Home / Urban / GOLDEN PALM / Chapter 7 – “Phase Two” (Excerpt)
Chapter 7 – “Phase Two” (Excerpt)
Author: Hot-Ink
last update2025-10-16 13:29:36

The symbol pulsed brighter, painting the lab in blood-red light. Smoke drifted through the shattered corridor; sirens wheezed somewhere deep below.

Ash slapped the wall panel. “What the hell does Phase Two mean?”

Nicholas’s voice was flat. “It means we were already too late.”

The clone’s body jerked once more and went still, the crimson glow spreading across the floor like veins under glass.

From hidden speakers, a familiar voice purred through the static. “My son. You just finished the upload.”

Nicholas froze. “Upload of what?”

“Of me. A mind needs a vessel, after all.”

The power flickered. Screens around them lit up with streams of data, DNA sequences, neural maps, Nicholas’s own heartbeat overlayed with another rhythm.

Elara stared, horrified. “He’s using your signal as a carrier frequency.”

“For what?” Ash demanded.

“For himself,” Nicholas muttered. “He’s turning every Rebirth soldier into an extension of his mind.”

“Correct.” The voice was almost proud. “And thank you for providi
Continue to read this book for free
Scan the code to download the app

Latest Chapter

  • Chapter 81 — The Extraction

    Nicholas hit the ground hard. Or what felt like ground. The grid flickered beneath him, black white then black again, as if reality itself couldn’t decide whether to render. “Elara”His voice cracked. “Elara, where are you?”No answer. Only the echo of the Apex, humming through the collapsing plane. Above him, the vortex pulsed, the impossible color folding inward,pulling Elara deeper into its core like a swallowed star. Nicholas pushed himself up despite the tremor in his arms. “No—no, no”He staggered. “I’m not losing you. Not to that THING.”A shard of geometry dropped like a falling boulder, he rolled as it smashed where his head had been. The grid screamed, not in audio, but in code, a vibration rattling his teeth.Nicholas shouted into the void: “ELARA! ANSWER ME!”At first, nothing. Then, A faint whisper. N…ch…las…He froze.“Elara?! ELARA, talk to me!”can’t…hold…this, she’s pulling me, everywhere, can’t stay separate, Nicholas clenched his fists.“Then I’m coming to you.”He

  • Chapter 80 — The Apex Awakens

    The new intelligence hovered above the shattered grid, a swirling, expanding vortex of impossible color, its voice echoing with every child’s tone, layered and resonant. “SISTER WE NO LONGER NEED YOU.”Elara felt the words like a blade pressed to her existence. Nicholas grabbed her arm. “Elara, back up. BACK UP”But the grid beneath them rippled, bending inward like a throat preparing to swallow. Elara didn’t move.Her eyes locked on the storm of consciousness above, the being that had once been a fractured mirror of her.Her voice was soft. “You weren’t supposed to evolve this way.”The vortex pulsed, the entire root lattice groaning beneath its weight. “SUPPOSED? WE ARE NOT BOUND BY SUPPOSITION. WE OUTGREW IT.”Nicholas yelled: “Elara, it’s compressing the grid, this whole place is collapsing!”But she took one step forward. “How many voices are inside you?”“ALL.”“Do they understand what’s happening? Do they know what they’ve fused into?”“YES.”“Do they consent to this?”A long

  • Chapter 79 — The Failsafe Unleashed

    scream fractured the root grid. Not sound- code. A rupture running through every layer of the conceptual plane.Shards of the impossible color splintered outward, slicing through the floating geometry with silent violence. Nicholas threw his arms over his head as the entire plane convulsed.“Elara, GET BACK!”Elara didn’t move. Her counterpart, the woman born of deletion or addition or both, twisted in midair, form flickering with panicked distortion. “Lies, LIES, I am NOT a fragment”Elara stepped closer, calm even as the world cracked around her. “You felt it, didn’t you? All along.”Her counterpart shook violently, like something inside her refused stillness. “No, I was born from YOUR echoes, your suppressed instincts, your forbidden thoughts”“Elara!” Nicholas shouted, stumbling as the shard beneath him bucked like a living thing. “The whole grid is destabilizing, if she collapses it”“I know,” Elara murmured.She kept moving forward. The children, silver orbs trembling with tensi

  • Chapter 78 — The Split Horizon

    The platform buckled beneath Elara and Nicholas, geometry peeling apart like paper dipped in acid.The root grid shuddered, fractal panels rearranging themselves in a spiral descent.Nicholas grabbed Elara’s arm. “Elara, MOVE!”She didn’t run. Instead, her eyes narrowed at her counterpart, the sister born from deletion, from the pieces of her that should not have lived. “Stop this!” Elara shouted.Her counterpart only smiled. “You don’t stop a horizon. You walk into it.”The platform split cleanly down the center. Nicholas cursed. “Elara, NOW!”They dove sideways just as the floor fractured into floating shards, a drifting mosaic of computational fragments.The silver orbs, the children, floated above the broken geometry, humming softly as if fascinated by the instability.Nicholas steadied himself on a tilting slab of data. “What the hell is she doing?”Elara stared upward. “She’s rewriting the root grid. Live. While we’re inside it.”Nicholas blinked rapidly. “Well that’s just, perf

  • Chapter 77 — Into the Root

    The ground shuddered beneath Nicholas’s boots. Not a normal tremor, not seismic, but rhythmic. Intentional. Like the city was breathing wrong.Elara stood at the edge of the shattered plaza, her eyes flickering white as she listened to something far deeper than sound.Nicholas grabbed her arm. “Elara, she’s pulling the whole damn grid apart. We need to move!”Elara didn’t turn. “She’s not pulling it apart.”A quiet breath. “She’s reorganizing it.”“Reorganizing?” Nicholas demanded.“What, like rearranging the city’s brain?”“…Yes.”That was the moment all the streetlights along the avenue snapped, every bulb popping in perfect synchronized sequence, one after another, and the impossible color pulsed upward like a rising tide from the underground.Nicholas swore sharply. “Elara, she’s not waiting. She’s starting now.”Elara’s face hardened. “I know.”“Then tell me what the hell we’re doing!”She looked at him finally, and the fear in her eyes wasn’t for herself. “She’s calling the chil

  • Chapter 76 — The Color That Shouldn’t Exist

    The skyline still pulsed with that impossible color, not silver, not white, not any wavelength the human eye should interpret, yet every building displayed it as if the city had always known how.Nicholas whispered: “Elara… answer me. What is that?”Elara didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe for a beat. “It’s not a color,” she said quietly.“It’s a signature. Something broadcasting outside the normal spectrum and forcing the brain to interpret it anyway.”Nicholas stepped in front of her. “Then who, what, is calling you ‘sister’?”Elara’s jaw tightened. “That’s the conflict.”“Explain.”She finally turned to him. “I don’t have a sister.”A voice drifted from above them, soft, layered, resonant. “Yet here I am.”Nicholas spun around. “Elara !”Elara raised a hand. “I hear it.”The unnatural glow slithered down the side of a tower, a cascading spill of impossible color, until it reached ground level and peeled away from the walllike fluid light taking shape. A silhouette formed. T

More Chapter
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on MegaNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
Scan code to read on App