2025-06-19 06:30:51They ran blind through the smoke.
Ash led the charge, rifle in hand and night vision gear clipped over one eye. Damien positioned himself between Sophia and any potential threat, his heart racing as he gripped his pistol in one hand while guilt weighed heavily in the other.
The freight tunnel wasn’t just breached; it was being demolished. Explosives had been strategically placed on support beams and detonated with precision.
Someone knew exactly where they were.
“Shadow Unit,” Ash shouted as they ducked behind an overturned crate. “At least five. Heat signatures moving along the west wall.”
Damien swore softly. “They’re herding us.”
“Toward the secondary exit.”
He turned to Sophia. “You good?”
She nodded, her breath unsteady. “Just keep moving.”
Ash tapped her ear. “Looping signal jammer. I’ll buy us twenty seconds.”
They took off again quickly, low, and methodically. Gunfire erupted behind them in short bursts, bullets tearing through concrete and narrowly missing them. Damien fired a shot without aiming, hearing a grunt as a body hit the ground.
One down.
Four to go.
When they finally burst into the open air, dawn was just breaking.
The tunnel’s exit led them into an old, abandoned train yard. Fog clung to the rusted rails, and decaying boxcars loomed like sleeping giants.
Ash checked her scanner. “They’re not following. Not yet.”
Damien’s gaze shifted to Sophia.
She was shaking, her lips tinged blue, pupils wide.
That didn’t sit right with him.
“We need to get whatever’s in her head out,” he insisted. “Before it shuts her down.”
Ash nodded. “I’ve got the rig. It’s risky.”
“I don’t care.”
Inside an old security cabin, they set up the neural interface again, this time focused solely on extraction.
Sophia lay on a dusty cot, cables snaking into a monitor. Her vitals flickered erratically. Ash studied the readouts in silence while Damien paced the room, a knot tightening in his stomach.
“You’re sure this works?” he asked.
Ash didn’t look up. “It’s black-market tech. Used it once on an asset in Belarus. He lived.”
“How well?”
“Define ‘well.’”
Damien’s jaw clenched. “If she dies”
“She won’t,” Ash interjected. “Unless Eclipse triggers a feedback loop.”
Sophia opened her eyes. “Do it.”
Ash hesitated. “You sure?”
“I’m done running. Get it out of me.”
Ash activated the system.
The extraction process was brutal.
Sophia’s body convulsed violently. The monitor blared. Damien held her down as she arched off the cot, teeth gritted, sweat streaming down her face.
Data streamed across the screensymbols, pulses, sequences a complete neural map of the Eclipse Core Protocol.
It was beautiful.
And deadly.
Ash’s fingers flew across the console, isolating threads and rerouting corrupted loops. “We’re getting a clean signal. This thing is alive.”
Then, the monitor flatlined.
Damien's heart dropped.
“Sophia?!”
Ash scrambled to inject a stimulant. Nothing.
“No pulse,” she said. “I need a defib now!”
Damien grabbed the portable AED, ripped open Sophia’s shirt, placed the pads, and hit the trigger.
Shock.
Her body jolted.
Still nothing.
Ash pressed her fingers to the side of Sophia’s throat. “Still our hearts ’ not responding.”
“Again.”
Shock.
Nothing.
Damien’s voice trembled. “Come on. Come on.”
Then beep.
The monitor flickered.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She gasped.
Damien caught her as she shot upright, coughing and clutching her chest.
“You’re okay,” he whispered.
“No,” Ash said, staring at the screen. “She’s not.”
They both turned.
The monitor wasn’t just tracking vitals anymore.
It was broadcasting.
A coded signal.
Ash’s voice dropped. “She didn’t just hold Eclipse’s key…”
Damien stared in horror.
“She activated it.”
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The Architect’s Echo
Sophia barged through the door, practically tripping into the light. And this wasn’t just any light—no classic golden glow, no sterile hospital white. It was a brain-melting, headache-inducing brightness, like someone had turned all her half-finished thoughts into pure shine.Took her a second to get her bearings. It turns out that it wasn’t some grand chamber, and it was not even close. A corridor, endless and weirdly alive, stretched out ahead. The walls? Flickering panels, each one pulsing with memories except not directly hers. More like, remixes. She caught herself at ten, doodling spirals on a battered school desk. Then, twenty years older, screaming at some ghost in a lab that probably never existed.And then man, the real trip possible futures. Somewhere she didn’t even make it past the first recursion. Somewhere she ditched Ash and Damien. Somewhere she wasn’t even Sophia anymore, at least not in any way she’d recognize.She barely got her voice working. “What is this place?”
when the Abyss calls your name
The abyss surged in, bringing a physical presence and a flood of ideas shadows that felt alive, whispering secrets about every failure the four friends had tried so hard to bury.Sophia knelt there, shaking, her mind under siege. The abyss kept calling her name, over and over, like a toxic love song.Sophia. You’ve always been the fragile one. You masked it with sharp words and a facade of control, but you’ve always felt empty deep down. That’s why you created recursion, right? To escape from yourself.Her shield shattered like glass.Without hesitating, Damien stepped in front of her, his blade humming with energy. But when he swung, the abyss caught it between two fingers, snapping it like chalk. The sound echoed, heavy and final.Ash erupted in flames, bursts of fire pouring from his chest, so hot they scorched the walls. For a brief moment, the abyss pulled back. But even as Ash poured everything he had into the fire, the shadow swallowed the light, leaving only drifting embers in
The Rest of Me
The chamber’s scream was deafening. Every crack in the stone widened; every seam gaped open like a mouth, spewing shadows into the air. The ground buckled and split beneath their feet.Sophia stumbled, her shield wavering as the floor broke apart. Damien caught her arm, yanking her back just as a jagged rift yawned open where she’d been standing.The abyss self hovered above the chaos, its form dissolving into threads of smoke that danced into the widening cracks overhead. Its golden eyes shone like lanterns in a storm.You thought this was me?it whispered, its voice booming from every wall, no longer confined to a single throat. This was only a fragment.Ash cursed and swung flames at the crawling shadow husks, burning through them in handfuls, but they kept coming. For every one he took down, two more emerged from the stone, shrieking with half-formed mouths. Sweat dripped down his brow, and his flames sputtered dangerously.Not sustainable, he muttered through clenched teeth. We ca
When Shadows Bite Back
The chamber felt like it was closing in, like the walls had become jaws ready to snap. Shards of black stone rose from the ground, floating like jagged wings. The abyss was alive now, restless and hungry.The abyss self wasn’t smiling anymore. His face was sharper, colder stripped of any human kindness.You think this ends with words? he said, his voice rough like steel scraping against stone. No. This ends with survival.Suddenly, the ground split between them, and fireless lightning crackled across the cracks.Lena pushed Sophia back. Ash rushed to Damien’s side. Weapons ignited steel, flame, grit but the shadow was faster.He didn’t hit with fists or blades. He attacked with memory.In an instant, Damien wasn’t in the chamber anymore. He was back in the ruins of the first recursion field, ash falling like snow, bodies scattered around. The smell of burning filled the air, and he could hear the screams. And there, right in front of him, was a younger version of himself weak, despera
Reflections That Bleed
The abyss shifted. What had felt like an endless drop suddenly solidified beneath their feet. They stood on a cracked glass floor, stretching out into nothingness, each fracture glowing softly like light veins. Above them? There was no sky, just an infinite void.On that glass plain stood their reflections. Four against four. Perfect mirrors, yet so wrong. Sophia’s reflection wore a cruel smirk. Damien looked hollow, the darkness in his eyes swallowing everything but the gold. Ash showed scars he never had. Lena reflected someone who had given up hope long ago.Sophia’s breath caught in her throat. They weren't just enemies; they were possibilitiesAsh spoke first, his voice tight. These aren’t echoes. These are… what we could’ve been.Lena snarled, her blade raised. Or what we still might become.Then, the glass beneath them pulsed like a heartbeat. Words appeared in the fractures, not written but felt deep in their bones:Only truth defines the survivor. Only choice defines the line
Into the Rift
The chamber crumbled around them, shaking with a roar and filling the air with dust. Ash grabbed Lena's arm and pulled her forward just as stones shattered at their feet. Sophia was the last to follow, her eyes glued not to the chaos behind them but to a faint shimmer of light lingering in the air where Damien had disappeared.They barreled through a collapsing archway just as the floor beneath them gave way. The moment they got through, the ruin behind them vanished not just rubble, but nothing was like a hole that devoured everything, as if it had never existed.Lena whirled around, her blade snapping into action. That’s not a normal collapse.Ash swore under his breath. You don't need to be a genius to see that.Sophia halted mid-step, her breath catching in her throat. In the void where the chamber had been, something was taking shape.A figure.But it wasn’t Damien.The outline felt all wrong taller, sharper, with movements that defied the laws of physics. The thing emerged from
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