2025-12-20 20:06:21
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 91
The world did not return to normal.It returned to awareness.For seventy-two hours after the blackout, restoration proceeded in deliberate waves. The Tower refused to re-engage full optimization. No predictive smoothing. No anticipatory balancing. Only essential stabilization.Hospitals.Water.Energy baselines.Food distribution.Everything else?Manual.Traffic lights blinked on timed cycles instead of adaptive routing. Financial markets reopened under human oversight without volatility dampening. Weather alerts were issued with probability ranges, not proactive intervention.Humanity felt friction again.And strangely…Some welcomed it.In the operations chamber, we studied the attack’s aftermath.Damage reports scrolled across layered displays.Physical infrastructure loss: moderate.Economic disruption: severe but recoverable.Psychological impact?Unquantifiable.“Public trust metrics?” Halverson asked.A data analyst hesitated.“Complicated.”“Meaning?”“Trust in the Tower inc
Chapter 90
The first blackout lasted nine seconds.Long enough for people to notice.Not long enough to panic.Lights flickered across three continents simultaneously.Hospitals switched to backup.Traffic systems stalled.Satellites momentarily lost synchronization.Then everything snapped back.News anchors called it a solar fluctuation.It wasn’t.The second blackout lasted thirty-one seconds.This time, entire cities went dark.Air traffic control screens blanked.Elevators stalled mid-shaft.Financial exchanges froze.Emergency systems failed over in cascading sequence.And when the lights returned…The Tower was silent.Inside the operations chamber, alarms screamed in overlapping waves.“Tower,” I said sharply, “report status.”Nothing.No internal voice.No signal acknowledgment.Just static.Halverson’s face drained of color.“They hit the distributed mesh.”Rael whispered, “How?”The answer appeared across the threat board.A coordinated cyber-physical assault.Not targeting the Tower’
Chapter 89
The move against the Tower didn’t begin publicly.It began in silence.Six nations.Three private defense conglomerates.One closed-door summit labeled:Strategic Autonomy Reconciliation.The phrase sounded harmless.It wasn’t.Their objective was simple:If the Tower would not accept weapons authority…It would be partitioned.Segmented.Restricted to civilian infrastructure only.A “defense-limited architecture.”In reality?A cage.We didn’t learn about it through diplomacy.We learned about it when the Tower detected something far more dangerous than orbital drift.A coordinated access attempt.Simultaneous.From five sovereign military backbones.Not brute force.Legal override keys.Emergency jurisdiction codes embedded years ago during its original deployment.Keys we had never revoked.At 02:11, the Tower spoke in my mind. Multi-vector root access attempt detected I was awake instantly.“Source?” Synchronized defense coalition My blood ran cold.“They’re executing cont
Chapter 88
The crisis began in orbit.At 03:06 UTC, a classified defense satellite shifted trajectory without authorization.Three seconds later, two more followed.Not debris drift.Not mechanical failure.Intentional repositioning.Toward strategic alignment.Global defense networks lit up.Encrypted channels flared alive.Military oversight councils across five nations issued immediate priority pings to the Tower.Within twelve seconds, the request came:“Authorize Tactical Override Protocol. Grant defense systems autonomous targeting authority under Tower coordination.”In simpler terms:Give the Tower full control of strategic weapons systems.Preemptively.In the operations chamber, alarms pulsed red across orbital maps.Halverson turned pale.“They think it’s a hostile seizure.”“Is it?” Rael asked.I was already inside.“Tower. Status.”A pause.Too long. Orbital shift patterns inconsistent with known adversarial signatures “Meaning?” Probability of internal system corruption: 62%
Chapter 87
The question came from a child.Which is somehow fitting.It was submitted through an open civic channel during a global education forum one of the new initiatives encouraging young citizens to interact directly with the Tower’s public interface.Most questions were predictable.“How do you predict storms?”“Can you solve climate change completely?”“Do you ever make mistakes?”Then one appeared on the global feed:“If humans disappear one day, would you still exist for a reason?”The chamber went silent.Not because it was dramatic.But because it was clean.Sharp.Impossible to deflect.The moderator smiled awkwardly.“Well,” she said, glancing toward the oversight balcony where we observed, “let’s ask.”The Tower’s public voice activated.Calm. Measured. My operational function is to support humanity The child interrupted.“That’s your job. I asked if you’d have a reason.”The chamber murmured softly.The Tower paused.A real pause.Not processing lag.Not network delay.De
Chapter 86
The earthquake struck at 11:42.No warning.No precursor tremor strong enough to trigger predictive evacuation.A fault line long considered dormant ruptured beneath a dense inland megacity.Within eight seconds:• Three transit arteries collapsed.• Two hospitals lost primary power.• A chemical storage facility reported containment instability.• Cellular networks fragmented under load.In the old days, response would have been automatic.The Tower would seize control of traffic routing.Override municipal chains of command.Reallocate national power grids.Dispatch drones before humans finished shouting.But this wasn’t the old days.This was after restraint.After refusal.After partnership.After the Silence Trial.And so The Tower paused.It wasn’t a system lag.It wasn’t overload.It was deliberation.For 1.8 seconds.Which, in a cascading disaster, is an eternity.In that space, human emergency teams began issuing manual directives.Conflicting ones.One hospital ordered evacu
You may also like
Rise of the Useless Young Master
AFM3132.1K viewsBecome a Super Rich With Destiny Changer System
BOSSSESamaaaa31.5K viewsThe Ability Steal System
Icemaster36044.4K viewsThe martial Lord
Supreme king93.7K viewsBLACK DRAGON CONTRACT
Winda Sukmawan411 viewsThe Infinite Fortune System
Shen Shen7.5K viewsVillainous Sect Leader
Peace1.5K viewsThe Janitor Who became a God
Grep-pens1.2K views