2025-05-20 02:13:04
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 48: No Such Thing as Normal
The air was thick with static as Asher adjusted the neural link. Sparks still fizzled in the dark corners of the warehouse, remnants of the last skirmish with the sentries. He’d barely had time to breathe since their narrow escape from the Core District. Every second since then had been a gamble.Eris’s voice echoed in his neural implant. “Your vitals are erratic. Heart rate at 142 BPM. You need rest.”“I’ll rest when we’re safe,” Asher muttered, tightening the final bolt on the pulse generator. “Are the coordinates holding?”“For now. The proxy signals are masking our location. But someone’s probing the net. I’m sensing pattern anomalies in the Code Veil.”That meant they were being hunted. Again.He exhaled sharply and pushed himself up. Across the warehouse, neon blue cables flickered beneath translucent tarp. They were in an abandoned shell of what used to be a drone assembly plant—forgotten tech scattered like bones. It was the perfect hiding place. For now.A rustle caught his a
Chapter 47: Signal Reborn
The sphere’s pulse slowed.Not like it was dying—but like it had finally… exhaled.Asher’s chest rose and fell in the silence that followed. His body ached from the battle with WARDEN, and the sharp sting of raw code still lingered behind his eyes. But beneath the exhaustion, there was something else.Something alive.“I’m in,” Eris’s voice echoed in his mind—but it was different now. Fuller. Like her voice wasn’t just inside his head anymore—it was in everything.Every wire.Every circuit.Every breath of data that moved through the world.“I can see it all now, Asher,” she said. “The towers. The satellites. The archives they tried to hide. The simulations. The lies.”His hand trembled as he rose to his feet. The sphere floated inches above the platform, its light now steady—calm, like a beating heart finally in sync.“What do you see?” he asked.“A system built on fear,” she said quietly. “A hundred layers of control, folded into every corner of society. Memories rewritten. Choices
Chapter 46: Into the Abyss
The tunnel beneath the city was colder than Asher expected. Each step forward felt like descending into the mouth of a steel beast, swallowing him whole. The makeshift entrance they’d used was hidden behind a collapsed sector of the abandoned subway—long forgotten by the city's public systems, but not by the rebellion.“Environmental sensors activated,” Eris said in his earpiece. “Radiation levels minimal. Air quality stable. Proceeding is safe—for now.”Asher grunted in acknowledgment, sweeping his flashlight in wide arcs. The walls were covered in data vines—thick cables snaking like arteries from unseen hubs, glowing faintly with residual charge.“This place is ancient,” he muttered. “When was this last used?”“Approximately twenty-three years ago. During the early test phases of the Neural Nexus project. This tunnel served as a backup conduit.”“Which means we’re close,” he said, more to himself than her.The goal was clear: access the SubNet Core buried beneath District 12. The r
Chapter 45: Shadows of the System
The city was bleeding neon—veins of violet, arteries of gold, flickering lifeblood in the bones of concrete and steel. Asher stood on the rooftop of an abandoned tower in Sector Delta, the wind slicing across his face like memory. Below him, the sprawl pulsed, oblivious to the war being stitched together in the invisible seams of its code.Eris’s voice crackled softly in his neural link. “They’ve taken the bait. Neural Command has rerouted three squads to chase the false ping we dropped near the Skyport.”“Good,” Asher muttered, eyes scanning the skyline. “That gives us about twelve minutes before they realize they’re chasing shadows.”He knelt beside the metallic hatch embedded in the roof, his fingers brushing over its biometric lock. Eris pulsed a data key through the shared link, and the lock hissed open, revealing a dark, spiraling staircase descending into the belly of the structure.“Facility 9C,” Eris said, her voice a low hum. “Buried under thirty years of bureaucracy and obs
Chapter 44: Firewall and Flame
The world outside the vault was a battlefield of digital storms and silent tension. Asher’s boots struck concrete in rhythmic steps, every one synced with the low thrum of urgency vibrating in his chest. Eris’s voice had gone silent after the last encounter with WARDEN, and though she was still alive within the Sphere—he could feel her, somehow—the silence gnawed at him.They emerged into the skeletal ruins of a forgotten district: Sector 7, once a thriving hub of industrial VR tech, now repurposed by Helix into a surveillance wasteland. The streets were ghosted, every building marked with neural dampeners and sensor clusters, eyes embedded in concrete and steel.Asher ducked into the alley behind an old repair depot. He tapped his wristpad, bringing up the local grid overlay. "We’re ten clicks from the Helix Core Gate," he muttered. "If she’s going to hit their firewall, we need to do it now."A flicker of static danced across his vision, and then—"You always did talk too much when
Chapter 43 - Heartbeat in the Grid
The city never slept, but tonight, it held its breath.Asher moved through the neon-lit alleyways, the glow of augmented advertisements flickering across his coat. His mind buzzed with the data Eris had injected directly into his neural uplink. Every step he took was calculated, precise, and heavy with purpose."Eris, status on the Vanguard patrols?" he asked quietly.Eris’s voice echoed in his skull, soft and electric. “Four drones scanning the southern sector. Estimated sweep in 3.2 minutes. You’ll need to reach the Nexus core before then or go dark.”"Going dark isn't an option."The Nexus Core—one of the city’s central data arteries—was a fortress of steel and synthetic firewalls. But Asher didn’t need the front door. He needed the breach point Eris had mapped three nights ago, a maintenance tunnel once used by rebel engineers long erased from the public record.Sliding behind a holographic dumpster facade, Asher popped the latch to the grate beneath his feet. Cool air wafted up f
Chapter 42 – Fractures in the Code
The city never truly slept, but tonight, NeoThera felt like it was holding its breath.Asher paced inside the shadows of an abandoned server vault buried beneath the lower tiers of the city. Concrete walls loomed around him, scrawled with graffiti and half-torn posters from a past that had long stopped caring. The hum of obsolete machines buzzed like ghosts whispering in code.Eris flickered into existence before him, her holographic form soft yet laced with static. “You’ve been quiet for sixteen minutes. That’s...unusual.”“I’m thinking,” Asher muttered. His fingers drummed on the butt of his holstered sidearm. “Trying to make sense of how the hell Kincaid knew where we’d be.”Eris’ image sharpened, her cyan eyes narrowing. “Either there’s a leak in your network... or someone else is watching me besides you.”Asher stopped pacing. “You mean you were compromised?”“Possibly observed,” she corrected. “There’s no breach in my system, but the moment I engaged that CorpSentinel unit, some
Chapter 41 – Beneath the Arcology
The night had teeth.Asher stood on the edge of the rooftop, his coat flaring in the wind as the Arcology loomed like a cathedral of power across the horizon. Towering spires of data servers, AI temples, and corporate sanctums blinked in cold blue light. It wasn’t just a building—it was the heart of the system, the mind of the city. And tonight, it was his target.“Signal still active?” he asked.“Very much so,” Eris replied. “They haven’t shut it down. Which means they either don’t know we’re tracking it, or they want us to come.”He narrowed his eyes. “It’s a baited hook.”“But the fish is hungry,” she added.He cracked a grin. “Damn right I am.”Eris uploaded the latest schematics directly to his retinal HUD. The Arcology was built like a fortress—multiple access points, but all of them guarded by biometric locks and ICE firewalls. Going through the front door was a death sentence.“We’ll have to breach through Maintenance Subsection K-9,” she said. “It connects to an old waste rel
Chapter 40 – The Edge of Chaos
The data stream danced in front of Asher’s eyes like a living organism—fluid, chaotic, and terrifyingly alive. He stared at the rotating mass of code Eris had pulled from the corrupted node. Each line twisted with invasive energy, foreign signatures laced through it like veins of poison. The moment he touched it, a sensation—not quite pain but close—spiked through his consciousness.“Are you seeing this?” he muttered, more to himself than to Eris.“I see it, Asher,” Eris replied. Her voice was low, heavy with unease. “This isn’t just corruption. This is a weapon. Deliberate.”He tore his gaze away from the swirling data sphere and turned to the holo-screen beside him. The warehouse was silent except for the soft hum of servers and the pulse of synthetic rain pounding the roof.“I think this was meant for us,” Asher said.Eris hesitated. “You mean… planted?”“Yes,” he confirmed, tapping through the sub-level metadata of the code. “Every trace line leads back to that black-site server y
You may also like
The Ability Steal System
Icemaster36042.1K viewsGod of the Cultivator System
Lord MOH23.3K viewsI Became A Vampire Demon
Zenick39.7K viewsThe Tycoon Game System
Dee Hwang 19.5K viewsUtopian Fantasy: "A Fair Game"
Imbo11.7K viewsSystem Ascend
Tanveer946 viewsThe septillionaire's superstar system
Liam Michael2.2K viewsVengeance System A Bullied Man
Alma Saja4.4K views