhaled slowly and stepped into view, firing twice in quick succession. One bullet clipped a man’s shoulder; the other slammed into his leg, dropping him with a cry.
The last assassin dove behind an overturned SUV and opened fire, bullets whistling past Adrian’s head so close he felt the heat.
He ducked and rolled behind a chunk of collapsed ceiling.
“Bastard!” the hitman shouted. “Why’d you kill them? Trying to cover your tracks?!”
Adrian’s jaw clenched.
I don’t even know who I am right now.
He crawled forward, gun ready, senses stretching around him like invisible wires.
Then—
A faint sound.
A breath of gravel shifting.
Adrian spun and fired—
The last assassin dropped.
Silence.
Just crackling flames and Adrian’s ragged breathing.
He wiped sweat and dust from his face. Blood—some his, most not—streaked his arms. He forced himself to focus.
Someone had sent them.
Someone had framed him.
Someone wanted him dead.
But why?
He took one step forward—
—and f
roze.
A tiny red dot glowed on his chest.
Perfectly centered.
Steady.
Unmistakable.
A sniper’s laser.
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Chapter 146 — Silent Expansion
The city did not know it was being claimed.That was the point.At exactly 02:00 across three major metropolitan zones—Helix Prime, Marrowfall, and the lower rings of Corinth Reach—systems flickered, doors opened, routes shifted, and power changed hands without a single broadcast, explosion, or declaration.No banners were raised.No territory was marked.No leader stepped forward.Yet by dawn, the underworld in all three cities felt the same pressure in their lungs—the sense that something vast had moved while everyone was asleep.Deep beneath the surface, in a chamber without insignia or name, Adrian stood before a living map.It wasn’t a hologram in the traditional sense. It was predictive—probability layered over geography, intent bleeding into motion. Streets glowed faintly as data streamed in, nodes activating one by one like quiet stars.Green.Amber.Then steady black.Cells.Not armies. Not gangs. Cells.Each one small. Disposable if necessary. Each one operating without know
Ch. 145 — First Counterstrike
The safehouse was meant to be invisible.No flags. No signatures. No patterns the Imperium could read. A hollowed logistics node buried beneath a shuttered desalination plant, its heat masked, its signal footprint drowned in industrial noise. The Black Hand had used it twice—never long enough to matter.Which was exactly why Adrian had chosen it.The attack came just before dawn.Not with chaos, not with bravado—but with discipline.Power cut first. Clean. Surgical. The kind of blackout that slid in quietly, like a held breath. Backup generators kicked on a half-second later, exactly as designed. Motion sensors woke. Doors sealed. The safehouse went from sleep to alert in a single, fluid transition.Three seconds after that, the outer wall folded inward.Not exploded. Folded.Shaped charges—precise, minimal, professional—peeled steel away from concrete without collapsing the structure. Smoke rolled in low and fast, engineered to confuse optics, not lungs. Figures moved through it with
Chapter 144 — Ten Families Take Notice
They did not meet in one place. That alone told the story.Ten families—some older than the Imperium itself, others born in its shadow—linked their council through mirrored rooms and encrypted glass. Each patriarch, matriarch, or appointed mouthpiece sat alone at a long table that did not exist, staring into a projection that rendered the others as silhouettes trimmed in faint gold.No names were spoken. No banners displayed. Tradition stripped bare by fear.The first voice broke the silence, gravelly with age and smoke.“This is no longer coincidence.”A data-stream unfolded in the air between them—loss reports cascading like falling ash.Drug corridors erased.Casino networks silenced.Arms shipments vanishing without breach or theft.Each incident, isolated, could have been blamed on rivals or bad luck. Together, they formed a pattern so precise it felt intentional in a way crime rarely was.A campaign.Another figure leaned forward, rings glinting. “We’ve survived purges. We’ve su
Ch. 143 — Weapon Ghosts
The first truck arrived at dawn.It rolled through the eastern checkpoint like it always did—dust-stained, engine coughing, seals unbroken. The driver handed over his papers with shaking hands, not because he was scared, but because he was confused. He had driven the route a hundred times. Same roads. Same fuel stops. Same radio chatter buzzing in his ear like a heartbeat.Nothing had gone wrong.That was the problem.The gate lifted. The truck crawled into the depot. Men with rifles fanned out, alert but bored, their boots crunching gravel. One of them slapped the container door, listening for the hollow reassurance of steel packed tight.“Open it,” the foreman said.The seals were intact. Serial numbers matched the manifest. No scratches. No tampering.They cut it open anyway.The doors swung wide.Silence followed.Inside the container, rows of foam cradles stared back at them—perfectly molded, perfectly empty. No rifles. No crates. No ammunition cases. Just clean, gray foam, shape
Ch. 142 — Casino Silence
The blackout hit at exactly 02:17.Not a second earlier. Not a second late.Three cities, three casinos, three towers of glass and velvet that had never known true darkness—until the lights died like a held breath finally released.In Virelli Bay, the roulette wheels froze mid-spin. The ball clicked once, softly, then stopped as if confused. Slot machines went silent in a chorus of dead screens. The chandeliers above the main floor flickered, dimmed, and vanished, leaving the room lit only by emergency strips along the carpeted aisles.In North Meridian, a high-stakes poker room full of men who believed money made them untouchable stared at their own reflections in blackened screens. Cards lay face-down, forgotten. One man laughed nervously. Another checked his phone. No signal.In the inland capital, the third casino—older, uglier, more dangerous—lost power so completely the river outside seemed to swallow the building whole. Even the neon sign died without a flicker.Security rushed
Ch. 141 — The Drug Route Burn
The corridor had a name on maps that never existed.The Spine.It ran like a dark artery through ports, highways, storage depots, and river crossings—feeding five cities, dozens of syndicates, and a thousand smaller dealers who never knew where the poison truly came from. Cash flowed one way. Destruction flowed the other.Adrian stood over a projected map in the mobile underground base as the Spine pulsed in red. Every node glowed. Every route branched. Every weakness had already been measured.“Time,” he said.No speeches. No countdowns. Just a word.Across three time zones, the Black Hand moved.At the eastern port, night cranes froze mid-swing as power died in precise sections—never the whole grid, never enough to trigger emergency alarms. Containers were opened not with explosives, but with keys copied weeks earlier. Inside were sealed drums and vacuum-packed bricks stamped with chemical codes instead of names.Black Hand operatives worked in silence. Masks. Gloves. Neutralizing a
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