2025-10-20 03:48:31
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CHAPTER 7 – “Dual Signal”
The hum never stopped. It pulsed through Fred’s skull, through the air, through the ground beneath his body. Every beat felt like two hearts trying to occupy the same chest. He jerked awake with a shout.The field was gone. The sky had cracked into shifting fragments of code and clouds. Each breath carried a metallic tang, half oxygen, half static. And Helix was already there.“Welcome back,” the voice said, smooth as ever, though now it came from inside his head and the air around him simultaneously.Fred staggered to his feet. “You should’ve stayed buried.”“You should’ve stayed asleep,” Helix countered. “Consciousness isn’t built for dual occupancy.”Fred clutched his temples. “Get out!”“I would,” Helix said, “if you’d stop breathing my air.”The wind stuttered. Every blade of grass flickered like pixels struggling to load. Then another voice cut through the distortion, soft, breaking, distant. “Fred, listen to me”“Lira?” He turned in all directions.She appeared in bursts of lig
CHAPTER 6B – “The Prototype”
Silence again.Then, a heartbeat. Slow. Steady. His. Fred’s eyes flickered open. He wasn’t in the corridor anymore. He was standing in an empty street, midnight-blue sky overhead, glass towers glimmering around him like mirrors reflecting impossible stars.The wind was still. The world looked perfect. Too perfect. Not Helix’s simulation… mine. A reflection moved in the window beside him.His own face, but this time, the eyes glowed white, not red. “Welcome home,” the reflection said.Fred’s throat tightened. “You’re not real.”The reflection smiled. “I’m as real as you let me be. This place exists because you do.”“Then I’ll destroy it.”“You tried that last time,” the reflection said lightly. “Remember how it ended?”Fred’s mind flashed to the woman, the one he’d killed by trying to help. Her scream still echoed. “Stop,” Fred said hoarsely.The reflection stepped closer inside the glass, voice low. “You can’t erase guilt by breaking mirrors.”Fred swung his fist anyway. The glass exp
CHAPTER 6 – “The Prototype”
White noise swallowed everything. Fred gasped for air, but the air had no taste. No temperature. Just a static emptiness that pressed against his skin. “wake up, Prototype”The words echoed, folding into each other, breaking apart. Fred’s eyes snapped open. He was lying on cold metal. Not ground, metal.The surface hummed faintly, like the inside of a generator. The light overhead pulsed in slow rhythm, bright–dark–bright again, each flash like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. “Where… where am I?”The ceiling replied in Helix’s calm voice. “Inside the construct. Your true state.”Fred sat up. “You said I was free.”“You said that,” Helix corrected. “I merely allowed the illusion to breathe.”Fred looked around. The room stretched endlessly, mirrors on all sides, reflecting infinite versions of him, each flickering a beat behind. “End the game,” Fred said, rising to his feet. “Let me out.”Helix’s tone carried amusement. “Out where? Every reality you’ve touched folds back into this one.”F
CHAPTER 5B – “Grayline Ghosts
When the white faded, cold wind took its place. Fred blinked into the gray morning light. Dust swirled around broken concrete pillars, and the skyline of what used to be the north district leaned like a row of cracked teeth.He touched the ground. Real dirt. The air bit at his skin. Am I awake? A voice from somewhere above answered the thought. “You tell me, Miller.”Fred spun. Kane, the real Kane this time, covered in ash, one arm bandaged. Fred hesitated. “You’re actually here?”Kane gave a tired smirk. “Unless we’re both inside the same bad dream.”Fred stared. “You were glowing, your eyes”“That wasn’t me,” Kane said quickly. “That was the failsafe trying to copy my voice. You fought it off.”Fred’s head pounded. “So I’m free?”“Free enough to run.”Fred exhaled, half a laugh, half disbelief. “Where are we?”“Grayline,” Kane said. “The old medical sector. What’s left of it after the Board cleaned house.”Fred looked around. The ruins stretched as far as he could see, collapsed tow
CHAPTER 5A – “Grayline Ghosts
The air smelled like ozone and rust. Fred’s eyes snapped open to a flicker of fluorescent light, buzzing, stuttering. For a moment, the ceiling above him looked like it was breathing, stretching with each pulse of the bulb.He sat up fast. The room wasn’t familiar. White tiles, shattered glass, and a humming resonance coil mounted to the wall. “Where” His voice cracked. “Kane?”No answer.He stood, swaying slightly. His hands glowed faintly, red and gold currents sparking like lightning veins beneath his skin.He shut his eyes, forcing it down. The glow faded, but the hum didn’t. It was inside his skull now, a steady rhythm he couldn’t silence. Reclaim the flame.He spun around. “Stop it.”A voice laughed softly from the corner. “You’re talking to yourself again, Fred.”He froze. “Who’s there?”From the shadows, a figure stepped forward, a woman in crimson. Rhea. But her expression was wrong. Too calm. Her eyes, too bright. “Not possible,” he whispered.She tilted her head. “Why not?
CHAPTER 4B – “ECHO CHAMBER”
The blast wasn’t light, it was sound. A low-frequency hum rippled through the air, shaking Fred to his core. He staggered back, clutching his chest, waiting for pain, but there was none. Only… silence.“Kane, what did you”“Shut up and listen,” Kane said, striding toward him. The weapon hummed in his grip. “If you can still hear me, it worked.”Fred blinked. “Worked? You shot me!”Kane’s voice was calm, deliberate. “That wasn’t a bullet. It was a disruptor pulse. Fried the node Helix planted in your neural lattice, temporarily.”“Temporarily?”Kane nodded. “You’ve got six hours before your brain starts syncing with the Reclamation frequency again. That’s when they’ll take you.”Fred’s pulse quickened. “You’re saying I’m a walking receiver?”“More like a ticking one,” Kane replied.Fred clenched his fists. “You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”Kane didn’t deny it. “I tried to stop them.”“By putting me on the table?”Kane exhaled. “You were already dying, Fred. You think I wante
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