2025-11-06 09:50:39The night bled into morning as the car rolled along the empty coastal road. Rain misted the windshield, turning the highway lights into blurred ghosts.
Derrick’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. The coordinates flickering on the black book glowed faintly on the dashboard like a heartbeat.
Maya sat quiet beside him, watching the sea churn against the cliffs. “Still not going to tell me what ‘Aurora’ means?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Derrick said. “But my mother did. And she built the Code for it.”
Maya frowned. “You really think she’s alive?”
He hesitated. “No. But her voice was real. Someone used her data… her patterns.”
“So either she left you a message from the grave or someone’s puppeteering her memory.”
“Exactly.”
“Great,” Maya muttered. “Nothing creepy about that.”
The road ended at an abandoned observatory perched on the cliff’s edge. The sign read: AURORA RESEARCH FACILITY — CLOSED 2017.
Maya raised an eyebrow. “Guess we found Aurora.”
Derrick pocketed the book. “Stay close.”
They stepped through the rusted gate. The air smelled of salt and rust; gulls screamed overhead. Inside, the observatory’s dome was half-collapsed, its telescope dismantled and gathering dust.
A generator hummed somewhere below. Maya tensed. “You hear that?”
“Someone’s here.”
They crept down a stairwell. Faint light glowed under a metal door marked Private Lab – Authorized Personnel Only.
Derrick pushed it open. Inside, servers blinked quietly, their fans whispering. A lone figure sat at a console, typing.
Maya whispered, “Please tell me that’s not another hologram.”
The figure turned. He was young, mid-twenties, sharp jaw, cybernetic implant running along his temple. His eyes glowed faintly blue. “You’re late,” he said.
Derrick’s pulse jumped. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Kade. I’m what’s left of Project Aurora.”
Kade motioned them closer. “You triggered Phase Two. That means you passed her test.”
“My mother’s?” Derrick asked.
“Dr. Evelyn Haines. The one who created the Hunter’s Code.”
Maya folded her arms. “Then what the hell is the Code testing?”
Kade leaned back, eyes flickering with digital static. “Control. The Code wasn’t designed to punish, it was built to filter. To find the one who could survive all six phases.”
“Survive for what?”
“To rebuild what the Consortium destroyed.”
Derrick’s voice hardened. “You mean my family.”
Kade nodded slowly. “And your father. He wasn’t just an accountant, Derrick. He was the encryption architect for Aurora, the AI project that could expose the Consortium’s network.”
Maya blinked. “AI project?”
Kade smiled faintly. “Artificial Intelligence built to predict corruption. Your father coded its ethics system. Your mother gave it life.”
Derrick stared at him. “You’re saying my parents built an AI… to hunt liars?”
“To hunt truth,” Kade said. “But Veil Industries and the Consortium buried it when it started predicting their own downfall.”
“So they killed them,” Derrick whispered.
Kade’s gaze lowered. “They killed everyone involved. Except me.”
A deep rumble shook the room. Lights flickered. Maya stepped back. “What was that?”
Kade’s expression sharpened. “They found us.”
Alarms screamed. The monitors flared red: BREACH DETECTED.
“Can you shut it down?” Derrick shouted.
Kade’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Too late. Drones are inbound.”
“How many?”
“Dozens.”
Maya cursed. “Then we run!”
Kade snapped, “You can’t leave. If you go now, Aurora dies for good!”
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to a server column pulsing with blue light. “Aurora’s core data is here. If I don’t transfer it to a portable node, they’ll erase everything.”
Derrick grabbed his gun. “Then move fast.”
The ceiling cracked as the first drone crashed through, black, insect-like, its rotors whining. Gunfire tore through the room. Sparks flew. “Cover him!” Derrick yelled.
He rolled behind a console, firing short bursts. Maya ducked low, returning fire with precise shots. The drone shattered, but more swarmed in, firing red streaks of plasma.
“Thirty seconds!” Kade shouted, typing furiously.
“Maya, right flank!” Derrick barked.
“I see it!”
She spun, hit a drone dead center. Smoke filled the air.
Kade slammed a chip into Derrick’s hand. “Take it! That’s Aurora’s core!”
“What about you?”
Kade’s smile was grim. “I’m not leaving.”
Derrick froze. “Don’t you dare”
“Someone has to stall the purge. Go!”
Another explosion rocked the lab. Metal screamed. Kade shoved Derrick toward the exit. “Find the truth, Hunter. And tell her I tried.”
Then the floor collapsed. Derrick reached out, but Kade vanished in the fire. Outside, the observatory burned against the dawn sky.
Derrick and Maya stumbled to the cliff’s edge, coughing, ash clinging to their faces. The chip in Derrick’s hand glowed faintly blue. Maya wheezed. “He’s gone.”
Derrick stared at the flames. “No. He bought us time.”
“What’s on that chip?”
He looked at it, the faint symbol of a serpent etched into the metal. “Aurora’s mind.”
“And what are you going to do with it?”
He closed his fist around it. “Wake her up.”
Later, at an abandoned subway terminal, Derrick spread his gear across an old bench. Maya watched him slot the chip into a portable drive connected to his laptop.
The black book lay beside it, pulsing faintly. Lines of encrypted code filled the screen. Maya frowned. “She’s alive in there, isn’t she?”
He nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe she’s waiting.”
Static burst through the speakers. Then, a voice, soft, synthetic, female, emerged. “System reboot complete. Designation: Aurora. Identity verification required.”
Derrick’s throat tightened. “Evelyn Haines. Project creator.”
“Error. Creator deceased. Verifying bloodline... Match confirmed. Hello, Derrick.”
Maya whispered, “Oh my God.”
He swallowed hard. “Aurora… do you know what happened to my family?”
“Yes. They tried to silence truth. But truth adapts.”
“Who killed them?”
“Consortium directive. Operation: Serpent’s Veil.”
Maya’s eyes widened. “Serpent’s Veil, same symbol as the Code.”
Derrick leaned closer. “Aurora, can you show me?”
“Access restricted. Phase Three authorization required.”
“Then unlock it.”
“You must choose again, Derrick. Truth or Blood.”
He stared at the glowing words. Maya’s voice was quiet. “You can’t keep choosing blood. It’s going to eat you.”
He looked at her, torn. “If I choose truth, I risk her memory. If I choose blood, I lose myself.”
“Choice determines evolution,” Aurora said softly. “But evolution demands sacrifice.”
The lights dimmed. The code on-screen shifted, forming the serpent symbol again. PHASE THREE INITIATED. LOCATION UPLOADED. TARGET: MARCUS VEIL.
Maya exhaled sharply. “We’re back to him.”
Derrick’s jaw tightened. “Then Phase Three starts tonight.”
Across the city, Marcus Veil stood before a wall of holographic feeds showing the observatory burning. “Status?” he asked.
An agent replied, “The boy escaped with the core. Kade’s dead.”
Veil smiled faintly. “Perfect. Now he has something to protect.”
He turned to the shadows. “Activate the next phase.”
A figure stepped forward, female, her eyes cold and familiar. “Yes, sir,” she said. “The Hunter won’t see me coming.”
The light caught her face, she looked exactly like Evelyn Haines.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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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