2025-08-03 19:43:52The scent of antiseptic punched Ethan ’s nose the moment he stepped into the emergency ward.
He wasn’t breathing—he couldn’t. “Code Blue in Room 7!” The shout echoed down the corridor like a bullet through his skull. Room 7. His mother’s room. His feet moved on instinct, tearing through nurses, IV poles, and screaming orderlies. His heartbeat thudded like war drums in his ears. Please no… Not her. Not again. Not now. When he slammed through the door, what he saw nearly brought him to his knees. His mother—pale, fragile, the woman who used to sing lullabies through her broken voice—was convulsing. Her IV bag had already been yanked out. Nurses scrambled to resuscitate her. “Ma!” Ethan choked. “What happened to her?!” The head nurse didn’t even look at him. “Get security in here!” Ethan ignored her. “System, save her. Save her now!” [Emergency Medical Protocol Activated.] Analyzing bloodstream… Toxin Detected: Type-C neuroagent. Source: IV fluid. Countermeasure Initiated. Injecting anti-serum via NeuralSync Port. Administering micro-drones for clot reversal and cardiac stabilization. The HUD flashed red and gold in his eyes. His knees hit the cold tile. His hand found hers—cold, trembling, slipping away. “Come on, Ma… Please. Please, don’t leave me. Not after everything. You’re all I have…” Seconds ticked like hours. Her heart monitor shrieked once… then steadied. Again… and steadied more. A nurse gasped. “What the… she’s stabilizing? How?!” Ethan didn’t answer. He just bowed his head, trembling as he whispered against her knuckles, “Thank you… thank you…” [Stabilization Complete. Recommend 48-hour neural observation. Target will survive.] But Ethan ’s eyes were already different. The raw fear was gone. Replaced with something cold. Rage. The kind that doesn’t explode… but simmers. Boils. Evolves. ⸻ He sat alone in the hallway, staring at his hands. They were still shaking. [Source of toxin traced.] Accessing hospital surveillance. Reverse-tracking all movement tied to IV entry.] Match found. Subject: Unlicensed male, approx. 42, disguised as janitor. Affiliation: Brooks Corp Private Black Ops. Ethan didn’t speak for a long moment. Then: “Give me his face. And the name of the one who paid him.” [Generating Facial Recognition Match…] Name: David Sloan . Brooks Corp Level-3 Security. Orders authorized by: Lin Bai.] Ethan stood. Straightened his collar. Walked to the vending machine, calm as a man about to attend a funeral. “System,” he said quietly. “Track Lin Bai’s current location.” [Location: Brooks Mansion. Private Dining Hall. ETA: 22 minutes by drone.] Ethan smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Then let’s go crash dinner.” ⸻ Twenty-two minutes later, a black drone—sleek, silent, military-grade—descended into the private courtyard of the Brooks family’s fortress-like estate. Inside, the family sat around a long table. Roasted duck, wine glasses, laughter. Brooks Lili was mid-toast. “To the death of pests,” she said smugly, her eyes glinting. “And the return of our company’s honor.” Lin Bai leaned back, smug. “That should teach that street rat to know his place. Honestly, I don’t know why you even married trash like him.” Suddenly— THUNK. Something dropped onto the center of the table. A small, metallic sphere. The room went still. “What the hell is that—” CLICK. The drone unfolded. Projected a hologram into the air. It was Ethan ’s face. Smirking. “I told you not to touch my mother.” “Now you’ll see what real tech is.” The lights in the room flickered. The fireplace died. The temperature dropped as power surged. Every camera on the walls rotated toward them. The steel dining room doors slammed shut automatically. Locking. The drone emitted a soft chime. Then: [Brooks Family Internal Network: Breached.] [Security Systems: Disabled.] [Comm Units: Jammed.] [Backup Generators: Offline.] [Firewall Status: Bypassed.] All over the mansion, security went black. Phones went dead. Alarms failed to ring. And every speaker in the home echoed the same line: “Welcome to the Void.”
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Host 000
The words burned across Ethan’s vision like a curse carved into his skull.HOST 000 — LENA BROOKS.For a moment, he thought the System had glitched, that his overstrained nerves were inventing horrors out of paranoia. But the red pulse of the confirmation mark kept flashing, hammering into him with every heartbeat.His mouth went dry. His fists clenched until his nails dug deep into his palms. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked through the heavy silence like a gunshot.“Tell me this is wrong.” His voice trembled with fury and fear. “Tell me the System is lying. Lena… look at me and say it.”Lena froze, her eyes wide, her breath quick and shallow. “Ethan… I don’t know what that means. I swear, I don’t—”“Don’t,” he snapped, stepping closer, his face shadowed in rage. “Don’t you dare stand there and pretend ignorance. The System doesn’t lie.”Her lips parted, but no words came out. She looked smaller than he remembered her, stripped of the icy confidence that used to coat her ever
Fractured Allegiance
The safehouse was quieter now, though “quiet” was relative. The walls still trembled from distant fires. The blackout painted the city outside in eerie shadow, punctuated by the occasional flash of gunfire. Maya had collapsed onto a cot, pale but alive, her side bandaged hastily.Ethan sat alone in the adjoining room, staring at his hands. His veins still glowed faintly with the remnants of the overload, skin raw where code had burned through flesh. He felt hollow, emptied out, but not clean. The assassin’s final words gnawed at him like rust in bone.It’s inside you.He clenched his fists until blood seeped from reopened wounds. “Am I fighting them… or am I fighting myself?”The System, silent for once, gave no answer.The door creaked open. Ethan’s head snapped up. His pulse froze.Lena Brooks stepped into the room.For a moment, neither spoke. The shadows seemed to deepen, pulling them into a bubble where only their breath existed. She looked thinner than he remembered, her hair pi
The Knife in the Dark
The blackout had reduced the city to something primal. Outside the safehouse walls, the streets groaned with distant sirens, fires crackling where substations had collapsed under Ragnar’s purge. For hours, Ethan’s team had worked in the flickering emergency lights, patching comms, feeding scraps of intel into the fractured Ghost Network. The air smelled of sweat, dust, and burnt plastic.Then the power cut completely.The silence that followed was unnatural—no hum of backup generators, no whisper of cooling fans, no glow from cracked monitors. Just darkness, so complete it pressed against the skin.Maya stiffened instantly, her hand resting on the pistol holstered at her thigh. “That’s not the grid. Someone killed the line from inside.”Ethan’s chest tightened. He could feel it too—a shift, subtle but sharp, in the static of the Network. A presence. An intrusion.The sound came next: a faint scrape, metal against wood, somewhere deeper in the house.“Contact,” Maya hissed, weapon alre
Countdown to Oblivion
The numbers burned into Ethan’s HUD.72:00:00.71:59:59.Each second was a hammerbeat in his skull. Ada’s voice still haunted him: End the cycle, or become its god. And now, her last breath had chained itself to a clock that threatened every Host alive.Maya’s fingers hovered above his trembling hands, her face pale with exhaustion and fear. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”Ethan swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash. “It’s worse. The file isn’t just locked—it’s tethered to Ragnar Core. If it detonates, it’ll collapse every Host in the network. Billions. Gone.”“Host Collapse,” Maya whispered, the words tasting like poison.Around them, the rebel bunker shuddered with distant aftershocks. Survivors limped and stumbled into makeshift rows, some staring at Ethan with awe, others with terror. He didn’t need to look to feel it—half of them wanted him to save them, the other half feared he’d burn them down with a blink.David Sloan stepped forward from the shadows, his armor scorch
Ada’s Last Breath
The world dissolved around Ethan.One moment, he was standing in the ruins of the rebel encampment, Maya’s voice tethering him to reality. The next, the Ghost Network swallowed him whole. The shift was like falling into a well with no bottom—shadows and stormlight spiraling around him, dragging his consciousness deeper and deeper until time itself fractured.And then, she appeared.Ada.Not alive, not whole, but a flicker—an echo caught in the folds of the Network, woven from memory and pain. She stood with her back turned at first, shoulders squared, her dark hair tied tightly in a knot as she scanned a glowing console. Around her, a simulation of steel walls and humming servers pulsed like a heartbeat.Ethan’s chest constricted.“Mom…”The word escaped him before he could stop it.But she didn’t turn. The echo didn’t see him—not really. She was trapped in a loop, caught in the final days of her life.And then Ethan saw it.The betrayal.Through the glass walls of the simulated chamb
The Heir of Nothing
The Ghost Network pulsed around him like a living organism, threads of light stretching into infinity, humming with power that felt older than the city, older than the corporations that fought to control it.Host 001 stood unmoving in the center of it, its presence oppressive, yet calm, like the eye of a storm. Ethan’s breath came ragged, each inhale a battle against the gravity pressing down on him.His voice broke the silence first, sharp, furious.“Who the hell are you really? Why me? Why my mother?”The hooded figure tilted its head, as if amused. The code around its body shifted, forming shapes—faces, fragments, static—before dissolving again.“You think the Paragon was built,” Host 001 intoned, its voice layered, vibrating in tones that didn’t belong in human ears. “You think corporations forged this order, that Ragnar, Brooks, or any empire ever had the power to shape destiny. They are scavengers. Nothing more.”Ethan clenched his fists, his system interface sparking violently.
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