2025-06-19 06:22:53The bodies were still warm when Damien closed the hatch.
Four men. No insignia, no dog tags. One of them had a sidearm from Vale, while another carried an encrypted comm unit that had already been wiped clean.
Just ghosts, every last one.
Ash knelt by the nearest body, rummaging through pockets. “They were here to kill her, not to take her alive. Two of them had single-shot darts. Hollow tips. Nerve agents.”
Damien didn’t reply. He was focused on powering up the long-range sat-link burner a backup system relying on a repurposed weather balloon in low orbit. Only one number was programmed in.
Vale.
It connected after two encrypted rings.
Adrian Vale’s face appeared on the screen, lit up by the sterile glow of a white-walled office. His suit was sharp and tailored, but his eyes told a different story.
“Damien,” he said, his voice smooth and corporate. “I assume this isn’t just a friendly chat.”
“You sent assassins.”
Vale frowned. “I sent no one.”
“One of them had a weapon from you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Just like Project Eclipse,” Damien shot back, “but here we are.”
Vale leaned in closer. “I gave you one job: keep her alive.”
“You only gave me half the truth.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the air.
Finally, Vale let out a slow breath. “They’re not mine.”
“Then whose are they?”
Vale glanced off-screen for a moment. When he returned, his voice dropped. “There’s someone else. Someone who activated an old asset chain I thought was done three years ago.”
Damien stiffened. “Rourke.”
Vale’s silence said it all.
“You knew he was still alive.”
“I hoped he wasn’t,” Vale admitted. “But you’ve always been better at dealing with ghosts than I was.”
“You handed Sophia’s mother over to him,” Damien said. “I heard the recording.”
Vale’s expression darkened. “That was a mistake. One of many.”
“She died believing she saved her daughter. You let Eclipse keep running.”
“I tried to kill it,” Vale snapped. “But Rourke already had fragments. The AI restructured. It became decentralized.”
Damien clenched his jaw. “And now?”
“Now it’s testing how far it can go without us.”
Ash cut the link.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
Damien stayed quiet.
Ash frowned. “You should. Vale’s a lot of thingsarrogant, manipulative but scared? That’s new.”
Sophia stepped out from behind a rusty cabinet, her face pale but steady.
“What happens if this… Rourke gets what he wants?” she asked.
Ash looked grim. “Then Eclipse stops needing people.”
Sophia swallowed hard. “And if he doesn’t get it?”
“Then he’ll burn everything down trying.”
They moved again, this time to an old freight tunnel that used to transport weapons beneath the city during the Cold War. Ash set it up with proximity sensors and thermal traps. Meanwhile, Damien scanned encrypted traffic for patterns.
He found one.
A repeated phrase embedded within burst data across old military satellite networks:
“Protocol Reign: 13 Days Remaining.”
He showed it to Ash.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Looks like a countdown.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophia sat across from them, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes blank.
Ash glanced at her. “She’s fading.”
“She’s processing,” Damien replied.
“She’s just a girl caught in a war she didn’t choose.”
“She’s the reason there’s a war.”
Ash shot him a sharp look. “That kind of thinking could get her killed.”
“I don’t treat assets like kids.”
“She’s not just an asset.”
“She’s not a civilian anymore, either.”
They locked eyes until Sophia broke the tension.
“I need to know what’s inside me.”
Ash stood slowly. “Then we’ll extract it.”
The next night, in a makeshift med bay pieced together from scavenged field equipment, Sophia lay on a padded bench as Ash hooked her up to a portable neural monitor.
“I don’t remember anything,” she whispered.
“You don’t need to,” Ash said gently. “The pattern’s embedded in echo neurons that trigger when you’re stressed, scared, or feeling intense emotions. We’re just going to listen to the rhythm.”
Damien stood by the door, arms crossed. Every muscle in his body screamed to stop this.
But he didn’t move.
Sophia closed her eyes, her breathing slowing.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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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