2026-07-16 13:09:31The key to bringing down a tower from below is to sever the supply to its foundation.
Six hours after the clinic raid, Axel stood within the Sub Sector 4 buffer district, a logistics transit zone where Eternity Corp stockpiled raw Time Core reserves before shipping them to the Upper District. The air here was heavy with the mist of liquid nitrogen coolant, and the perimeter was heavily fortified by high-voltage electric fencing. 29 Days, 12 Hours, 40 Minutes.
Axel adjusted the positioning of the tactical blade concealed beneath the sleeve of his black tactical frock coat. Beside him, Rhea was busy bypassing the outer control panel using a portable cyber-deck. The atmosphere between them remained suffocatingly tense ever since the truth at the clinic had unraveled that night. Rhea stole glances at him several times, her lips parting as if she wanted to say something, but Axel remained stone-faced, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
“Perimeter encryption bypassed,” Rhea whispered, wiping the sweat from her brow. “The logistics sector gate will remain open for exactly forty seconds. Axel... about Angga and the bank script, ”
“Save it for later,” Axel cut her off coldly. He adjusted the high collar of his tightly buttoned tactical coat. “Focus on your mission. The moment I’m inside, lock the gate from the outside and standby at the evacuation point.”
Before Rhea could argue, the steel door ahead hissed open. Axel moved like a dark shadow, slipping into a massive logistics hall filled with thousands of glass cylinders glowing with a silvery, liquefied time.
Axel’s plan was calculated with absolute precision: he hadn't come to steal lifespan for himself. He had come to detonate this sub-sector’s main distribution tank, cutting off the flow of lifespan to the Upper District, and forcing his father to scatter his forces.
Moving efficiently through the storage corridors, Axel neutralized two patrolling guards from behind with silent chokeholds, refusing to waste a single bullet. However, the moment he stepped into the main tank control room, his footsteps ground to a sudden halt.
In the center of the room, positioned directly beneath a single, harsh spotlight, sat a steel chair. Strapped to it was an emaciated old man, his entire body trembling violently.
“M-Marcus?” Axel gripped his weapon tighter, his eyes widening.
The old man raised his head with immense effort. His face was etched with deep wrinkles, and his hair had turned entirely snow-white. Axel knew him, Marcus was the former commander of the Liquidator division, the very mentor who had taught Axel everything about combat tactics and infiltration. He was the man Axel considered a surrogate father.
Strapped to Marcus’s chest was a high-tech automated extractor, relentlessly siphoning away his remaining lifespan at a agonizingly slow rate. The digital clock on Marcus’s wrist spun backward brutally: 00 Days, 00 Hours, 08 Minutes.
“Axel... you... shouldn’t have come here,” Marcus’s voice dragged out, raspy and broken.
A massive monitor on the control room wall suddenly flared to life. Adrian Vance’s face reappeared on the screen, bearing an expression of utter boredom.
“I told you, Axel. I know all your moves because I am the one who designed your patterns,” Adrian said from behind the glass. “You targeted this logistics tank to force me into negotiations. A highly tactical move, yet entirely predictable.”
“Let Marcus go, Adrian!” Axel snarled. His breath hitched as the searing pain of Chronos Decay flared in his chest, triggered by the surge of raw emotion.
“I am not holding him. You are holding him here,” Adrian countered cruelly. “Marcus is guilty of hiding the backup blueprints of your emergency system fifteen years ago. I offer you a deal: surrender yourself within these three minutes, and I will deactivate the extractor and restore his lifespan. If not... you will watch your beloved mentor die as a direct result of your own choice.”
Axel’s inner monologue spun into a chaotic frenzy. This was the cost of his rebellion. Every single time he attempted to make a move, Adrian would systematically crush the people he held dear. His father wasn't using bullets to break him; the sociopath was weaponizing guilt to shatter his mind.
“Axel... don’t,” Marcus coughed, spitting a trace of dark fluid from his mouth. “Don’t go back to that tower... if you surrender... he will use your mind to enslave this entire city forever. Destroy it... destroy the tank...” 00 Days, 00 Hours, 03 Minutes.
“Time is ticking, Axel,” Adrian said in a casual drawl, counting down the seconds with total indifference.
Axel stepped forward, his hands hovering over the emergency console. He could hack the extractor, but Adrian’s security protocols would require at least five minutes to breach, time Marcus simply did not have. The choice before him was binary: surrender and become a corporate slave once more, or forge ahead with his destruction at the cost of his mentor’s life. 00 Days, 00 Hours, 01 Minute.
“I’m sorry, Axel... finish this war,” Marcus whispered with the last shred of his strength.
The digital timer on Marcus’s wrist struck 00:00:00.
Instantly, the old man’s body seized. His skin withered, and the light in his eyes faded into absolute vacancy as the machine ripped away the final remnants of his consciousness. Marcus died right before Axel’s eyes, becoming yet another casualty of Eternity Corp’s tyranny.
Axel froze in place. The silence inside the room grew suffocating. On the monitor, Adrian merely let out a soft, dismissive grunt.
“A pity. You chose the hard way, my son.”
The monitor cut to black. Simultaneously, the security alarms across the entire logistics complex blared to life, followed by the heavy, rhythmic thud of hundreds of enforcement reinforcements closing in on the building.
Axel didn't move for several seconds. He lowered his head, his grip on his mother’s silver necklace inside his coat pocket tightening so fiercely that its sharp edges dug deep into his palm. The profound grief vanished from his expression, instantly replaced by a terrifying, absolute emotional void.
He had failed to save his mentor tonight. But this failure would not bring him to his knees. Instead, it tore away the very last shred of humanity he held for his father.
Axel turned around, unclipped a kinetic bomb from his tactical belt, and slapped it directly onto the core of the main logistics tank. He stared at the exit doors, which were already being peppered with warning laser fire.
“Rhea,” Axel spoke into his earpiece, his voice deathly calm, yet carrying a lethal chill. “Open the back gate. I’m carving my way out through a pile of corpses.”
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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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