2025-08-14 21:21:54
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Into The Maw
The closer they drew to the engine’s heart, the less the world resembled anything Jason could call reality.The scaffolding warped into spirals, beams curling back upon themselves, ladders twisting into Möbius strips. Light no longer traveled in straight lines—it bent, refracted, broke apart into prisms that floated like ash.Jason gritted his teeth as his boots struck a stair that shouldn’t have existed yet carried him upward. “Stay focused. Don’t look too long at what doesn’t make sense.”Callen stumbled behind him, sweat streaming down his pale face. “You’re asking me to ignore the fact we’re walking through equations that shouldn’t solve.”“Then treat it like a broken puzzle,” Jason snapped. “Step. Breathe. Keep moving.”Yara brought up the rear, blades drawn, eyes locked on every flickering shadow. “If either of you start seeing cracks in the air whispering your name, say it out loud. I’ll know if you’re lying.”Jason almost smiled at that. Almost.***They emerged into a chamber
Through The Cracks
The city was no longer a city.It was a wound.Jason stood on the rooftop, breath ragged, staring at the skyline unraveling in impossible geometries. Streets folded upward into the sky, rivers bent sideways, and towers dissolved into spirals of dust that rebuilt themselves in looping patterns.But it wasn’t just matter shifting.It was space.The air rippled with fractures, like glass under strain. Thin seams of light split across the horizon, widening slowly, each one bleeding shadows.Callen’s scanner warbled with broken static. “These aren’t distortions anymore. They’re thresholds. The engine’s… opening doors.”Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Doors to where?”Jason’s gut was already answering. “Nowhere we want to see.”***The first seam tore open above a collapsed avenue. Light spilled outward, then bent inward, pulling with a hunger that made the buildings groan. Shapes flickered inside—outlines of streets that weren’t theirs, skies that burned a different color.And then something steppe
Shattered Horizons
The perimeter wall collapsed with the sound of grinding thunder, folding inward like shattered glass. What had once been a shimmering barrier became jagged shards of light, plunging into the city in arcs that set buildings ablaze.Jason shielded his face from the flare. “Move—before the collapse catches us!”The platform shuddered underfoot, tilting toward the pit. The engine’s roar was no longer mechanical—it was alive, a howl that bent the air itself. Metal warped, groaning as if reality strained to contain the force.Yara pulled Jason toward the service hatch at the far end of the platform. “Escape routes, Callen!”“Working on it!” Callen barked, scanning frantically. His display glitched, shapes twisting on the screen. “The containment collapse is scrambling everything—maps, signals, orientation. I can’t trust half of this.”“Then trust the other half,” Jason snapped. “Find us a way out.”***They dropped into the maintenance tunnels, racing through flickering corridors as alarms
The Engine’s Howl
The first thing Jason noticed wasn’t the sound of the explosions fading behind them.It was the silence that followed.The hum of the engine hadn’t stopped—it had changed.Lower, rougher, as if the machine itself had been wounded but not killed. The resonance vibrated in his ribs, crawling under his skin.Callen cursed, checking the scanner on his arm. “That’s… not decay. The frequency’s climbing.”Yara steadied herself against the scaffolding. “You said cutting the conduits would stall it.”“I said it should,” Callen snapped. “But look at this—” He turned the display toward them, lines spiking upward in violent waves. “The engine’s pulling harder from the geothermal grid. It’s compensating.”Jason’s stomach tightened. “Then we just kicked it into overdrive.”***Spotlights flared across the pit. Automated turrets unfolded from the scaffold arms, targeting servos shrieking as they locked on.Jason shoved Yara down just as the first barrage tore through the air, shredding a section of
Fault Lines
The map table in the Severed Wing’s safehouse was a patchwork of hologram overlays and handwritten notes. Streets glowed red where Raven patrols were densest, blue where power conduits converged, and a new jagged yellow arc traced the perimeter wall they’d just breached.Jason leaned over it, tracing the blue lines with a finger. “Here, here, and here. Those conduits are feeding the engine directly. If we cut even one, it stalls the rotation. Cut all three, and we might collapse the whole structure.”Yara shook her head. “If it’s pulling from the geothermal grid too, we’ll just buy ourselves time. They’ll reroute.”“That’s fine,” Jason said. “Time is exactly what we need.”***Callen dumped a stack of intercepted Raven schematics onto the table. “Got these from their encrypted feeds. Took me all night to strip out the garbage data. The good news is—yes, those conduits are vulnerable. The bad news—they’re inside overlapping kill zones.”Yara studied the files. “Meaning?”“Meaning,” Cal
The Shimmering Wall
The barrier wasn’t just light.It was sound, too—low, almost subsonic, pressing into Jason’s chest with every step closer.From this distance, the shimmer was no longer a faint haze; it was a rippling membrane stretched across the street, its surface alive with drifting patterns like oil on water.Callen adjusted the scanner clamped to his forearm. “Field strength’s fluctuating. Not random—pulses in a set rhythm. I can thread us through between peaks, but we’ll only have seconds.”Jason nodded. “Make them count.”Yara scanned the empty rooftops. “Feels too quiet.”“It’s not quiet,” Jason said, eyes narrowing. “It’s waiting.”***They moved into position under the shadow of a gutted tramline. Callen crouched by a rusted junction box, pulling a mess of cables and antennae from his pack.“On my mark,” he said, fingers flying. “Three… two… one.”The shimmer split open like a tear in glass, revealing a narrow corridor of still air.“Go!”Jason led the way, boots pounding against the cracke
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