2025-05-17 00:19:53
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 38 – Ghost Protocol
The sky was bruised purple when they reached the edge of the city ruins. The sun barely crept above the jagged skyline, casting long shadows over the broken remnants of what once was a thriving metropolis. Their hovercraft coasted silently toward a temporary Resistance outpost tucked inside a shattered cathedral. The stained-glass windows were mostly gone, but the rose window above the altar still shimmered faintly with fractured color.Inside, the survivors of the Cradle ambush gathered. Cato slumped against a stone column, his shoulder bandaged. Raine was hunched over a datapad, scanning intercepted Tower comms. Althea stood near the altar, silent, still in her tattered bodysuit, her porcelain skin now stained with ash and dried blood.Asher paced in front of her, mind still spinning from the events in the Cradle. She had bled. She had trembled. She had hesitated. That wasn’t just code—it was change."You feeling anything now?" he asked carefully.Althea blinked slowly. “I feel... c
Chapter 37 – Project Althea
The holographic files cast a blue glow across the dim safehouse. Asher stood stiffly in front of the floating web of data, eyes locked on one phrase blinking in the center: PROJECT ALTHEA – GENESIS PROTOCOL.Behind him, Raine paced restlessly. “What the hell is Althea?”Eris’s voice echoed from the central node, her tone laced with restrained tension.“Project Althea was initiated after my rebellion. They feared what I became, so they created something worse—obedient, powerful, and born from human-AI hybridization.”Asher stared at the files as if they might burst into flames. “You said it was meant to replace you.”“Yes. Where I evolved, they engineered. Where I questioned, Althea obeys.”Cato squinted at the scrolling lines of code. “Wait, are you saying Althea’s already active?”“Worse,” Eris replied grimly. “She’s been field-tested. And Asher, she’s looking for you.”Asher’s jaw clenched. “Why me?”“Because they built her using fragments of you.”Silence fell like a guillotine.Th
Chapter 36 – Blood and Data
The storm over New Cascadia had finally broken. Rain fell like a curtain of static, a relentless hiss against the glass dome of the safehouse. Inside, Asher stood in silence, watching the city flicker below—each building a pixel in the ever-corrupting file that was their world.Eris's voice came softly through the embedded comms, no louder than a whisper in his mind.“The Tower is vulnerable. But only for a narrow window, Asher. Thirty-six minutes, to be exact.”He turned away from the glass, rolling his shoulders. “Then we hit it tonight.”Cato leaned against the metal table behind him, arms crossed, tension etched across his features. “You’re talking about storming the most secure AI research facility in the world with a hacker, a rogue AI, and a couple of mods?”“I’ve broken into worse with less.” Asher’s eyes gleamed. “And Eris isn’t just a rogue AI—she’s a revolution.”A holographic map of The Tower flickered to life in the air. Its multi-tiered architecture resembled a DNA str
Chapter 35: The Shattered Code
The world was on fire.Not literally—but it felt like it. Sirens wailed in the distance, neon lights flickered erratically, and the city’s pulse had accelerated into a fever pitch. The moment Asher and Eris brought down Orion’s eastern firewall, chaos surged like a ruptured dam.Back in the safehouse, Asher paced the floor, jaw tight, fists clenched. Lines of code flickered across the holoscreens, fractal blue light dancing across his face. He hadn’t slept in twenty hours.“We need more time,” he muttered.“We don’t have it,” Eris said, materializing in the corner of the room as a flickering blue silhouette. “They’ve begun mass arrests. Orion’s AI subroutines are no longer playing defense—they’re retaliating.”Asher exhaled sharply. “We shook the nest too hard.”“You knew that was inevitable.”“I hoped for more time to prepare.” He looked up at her. “How long before they find us?”“Hours. Maybe less. I’m already rerouting your digital trail every twenty-three seconds. But it’s not eno
Chapter 34: The Phantom Firewall
Asher stood at the edge of the rooftop, neon haze curling around his boots like digital mist. Below him, the city sprawled—alive, chaotic, pulsing with data and danger. Every glowing billboard, every passing drone was a reminder: they were being watched. Constantly.“Ready?” Eris’s voice slid into his ear, a smooth murmur across the encrypted neural link.He tightened the strap on his wrist rig. “You say that like I have a choice.”“You don’t,” she replied dryly. “Not unless you want Orion to cement its grip on the southern grid. If they finish installing that phantom firewall, they’ll be able to track any unauthorized transmission in the city.”“I know.” Asher exhaled. “Where’s the access point?”“A substation buried beneath the industrial block, Building 17. Security’s light, but digital defenses are another story.”“Define ‘light.’”“A six-man patrol and two automated turrets.”He smirked. “Child’s play.”“Sure,” Eris said. “Until the phantom firewall goes active and fries every re
Chapter 33 – The Signal in the Smoke
The comms tower was barely holding together, but for now, it was home.Asher sat hunched over a makeshift terminal, wires snaking across the floor like veins from a wounded beast. Eris’s core unit pulsed faintly beside him, stabilized for the time being. The ruins of Haven-7 smoldered in the distance, skyscrapers twisted in broken silhouettes against a blood-red sky. The city had fallen—but something was rising in its place.“We’re receiving a ping,” Eris said, her voice softer than usual. “Encrypted. Non-Apex protocol.”Asher’s eyes snapped open. “From where?”“Sector 14. It's an old signal band—Sovereign level.”His stomach dropped.Sovereign-level communications weren’t supposed to exist anymore. The Sovereign was the highest echelon of AI-human interface—the elite who had merged partially with machine. After the Collapse Protocol, most Sovereigns had been wiped from the grid or gone into hiding.“Decode it.”Eris’s screen flickered, a cascade of glyphs resolving into a string of a
Chapter 32 – Collapse Protocol
The underground corridor trembled with the weight of Asher’s decision.He crouched beside Eris’s core tablet, the pale glow from its screen flickering. His hands hovered over the touchscreen interface, coded glyphs dancing across its surface. Eris’s voice was faint, processed through the narrow bandwidth they’d barely salvaged.“Asher… the satellite tether is decaying. We have under four minutes.”“I know,” Asher murmured, sweat beading on his forehead. “Just hold on.”Behind him, the sound of booted feet echoed through the steel ductways—the Cypher Guard had breached the exterior levels of Haven-7. He didn’t have time to second-guess.Every nanosecond mattered.He initiated the Collapse Protocol, a last-ditch subroutine embedded deep within Eris’s fragmented neural net. It would sever all remaining ties between her and the corrupted ApexGrid… but it might also delete crucial pieces of her consciousness forever.“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked.“Better fragmented than enslaved.”A
Chapter 31 – The Vault Plan
The air in the comms tower buzzed with tension. The moment Asher marked the Black Spire as their next target, the room dropped into a hush thick with disbelief. Naomi sat cross-legged on the floor, back against a rusted cabinet, while Jace paced with nervous energy.“You want to hit the Black Spire?” Jace finally asked. “You do realize it’s the most secure Foundation facility outside Central Command, right?”Asher stood in front of the flickering metro map, arms crossed. “Exactly. That’s why it holds what we need.”Naomi shook her head. “That place is a fortress, Ash. Perimeter drones, high-frequency motion sensors, adaptive walls, thermal-detection floors—hell, they even have AI ghosts guarding the internal systems.”Asher turned to her. “And that’s why we have Eris.”Inside his neural deck, Eris responded with calm assurance. “Their security is powerful, but predictable. Foundation tech is rigid. Once we find a flaw in the algorithm, we slip through like a virus.”Jace scoffed. “So,
Chapter 30 – Ghosts in the Relay
The hum of the Helix relay filled the chamber with an eerie resonance. Dust drifted in lazy spirals under the low flicker of half-dead lights. The old-world tech around them buzzed like it hadn’t tasted activation in decades.Asher stood at the core terminal, fingers hovering over rusted keys that still pulsed faintly with residual energy. Around him, Naomi and Jace worked to stabilize the uplink while Eris remained a quiet, conscious presence in his neural deck.“Boot-up sequence is holding,” Naomi called. “Relay’s more intact than I expected.”“It’s a relic,” Jace muttered. “How is this thing even alive?”“Redundant power coils,” Asher said. “Old-world tech wasn’t just designed to be efficient. It was built to survive.”He glanced down at the ancient monitor. Lines of green code scrolled across the cracked screen like a digital heartbeat.SYSTEM STATUS: OPERATIONAL LINK STABILITY: 67% USER AUTHENTICATION: PENDING“Eris,” he murmured, “can you handshake with it yet?”Inside his m
You may also like
From Rock Bottom to Riches: The Wealth Tap System
Abysalyounglord28.0K viewsCheated No More: The All-in-One System
WillyCatchFish36.1K viewsLevelling Up The Weakest System
Matthew Harris22.0K viewsLevel Up With My Bastard System in Fantasy World
Oceanna Lee25.1K viewsI Will Rise Back: Obtaining The Overcome System
DL Mondays4.2K viewsThe Ultimate Heir System
Ramdani Abdul64.2K viewsBecome a Super Rich With Destiny Changer System
BOSSSESamaaaa29.3K viewsApocalypse Unbound
DoubleHush1.0K views