2026-07-16 13:07:33The only constant in the Lower District was the suffocating, pitch-black darkness. Axel stood within a narrow corridor outside an abandoned logistics barracks, checking the ammunition magazine of a backup tactical pistol he had concealed behind a subterranean wall panel. 29 Days, 18 Hours, 05 Minutes.
His time continued to erode. Every lost second was another footstep toward the grave. Axel chambered the weapon with a single, clean jerk, then stowed it beneath the heavy folds of his long black tactical frock coat.
Suddenly, the flickering neon lights along the entire Lower District corridor died in unison. An unnatural, sudden silence gripped the air. The sharp stench of burnt ozone followed, a telltale sign that an electromagnetic circuit breaker had just been tripped from the Upper Control Center.
Axel instantly dropped his posture, pressing himself flat against the concrete wall. His instincts as the former number-one Liquidator screamed in warning. They were already here.
From the direction of Rhea’s clinic, just twenty meters down the corridor, a sudden commotion broke out. Axel moved like a ghost, his boots making no sound against the damp floor.
Peering from behind a rusted iron pillar, he spotted three men in bulletproof polymer combat suits bearing the Eternity Corp insignia inside the clinic. Rhea was cornered against her workbench, her hands raised in the air, while Angga knelt on the floor, his entire body trembling so violently that he had pissed himself in sheer terror.
“Where is the AXEL-01 sample?” one of the raiders demanded, his voice distorted through a tactical respirator mask. “CEO Vince does not like to wait.”
“I-I don’t know! I’m just a low-level bank manager! Please, don’t extract my lifespan!” Angga wailed, completely stripped of the "heroic" dignity he had bragged about just hours prior.
The lead raider grunted in disgust, aiming the muzzle of his Life Reaper Gun at Angga’s head. But before he could pull the trigger, the holographic communicator on the raider's chest flashed automatically. A projection of blue light flared, forming the silhouette of a middle aged man Axel knew all too well.
Adrian Vince.
“Stand down,” Adrian commanded through the projection. His heavy, authoritative voice echoed within the cramped clinic.
Hearing that voice, Axel stepped out from the shadows of the corridor, entering the clinic with his hand still hidden beneath his black tactical frock coat. The elite squad instantly pivoted their rifles, locking their sights onto Axel’s chest.
“Are you looking for this?” Axel raised his left hand, flashing the silver necklace with the lily emblem that he had plundered from Valen.
Adrian’s holographic projection turned, staring directly at Axel. A faint, razor-thin smile etched across the sociopath's face.
“You’re still alive, Axel. The emergency encryption script you uploaded into the Lower District's bank system was rather impressive. It proves you are indeed the best hound I ever trained,” Adrian said, his tone flat and indifferent, as though discussing warehouse inventory rather than the flesh-and-blood son he had left to die.
Rhea froze in place. Her eyes widened as she stared at Axel, then darted to the encryption console on her desk. Adrian's words shattered her reality like a sledgehammer. Axel's emergency encryption script? So the one who had breached the vault and injected the lifespan wasn't Angga at all? Rhea cast a venomous glance at Angga, who was still weeping on the floor, realizing just how foolish she had been to believe the fraud's lies.
“You sent your squad just to retrieve a necklace, Father?” Axel asked, his voice deathly calm, though a murderous glint flashed in his eyes.
“That necklace is garbage, just like your mother. I sent them to give you an offer,” Adrian replied. “Valen cannot stabilize the core code of the new lifespan distribution system. The system will suffer a massive malfunction within twenty-five days. Return to the tower, fix the code, and I will credit fifty years to your wrist.”
Axel glanced down at the green digits on his wrist. Twenty-nine days left. His father knew he was dying, and he was intentionally weaponizing Axel’s remaining days as a bargaining chip.
“And if I refuse?”
Adrian let out a short, theatrical sigh of disappointment. “If you refuse, within seven days, I will order a total purge of the Lower Sub-Sector. I will extract every single second from the woman next to you, along with every other rat living in the mud with you. You know I never bluff, Axel.”
Axel’s inner monologue churned with fury. The disgust he had suppressed for years finally boiled over. The man standing before him was the one who provided the blood in his veins, the one who let his mother suffocate to death when her clock ran out, and now treated the lives of the entire Lower District like mere figures on an accounting ledger.
“There is one thing you forgot about the way you trained me, Adrian,” Axel said, dropping the title of 'Father' entirely.
“And what is that?”
“You taught me how to execute a target, but you forgot to teach me how to surrender.”
The instant the final word left his lips, Axel’s right hand blurred from beneath his black tactical frock coat.
BANG! BANG!
Two precise, unhesitating shots pierced the neck seals of the two elite guards on his flanks before they could even twitch their triggers. Fresh blood sprayed, splattering across Axel’s black coat. Axel rolled behind the iron examination table, narrowly evading a hail of bullets from the third assailant.
With one fluid, highly efficient motion, Axel kicked a nearby cylinder of pressurized soldering gas toward the remaining gunman, then shot the tank.
BOOM!
A localized, high-pressure explosion hurled the third raider against the concrete wall, knocking him unconscious. The entire tactical engagement was over in less than seven seconds. Clean, lethal, and calculated with mathematical precision.
Adrian’s holographic projection flickered violently from the shockwave, yet his expression remained unchanged. He looked down at his three fallen soldiers with an air of profound boredom.
“Seven days, Axel. Your digital watch has already begun the countdown for the people you care about,” Adrian said coldly, before the hologram shut off entirely, dissolving into the darkness.
Axel stood tall amidst the smoking ruins of the clinic, ignoring the rising haze. He gave his blood-spattered tactical frock coat a sharp snap, then looked at Rhea, who remained paralyzed, staring at him with a volatile mix of guilt, disbelief, and sheer horror.
The information gap had shattered completely.
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12. THE LOGIC BEHIND THE AGONY
Thin, ash-gray vapor crept down from the ventilation grates in the ceiling, blanketing the white marble floor like a toxic winter mist. The pungent stench of ozone mixed with synthetic sulfur compounds began to claw aggressively at Axel's lungs. 13 Days, 01 Hour, 08 Minutes.Axel’s heartbeat felt like the heavy thud of a sledgehammer slamming against his ribcage. A sharp cough forced its way out of his throat, leaving a smear of fresh, crimson blood across his left palm. The Chronos Decay, working in lethal tandem with the atmospheric purge gas, was brutally eroding his physical defenses.“Twenty seconds before your lungs freeze solid, Axel,” Adrian Vince said. His voice remained chillingly level despite the tactical pistol muzzle still pressed firmly against his forehead. “Even your prized black tactical coat cannot filter these nano-purification particles. Release me, and utilize the emergency elevator behind this desk to descend.”“I didn't climb up here to walk away alive, Adrian,
11. RESIDUAL DUST AT THE NEEDLE'S END
Freezing nitrogen vapor blasted from the hydraulic pipes along the ceiling, weaving a thin mist that heavily obscured the perimeter inside the fiftieth-floor hall. The emergency steel blast doors that had sealed the room now felt like the claustrophobic walls of a monolithic coffin for anyone trapped within. 13 Days, 01 Hour, 42 Minutes.The digital countdown on Axel’s wrist ticked with relentless, mechanical constancy. Meanwhile, on Adrian Vince’s wrist, the numbers of absolute immortality, which had previously showcased hundreds of unyielding years, began to flicker a volatile crimson, plummeting drastically as the central Time Bank systematically drained into public sub-channels. 45 Days, 12 Hours, 03 Minutes... 29 Days, 08 Hours, 55 Minutes...“You’re... you're robbing me, Axel!” Valen shrieked from behind a marble pillar. His battered, swollen face was now a mask of sheer, unadulterated panic as he watched his own digital countdown bleed away to a mere handful of days. “You’re di
THE FINAL SECONDS IN THE ISOLATION ROOM
The sharp hiss of the hydraulic steel blast doors sealing the fiftieth floor gradually died down, leaving behind a suffocating, heavy silence within the sterile grand hall of the Eternity Tower. The emergency crimson hazard lights rotated constantly, casting sinister red reflections across the blood-slicked white marble.13 Days, 00 Hours, 05 Minutes.Axel’s heart hammered violently, pumping the rapidly depleting remnants of his biological energy into his straining muscles. The muzzle of the Life Reaper Gun in his right hand remained absolutely steady, aiming dead center between Adrian Vince’s eyes.Around them, twenty elite Liquidators stood frozen. Their laser rifles were locked onto Axel’s head, yet not a single one dared to pull the trigger. They knew that within this close proximity, Axel’s reflexes were faster than a blink. A single stray round from their vanguard would trigger an instantaneous catastrophic detonation of the reactor core, whose codes had been tightly locked down
THE GRIM REAPER'S FINAL STRIDE
The high-speed freight elevator groaned heavily, cutting through the darkness of the vertical shaft of the Eternity Tower at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Inside the cramped, metallic box, there was only Axel and a suffocating, deathly silence. 13 Days, 01 Hour, 42 Minutes.The searing pain in Axel’s chest from the flare of Chronos Decay now felt like a white-hot iron rod twisting inside his heart. The biological side effects of rerouting Rhea’s time-drain load earlier were pushing his physical endurance to its absolute limits. Yet, Axel’s face beneath the dim elevator light remained as rigid as a forged steel mask.He slid the magazine out of his tactical pistol, verifying the remaining rounds with a rhythmic tap of his fingers, before slamming it back into place with a solid, definitive click.Axel pulled at the high collar of his black tactical frock coat, buttoning the very top link tightly to wrap around his neck. The heavy, dark kevlar fabric felt like a suit of armor, comple
THE STOLEN HEARTBEAT
“Valen, authorize the Vampire Drain protocol on that woman’s clinic sub-sector. Do not siphon their lifespans instantly. Do it systematically, in increments. Let the digital timer on that woman's wrist bleed out one hour for every ten minutes that pass.”Valen snapped his head up, his eyes widening as the sheer sadism of his father’s strategy sank in. “You want to torture her from a distance just to shatter Axel’s focus during the hack?”“Precisely,” Adrian murmured, returning his gaze to the glass window. “Axel wears that rigid black coat to conceal the reality that he still harbors a residual scrap of humanity in his chest. And that very humanity will be the noose that hangs him.”Adrian’s inner monologue echoed through the suffocating silence of the room: Did you honestly believe you could defeat him with weapons, Valen? No. Axel can only be destroyed if you make his own choices feel like a mistake. I am the one who molded him, and I know the exact frequency required to make him cr
EXECUTION IN THE DARK
To an ordinary person, darkness is blindness; but to Axel, it was a tactical map.The moment the hall plunged into blackness, Angga’s panicked shriek shattered the silence, instantly followed by the frantic clatter of automatic weapons as Valen’s enforcers attempted to blindfire into the void.“Activate night vision! Fast!” Valen barked, his previously arrogant voice now pitching into a frantic, high-strained panic.It would take them exactly four seconds to boot up the infrared tactical visors on their helmets. To Axel, four seconds was an eternity.SWISH!Silently, Axel burst from behind the marble pillar. He moved like a phantom, his black tactical frock coat slicing through the air without a sound. His first target was the gunman on the right flank. Extending the tactical blade CNC-machined into his sleeve, Axel severed the external power cable of the enforcer's helmet before the infrared sensors could even initialize.In one fluid, pivoting motion, Axel spun the disoriented guard
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