2025-08-14 17:29:39
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Bridge or Betrayal
The voice doesn’t just echo. It sears through me, a brand on every nerve:YOU CARRY OUR MARK. POWER AWAKENS AT YOUR COMMAND.I flex my fingers. The air bends between them, thin threads of light snapping and curling, not electricity but something rawer, like thought made visible.“Ezren…” Kira’s voice drifts in like she’s speaking through water. “Your eyes…”My tongue feels heavy. “What about them?” But I already know. The collective shows me through surveillance feeds. My pupils have become perfect spirals of light, fractal patterns that pulse with each heartbeat like they’re alive. “They’re…” Aveline can’t stop staring. Her whisper is half-awe, half-fear. “Beautiful. And terrifying.”Devon doesn’t waver. His rifle tracks me like I’m already a target. “That’s not human anymore.”“I’m still me.” The words fall out brittle, like glass that could shatter either way. “Just… more.”“Expanded how?” Kira inches closer, her fear leaking through but her curiosity is stronger. “What can you d
Children in the Dark
EZREN’S POV“Fifteen percent and dropping.”Devon’s voice cuts through the alarms, brittle as glass about to shatter. Kira’s miracle, the shield that was supposed to hold eats itself alive on the monitors. In the back of my skull, the collective hums like a satisfied predator licking its teeth.“I can fix this,” I push toward the neural amplifier. “One more connection. Just let me….”“Absolutely not.” Devon steps in, weapon raised like he’s ready to use it on me instead of the invaders. “You’re already hanging by a thread.”“I’m fine.” The words feel too clean for what’s happening in my head. My vision fractures: on the left, the lab as it is; flickering lights, cables sparking, smoke curling toward the vents, my friends’ faces pale and taut. On the right, the collective’s version, data streams wrap everything in patterns I want to touch, equations bloom like flowers, and the gorgeous inevitability of conquest.“Ten percent,” Kira says, but her voice snags, like she’s trying not t
Countermeasure
KIRA’S POV“I’ve got it.”The words scrape out of me before I realize I’ve said them. My hands blur across the holographic interface, code cascading in tight green rivers. Every keystroke feels like I’m threading a needle in a hurricane.On the floor, Ezren jerks like someone’s shoving live current through his veins.“Got what?” Devon doesn’t glance away from him, rifle steady, safety off.“A fix,” I say, breath shallow. “Shields are glitching because the collective’s feeding them garbage data through Ez’s link.” My thumb hammers the deploy key. “This patch cuts the cord.”A set of progress bars crawls into existence. Not fast enough. Never fast enough.“How long till the next probe wave?” My voice comes out tighter than I want.“Three minutes,” Devon says. “Maybe less.”“This better work, Kira,” Dr. Aveline mutters, pacing behind me like a caged predator. “We don’t get second chances.”“It’ll work.” Thirty-seven percent. The numbers pulse like a heartbeat. “It’s clean. Elegant. Think
The Pack and the Hive
The collective’s welcome hits like someone jamming a live wire straight into my brainstem. No knock, no warning. Just a molten burn threading through my skull.Somewhere to my left, Devon’s neural tracker starts chirping in time with my heartbeat. The readout on his console climbs; steady, precise, in sync with me like we’ve rehearsed this. Behind me, Kira’s station erupts in a warbling alarm, her vitals spiking in the same rhythm.“It’s spreading,” Devon says, and he’s trying for calm, but there’s a hitch in his voice.“Jumping to anyone with neural implants,” Kira throws over her shoulder.“Standard military tracking,” Dr. Aveline murmurs, the words like she’s speaking to herself. “We all have them.”And then, like someone’s tugged open a curtain in my head, the voices come. Devon’s quiet self-reproach bleeds through like the taste of old metal. Kira’s thoughts were jittering with frantic calculation, lines of code breaking apart and reassembling in panic. Aveline’s cool analy
The Link
DEVON’S POVMy finger hovers on the trigger. Just a few ounces of pressure, and this ends.But I can’t.Ez’s eyes catch the emergency lighting like shattered glass catching fire and each shard reflecting red, each pupil split into precise, unnatural geometry. A design no human body should carry. And yet, past the alien fracture, I still see the kid who hauled me out of that Devourer snare on Europa Station.Still the kid who slid me half his last ration pack when we were pinned down for 3 days. “Devon.”Dr. Aveline’s voice slices through my hesitation. Not sharp enough to cut it clean, but enough to remind me she’s watching.“What’s your assessment?”Assessment. Sure. Like this is some neat little briefing over coffee instead of me aiming a rifle at my friend’s face.The flicker of the red emergency lights tugs me somewhere else. Dad’s workshop, back on the farm before the war. Lantern glow spilling over half-finished repairs on the workbench. The hiss of rain on the barn roof.
The Voice in the Dark
“Ez? You with us?”Kira’s voice is the first thing I hear, thin and sharp through a fog thick enough to drown in. I’m on the floor of Lab Seven, staring up at lights so bright they feel like needles punching into my eyes.“What… happened?” My throat’s dry. I push myself upright. Devon is crouched beside me, weapon still in hand but aimed at the floor. Dr. Aveline slumped against her workstation, skin ashen, knuckles white around the edge of the desk.“You were connected for seventeen minutes,” Aveline says, voice low and uneven. “We couldn’t break the link.”I blink at her. “What do you mean couldn’t?”Devon glances at her, then at me. “You started speaking their language. Not just words. We could feel what they meant… in our heads.”Memory crashes back in shards—the network. Billions of voices braided into one. Something vast and patient was watching me, learning.“I remember.” I stand slowly, testing my balance. “It showed me things.”“What kind of things?” Aveline asks.“The way
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