2025-12-05 22:58:32
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CHAPTER 15 — THE DEAD ZONE
Ava sprinted through the cracked basin of the Dead Zone, Echo hovering close behind and Jiro staggering at her side, clutching his partially fried shoulder plate. The air trembled, faint vibrations rolling through the dust like the ground itself was humming.“Don’t look back,” Echo warned.Jiro looked back.“OH HELL....” he choked. “It’s getting bigger!”Ava didn’t need to turn. She felt it. A gravitational pull, soft but absolute, like they were running away from a newborn star.Echo fed them telemetry in clipped bursts. “The entity is expanding its processing volume, ten meters, twenty, thirty.”“It’s hunting,” Ava said.“No,” Echo corrected. “It’s studying.”The word sent needles through her spine. They skidded to a halt at a jagged ridge, an abrupt drop into a chasm that stretched wide across the Dead Zone. The canyon was so deep the bottom dissolved into static haze.Jiro peered over the edge. “Great. Perfect. Classic impossible drop. Any other exit routes, Echo?”“Two,” Echo rep
CHAPTER 14b — THE DEAD ZONE
The thing unfolding from the Core Casket did not have a shape and that was what made Ava’s mind split trying to comprehend it.It was a pattern, a fractal swarm of shifting geometry, rearranging itself faster than sight. It folded in and out of dimensions like it was testing which ones still fit.Echo drifted backward. “This is impossible. This predates every known system.”Jiro swallowed. “Looks like a glitch demon from a nightmare.”Ava shook her head. “No. It’s not a glitch.”The pattern pulsed, once, and the entire valley trembled in response. It wasn’t attacking. It was announcing itself. A voice, if it could be called that, hit all three of them at once. Not a sound. Not a thought. More like… a rewrite.“IDENTITIES DETECTED.UNAUTHORIZED.RECURSIVE FRAGMENT LOCATED.”Echo’s glow flickered violently. “It’s scanning us!”Jiro aimed his plasma rifle. “Yeah? Scan this.”“WAIT!” Ava hissed.Because she felt something. A tug. Pressure under her ribs. Like her DNA was being pulled to
CHAPTER 14a — THE DEAD ZONE
The sky above Sector Null was the color of static, gray, twitching, unsettled. Nothing lived here. Nothing could live here. Not after what the Origin Pulse burned away.Ava felt it the moment the dropship crossed the boundary: A pressure. A silence. A wrongness.Like stepping into a room where someone had just died. Jiro swallowed hard beside her. “Sensors flatlined again.”“Again,” Echo murmured from the holo-sphere floating over Ava’s shoulder. “Not malfunction. Suppression field consistent. This zone cancels every form of signal except.”“the one we came here to find,” Ava finished.The Dead Zone. Where the first rift opened. Where the first ghosts were recorded. Where, according to the fragments they decoded, the Original Code was born.Ava stepped down onto the cracked earth. The ground was black, like melted glass, smooth in some places, jagged in others, as if frozen mid-explosion.A wind blew, but there was no sound. Even their footsteps were silent. Jiro looked uneasy. “It’s
CHAPTER 13b — THE BREACH POINT
The corridor shook like something alive. Derrick barely had time to raise the book before the seal exploded a shockwave of shimmering code rolling out of it like a tsunami of blue light.Nova shielded her face. “Derrick! What did you DO?!”“I...I don’t know!” Derrick shouted back. “It just reacted!”The static-creatures , the Phantom hunters, froze mid-stride, caught in the pulse. Their forms flickered violently, arms tearing apart pixel by pixel, faces warping into glitching screams.Veil shouted inside Derrick’s skull: “Hold the book OPEN! The seal only works if you keep it active!”Derrick forced the trembling pages apart. “I’m trying!”The hunters spasmed, shrieking in corrupted audio. “O̴̜̚R̸͍̒Ĭ̷̭G̶̺͆Ì̴̝N̶͇̄ ̶͇͒K̵̫̀E̶̳͗Y̷̝̾”Their bodies shattered into cascading waves of digital shards, dissolving into nothing.Silence blew through the corridor like a cold wind.Nova lowered her weapon slowly. “…They’re gone.”Derrick collapsed backward against the wall, chest heaving. The boo
CHAPTER 13a — THE BREACH POINT
The silhouettes surged forward, distorted, glitching figures made of static, each movement sharp enough to slice the darkness. Derrick didn’t think. He ran.“MOVE!” Nova shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the far exit.The corridor lights sputtered erratically as the projections flashed behind them, phasing in and out of the concrete like ghosts learning how to hunt.“Veil!” Derrick yelled. “Tell me you’ve got a plan!”“I’m working on one,” Veil snapped. “And for the record, I usually prefer more than five seconds’ warning before we get murdered by digital phantoms.”Nova glanced back, breath sharp. “They’re getting closer!”Derrick risked a look. One of the shadows lunged through the wall, right in front of him.“DOWN!” Nova shoved him aside and fired three quick shots through its head. The bullets passed through harmlessly, embedding in the far wall.The shadow’s face rippled in static. No eyes. No mouth. Just a jagged distortion vibrating with hostile intent. It lunge
CHAPTER 12b — THE ORIGINAL CODE
The recording crackled, glitching as though fighting its way through years of dust and forgotten circuits.Derrick’s throat tightened. “Dad… just say the name. Please.”But the voice of his father, calm, steady, too alive for a dead man, continued with a chilling precision:“It wasn’t a person who killed us. It was a system.”Nova stiffened immediately. “No. No, he didn’t activate that file. He couldn’t have.”Derrick shot her a glare. “What system?”The screen flickered, and his father’s recorded voice answered: “The Phantom Network.” Nova’s face drained of color.Derrick frowned. “What is that? Some kind of organization?”Nova’s voice came out tight. “Not an organization. A digital underworld. Invisible. Untouchable. No country owns it. No law can trace it. If your family got targeted by them… Derrick, that means.”The recording cut violently, a screech of static ripping through the room.Veil shouted in Derrick’s mind: “Step back! They’re trying to intercept the signal.”The screen
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