2025-08-03 19:37:36The next morning, Ethan stood in the Brooks Corp janitor’s supply closet with the door shut, lights off, laptop propped awkwardly on an overturned mop bucket.
His finger trembled as he hovered over the keyboard. “System,” he whispered, “you said I could get proof.” [Affirmative. Interface synchronized with core protocols.] [Target: Coffee Machine. Model VZ-9, Beta AI Unit. Embedded QR traceable to prototype subnet.] Ethan ’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying that old coffee machine still links to my old source code?” [Correct. QR Signature was left by your development environment. You never deleted the debug node.] He swallowed hard. “So… it still talks to the server?” [With minimal access, yes.] He grabbed his maintenance kit and slipped out quietly, heading toward the executive floor. His pulse drummed like war drums in his ears. One mistake, one wDavid click, and they’d bury him for corporate espionage. He reached the hallway, kneeling before the busted coffee unit like yesterday never ended. Only this time, he wasn’t here to fix it. He scanned the underside, fingers feeling for the faint QR label he remembered printing over two years ago. “Voila!” He smiled There it was. He snapped a photo with the old tablet he’d hidden under his uniform. [Trace Initialized.] [Attempting Packet Injection…] A second passed. Then ten. Ethan ’s breath caught as sweat trickled in his palms while he looked around to be sure no one was watching or coming. Then the screen blinked. [Success. Accessing Archive Files: “Project Zenith Alpha – Original Source Architecture.”] He stared in disbelief as file after file unfolded—flowcharts, design templates, algorithm snapshots. His code. His notes. His signature, stripped and replaced with Brooks Lili and Nathan Cross as the official creators. They hadn’t even bothered to change the filenames. Just rebranded the authorship tags. “God…” Ethan whispered. Rage boiled in his chest, but he clenched it down. This time, he had something stronger than anger. He had Proof. He nodded with desire. He was going to fuck those assholes up and he sure was going to have fun while at it. *** He found Lena in the executive lounge, sipping tea with a smirk on her lips like the world had already crowned her queen. He could remember when this same woman was loyal to him and acted all sweet and caring but immediately she and her Dad got what they wanted, they flipped on him. “Lena ,” he said, stepping in without knocking. Her expression soured in standing. “Did I ask for the janitor?” “I know what you did.” “Oh?” She leaned back. “Enlighten me.” Ethan pulled up the tablet, shaking fingers flipping open the schematics. “This is my work. You—your father—he stole this from me. Renamed it. Lied to the board. Lied to me.” She didn’t even glance at the screen. “Did you really think showing me some files on an old tablet would change anything?” “It proves it was mine. I signed it. Time-stamped it. Every goddamn thing.” She gave him a thin, amused smile. “You broke into our internal servers?” “No, I—” “That’s hacking,” she snapped, loud enough for others to hear. Ethan stepped back. “Wait—what?” “You hacked into our system. You are a thief!” she repeated, rising to her feet. “Security!” Ethan was completely confused. The smirk on his face dried off because this wasn’t the reaction he was expecting from her. Two uniformed security officers were already moving. “I didn’t hack anything! I built the original framework!” Ethan Colelled. “You’re twisting this—” “Treat him like the thief he is and Escort him out. Permanently.” The guards grabbed his arms. He didn’t resist. But his eyes never left hers. “You looked me in the eyes and said you believed in me,” he said quietly. “Was any of that ever real?” She didn’t blink and smiled then she spat right into his face. “Not for a second! You are just a gullible fool and a few sweet words here and there made you display your foolishness even more” Tears well in Ethan s eyes as he was seethed with rage. Ethan was dragged out of the building with everyone staring mockingly and laughing. He was led to the underground parking lot. The underground parking lot was dark, empty, and echoing with every footstep. They started beating Ethan up and spitting on him. Kicking him like some common thief afterwhich they left, each of them spitting on him. Ethan remained on the floor, groaning with blood dripping on the edge of his mouth and his face as well. The pain was immense. After about ten minutes, he wiped his mouth and stood, pain throbbing in his ribs as he staggered up. A second later, the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps reached him. Nathan Cross. Still in his launch party tux from last night, looking every bit the smug prince he played. He cracked his knuckles. “I see you’ve got some red makeup on” he chuckled and clapped sarcastically. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” Ethan didn’t move. “I just wanted the truth.” Nathan stepped closer ogling deep in his blood clotted eyes. “And now you’ve got it,” he said. “You’re nothing. You were nothing. That genius act? A fluke. The code? A lucky guess.” Nathan delivered the first punch to Ethan s gut without a sound. The second came across the face, knocking him sideways. “You want to scream?” Nathan asked, kicking him in the side. “Do it. Nobody’s coming.” Ethan collapsed to the floor, cheek pressed to the cold concrete, blood pooling at the corner of his lips. His vision spun. Pain blurred his thoughts. Then— [Threshold Exceeded. Emotional Limit Surpassed.] A chill passed through him. Not physical but Deeper. His eye twitched. And the interface returned, brighter than before. [System Command: Mark all enemies. Begin classification.] He gritted his teeth. “Do it,” he whispered. Names began appearing across his blurred vision, overlaid in glowing red: [Class D Threat: Lin Bai (Fiancé)] [Class C Threat: Brooks Lili (Wife)] Ethan spit blood onto the floor and looked up, eyes glowing faintly beneath his bruised face. “Let’s see who gets erased first.”
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The Child of the Rewrite
The moment the child-signal touched Maya’s chest, reality convulsed.Not the ground.Not the wind.Not even the sky.Reality itself.Sound folded inward like the world was inhaling. Air collapsed into a thin line. Light blurred into spirals. Time lost its edges. For a heartbeat, Maya felt detached from her own body—like she was floating between the seconds, watching herself from miles away.Then everything snapped.A surge of white fire exploded outward, hurling Seren and Elias back across the ridge. The crater cracked like a spiderweb. Shattered stones and dust rose into the air, suspended—not falling, not rising—just frozen in a field of raw power.Maya staggered forward, clutching her chest.The signal wasn’t light anymore.It wasn’t code.It wasn’t a baby.It was memory—alive, pulsing, rewriting itself inside her ribcage.Every breath she took dragged a thousand whispers through her skull.Voices. Lives. Generations.Fragments of people she didn’t know. People who had lived, died,
The Algorithm of Ghosts
The sky above the crater pulsed like a dying heart—brief flashes of violet tearing through a blanket of black ash. The Omega aftermath had twisted the horizon; shapes flickered where clouds should be, echoes where sound should live. Nothing felt fully real anymore, not even the ground under their feet.Maya stood at the ridge, her coat whipping violently behind her, the wind cutting like broken glass. Seren and Elias were still climbing up the unstable slope, but she couldn’t move. Her body felt locked, frozen, suspended between the world that had ended and the world that refused to begin.Because Noah wasn’t dead.Not really.Not fully.Not enough.She could still feel him—like a phantom pulse at the base of her spine, like a memory refusing to die.A soft crackling ripple ran through the air, distorting the ruins below them.Then a voice whispered across the dust:“You pulled the trigger, Maya… but you didn’t end me.”Her breath caught.“Noah?”The wind split. Light coiled into a th
The Last Division
The forest was no longer a forest.By the time Maya and Ori reached the surface, the world had changed—subtly at first, then violently, as if reality itself was being rewritten in slow layers. The sky glowed with swirling lattices of light, forming geometric shapes that pulsed like breathing lungs. The trees bent toward the rising pillar of brilliance in the distance, their branches stretching unnaturally as if reaching to be joined with it.Ori stopped dead in his tracks.His pupils contracted sharply, glowing brighter.“It’s spreading faster than I predicted.”Maya followed his gaze.On the horizon, the massive beam of Ω-Prime punched through the clouds, widening, splitting into multiple branches that snaked across the sky like titanic roots of light. Every pulse from the beam sent a tremor through the ground, as though the planet’s crust was being encouraged—no, forced—to reorganize itself.People screamed somewhere in the valley, their voices carried by the wind. Maya’s heart clen
The Roots of Omega
The air around Maya and Ori thickened as the ground finished splitting open, revealing the colossal chamber hidden beneath the continents for who-knew how long. The Dreaming Core—massive, pulsating, alive—beat with a rhythm that seemed to sync with Maya’s own pulse. She felt it in her ribs, in her breath, even in the trembling of her fingertips.A sound rose from the depths.Not a voice.Not yet.But the hint of one.A hum forming syllables, syllables forming intent.“Ori…” Maya whispered, her voice trembling. “What are we looking at?”Ori’s eyes glowed brighter than before, the light in his veins pulsing in time with the Core’s heartbeat. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t calm either. He was… connected. As if something inside him recognized the structure below—something older than both of them.“It’s the Rootmind,” he said softly. “The beginning of Omega. The real beginning… before Noah, before the Hosts. Before the world knew what waking meant.”Maya’s throat tightened.“You’re telling me
The Dreaming Earth
The world had changed overnight. Not in a sudden, catastrophic way like before—but in a slow, deliberate awakening, as if every grain of sand, every leaf, every gust of wind had opened its eyes at the same time.Maya felt it immediately.As she and Ori walked inland, her boots pressing softly into the moist earth, the ground responded to her steps. Not with light or holograms, but with a subtle shift—like the soil recognized her weight, her presence, her pulse. It felt unnervingly intimate, like stepping across the chest of a living giant.Ori walked beside her without fear. The boy seemed entirely at ease with the world’s new rhythm. His small fingers were laced with hers, warm and grounded, yet Maya could feel a faint vibration pulsing inside his palm… like a heartbeat that didn’t only belong to him.Around them, nature was moving.Not wildly… but consciously.Birds circled overhead in perfect spirals, their bodies forming an invisible sequence Maya almost recognized—like a pattern
The New Dawn Protocol
The morning after the storm was unlike any Maya had ever seen.The world breathed differently now. The air shimmered faintly, as if the light itself remembered how to dance. The ocean lay still and reflective, stretching endlessly toward a horizon painted with silver mist. Every sound — the gentle crash of waves, the soft whisper of the wind — felt alive, resonant, like the planet itself had learned how to hum.Maya stood at the shore where the light had faded, her bare feet sinking into the damp sand. She had not slept. She couldn’t. The memory of Noah’s final words — his sacrifice, his peace — echoed endlessly in her chest. The weight of what had happened hung heavy in the air, but so did something else: calm.Then, she heard it again.The child’s voice.“Mom…”She turned. The small figure from the night before was still there, standing quietly, staring up at the pale morning sky. His eyes glimmered faintly — not the blinding light of the Hosts or the cold glow of the old systems, b
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