2026-10-26 21:09:20
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 110: The Orbital Grid
The second marker sat off the eastern seaboard at a latitude that put it somewhere in the empty water between the continental shelf and the mid-Atlantic ridge, and it was blinking amber instead of white.“Naomi. Triangulate that.”Naomi put her hands on the keyboard and the globe spun and the marker resolved into a point.“Sir, it is a response signal on the same band. It came in eleven seconds after Oyelaran locked the channel and it has been repeating every eight seconds since.”“Is it a satellite?”“No. Sir, the elevation is wrong. It is coming from the surface.”Oyelaran leaned forward.“From the surface where?”“From the water. Sir, it is four thousand one hundred kilometers east of the coast and it is on a fixed bearing and it is not moving.”“Then it is a platform.”“Sir, it is a platform or a ship or an installation. I cannot tell from the bearing alone.”Oyelaran sat back on her stool.“Mr. Vance. That signal is a handshake.”“Say that again.”“That is a handshake protocol. I
Chapter 109: Reunion In The Lab
The airlock cycled at 06:40 and the inner door opened and the medical pod came through on its wheeled frame with two of Amara’s staff pushing it. Oyelaran was sitting up in it with the oxygen line off her face and a blanket around her shoulders and her grey eyes taking in the corridor, the lights, the ceiling, the seams in the steel.“This is a real facility,” she said.“This is a real facility.”“Who built it?”“I did.”She looked at me. “In how long?”“Eleven weeks.”She did not say anything to that. She looked at the ceiling for a while instead.They wheeled her along the corridor and up the west ramp and into the research bay, and the research bay was a long room with four benches and a sealed hood and a bank of monitors and a woman standing at the end of it with her hands at her sides.Vivienne did not move when the pod came in.Oyelaran looked at her.“Dr. Chen.”“Dr. Oyelaran.”“Your mother was on the eastern team. Her name was Mei.”Vivienne’s hands came up to her mouth.“You
Chapter 108: Ambush On The Frozen Lake
Felix came back on the comms at 05:20 and he was not calm.“Sir, the warlord has turned around.”“Show me.”The radar came up. The six trucks had come off the lake to the north and they had gone into the trees and they had stayed there for eleven minutes and now they were coming back out and they were not alone.“Sir, I have got four more signatures behind them and these are bigger.”“How much bigger?”“Sir, the lead one is a tracked chassis. It is not a truck. It is a tank hull with the turret removed and something else welded on top.”“What is welded on top?”“Sir, I have got a heat bloom on the front of it and it is not an engine. It is a nozzle.”I looked at the screen. The four new signatures were coming down the eastern shore of the inlet where the service track crossed the ice.“They are going to cut the track.”“Sir, they are going to be at the crossing in about nine minutes if we keep our speed.”“Then we do not keep our speed.” I pulled up the rover inventory. “Vance. What h
Chapter 107: Securing The Asset
The medical pod came out of the facility at 04:20 on a wheeled frame with four men pushing it and Oyelaran inside it under a heated blanket with an oxygen line taped to her face.“Felix. Are you reading her vitals?”“Sir, I have got a heart rate of ninety one and a blood pressure of one hundred over sixty. That is low but it is steady.”“Keep the link open and have Amara on the comms.”Amara came on. “I am here. Put her in the second rover and run the heater at plus twenty. Do not let the pod go below plus fifteen and do not let it go above plus twenty five. If her core temperature drops below thirty five she goes back into crisis.”Vance’s crew lifted the pod into the second rover and bolted the frame to the floor and Marcus backed the first rover around to the launch door.Halloway came out with a cardboard box.“The drives. Every mission log, every design spec, every test result from the program. It is all in here.”I took the box. “How many?”“Eleven. The twelfth one is the master
Chapter 106: Awakening The Architect
The thaw took eleven hours and not the nine the manual predicted. Halloway ran the chamber heating loop up one degree at a time and the loop held and the pods stopped frosting over and at the eight hour mark Vivienne put her hand on the primary pod and read the internal temperature off the panel."Minus twelve and climbing. The manual says we can start the revival sequence at minus five.""Then we have got two more hours."The revival sequence was four switches on the pod's control board and a sedative line and a warming blanket that had been folded in a cabinet since 1991. Vivienne read the procedure out loud twice before she touched anything."Mr. Vance, if I get this wrong she does not wake up.""Then do not get it wrong."At 02:40 the pod's internal light went from blue to amber and the glass lid hissed and vented a thin line of frost and the seal around the rim cracked.The lid came up four centimeters and stopped.Vivienne got her fingers under it and lifted.Dr. Marguerite Oyel
Chapter 105: The Cryo-Sleep Survivors
The old man opened the door himself. He pulled it back with both hands and it swung on a hinge that had been greased and he stood in the doorway with the lantern up and looked at the drone hovering at eye level."Are you a machine or is there a man behind it?"Vance answered from the rover before I could. "There is a man behind it.""Then tell him to come down here and talk to me face to face. I have been talking to a machine for four years and it has not said anything back."I pulled my gloves on. "Marcus. You are with me. Vance, you stay on the rover and keep the link open. Kwan comes too.""Sir, the restraints.""Leave them on."We went through the launch door and down the tunnel. The concrete was cold enough that the frost came off it in flakes when you brushed it, and the yellow line down the center was still visible under a skin of ice. The tunnel was two hundred meters long and it took us six minutes.The old man was waiting at the bottom of the lift shaft on level four with th
You may also like
Reincarnated as a Computer Malware
Young Master Jay9.1K viewsAnonymous: dawn of the unknown
Jedidiah TBD3.5K viewsULTRA A.I (Techno- God)
Richard4.9K viewsThe Special People
Feyonce10.2K viewsIron Sentinel: The Shadow Crown
SolidWrite1.9K viewsThe Archivists of Aftertime
Clare Felix5.1K viewsRanger Danger: The Sentai Stupidity of Kevin Cwan
Ian618 viewsEchoes Of The Eternal Green
Doas Firman2.0K views