2025-06-17 13:10:28Damien stared at the note in his hand, feeling like it could vanish any second.
“I’m watching too. You’re not alone. A.”
Four years ago, Ash Maddox had died right in front of him. At least, that’s what he believed. Their last mission in Moldova ended with an explosion, and when the dust settled, only Damien was still standing.
Now, she was back, or at least someone wanted him to think she was.
He burned the note in the sink, watching the flames flicker around the edges until it turned ash. Ironic, right? Then he locked down the safehouse and checked the perimeter one last time. No breaches. No bugs. Just his paranoia hanging in the air.
In the other room, Sophia stirred.
“You ever sleep?” she asked softly from the doorway.
Damien didn’t even turn around. “Not really.”
She stepped in slowly, barefoot and wrapped in a long cardigan. In the dim light, she looked smaller, but her voice was steady.
“I heard something earlier. Like a tap.”
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing?” she raised an eyebrow. “That’s the same tone you used when someone tried to kill me.”
Finally, Damien glanced at her. “You’re alive. That’s what matters.”
She crossed her arms. “And what do you do when I’m asleep? Just pace like a caged animal?”
He didn’t reply. She sighed and leaned against the kitchen counter.
“My mom used to say silence was safety,” she murmured. “That’s why she built the bookstore without Wi-Fi. No digital records. No tech inside the walls.”
Damien’s curiosity was piqued. “Your mom?”
Sophia nodded. “She was… paranoid. Always looking over her shoulder. Said we were being watched. That’s why I didn’t get a phone until I turned sixteen.”
He stepped closer. “Where is she now?”
“Died three years ago. Cancer.”
“Was that before or after you met Vale?”
“I never met Vale. Once, I sent a letter to his company with a proposal to help fund the bookstore. I never heard back until you showed up.”
Damien’s mind raced. Sophia’s mom was off-grid, antitech, and raised her daughter in a digital bubble, right when Eclipse was active.
He asked quietly, “Did your mom ever mention the word Eclipse?”
Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he walked over to the laptop and pulled up an encrypted folder.
“Come here.”
Sophia hesitated but then moved closer.
Damien opened a still image: surveillance footage from six years ago. A test site in Eastern Europe. Four civilians strolled through a busy street, and one was circled in red.
The caption read:
“ECLIPSE TARGET ALPHA-7”
He enlarged the frame.
The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties, with hair in a bun, green eyes, and wearing a long cardigan.
Sophia gasped. “That’s my mom.”
“I thought so.”
“But how… why…?” She gripped the back of a chair. “What is this?”
Damien clicked to the next frame. Alpha-7 flagged for termination. Civilian collateral accepted.”
Sophia’s voice cracked. “Termination?”
Damien stayed silent.
“She knew,” Sophia whispered. “She knew they were coming.”
“And kept you off the grid.”
Sophia’s hand covered her mouth. “She died thinking she’d kept me safe.”
An uncomfortable silence hung between them.
Then Damien said softly, “She bought you time. Let’s not waste it.”
By sunrise, they moved to a new safehouse.
Damien had three backup options. He chose the most isolated: an abandoned lakeside cabin he’d used back in his early mercenary days. No power, no cameras, no signalsjust wood, water, and wide open space.
Sophia didn’t complain this time.
She sat on the edge of the dock while Damien unpacked and cleared the area. Once he finished, he checked the paper dropsthree in total. Two were empty. The third had another note.
You’re asking the wrong question. It was never about her. It was always about you.
Damien’s stomach twisted.
He stepped outside. Sophia was sitting with her legs crossed, staring out at the water.
“I think it’s time you told me what Eclipse is,” she said without looking at him.
Damien took a deep breath. “It’s a ghost system. Surveillance AI. Designed to predict threats before they happen.”
“Like pre-crime?”
“Even worse. It doesn’t just analyze behavior; it rew...
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The city that remember wrong
The city shimmered, wavering like heat on water. At first, Ash almost believed she was back in her old world labs, glass towers, that familiar grid of civilization. But the closer she got, the stranger it all felt. Streets curled in on themselves. Reflections lagged, just a beat too slow. The skyline bent, slow and liquid, as if someone was drawing it from memory and getting the lines a little wrong. This wasn’t rebuilding anything. It was longing, trying to remember. Ash stepped through a curtain of light. Instantly, the air changed. It felt thick and soft, as if it could hear her. Even her breath echoed down hallways that weren’t there yet. The city kept rewriting itself, piece by piece. She wandered into an alley that curled like a question mark. The walls pulsed with faint light veins crawling across the bricks, forming half-faces, snatches of laughter, memories that didn’t belong to her. Ash stopped. Something whispered close to her ear. Welcome home. She spun ar
The dream that rewrites the sun
The sea didn’t move in straight lines anymore.Waves curled in on themselves, rolling and opening up with a strange intent, like they remembered other oceans and were trying to fit them all together. Ash stood at the edge, wind tangling her hair, staring at a horizon that wouldn’t stay still. One second, the water was just blue; the next, gold streaks flashed through it, like sunlight was scrawling something she almost understood.Behind her, the child wandered barefoot across the sand. Her steps didn’t leave footprints just quick bursts of light that faded as soon as they appeared.Ash still hadn’t found a name for her.She wasn’t Sophia. She wasn’t anyone Ash had known before.But she carried echoes of the others how they laughed, the way they breathed.The child knelt, pressed her finger into the sand, and drew a spiral. The mark glowed, lifted, and floated away, like dust in early sunlight. It broke apart, and suddenly warm air brushed Ash’s face.What was that? Ash asked.The chi
When the silence learns to speak
The silence felt heavy now.It wasn’t just quiet there was this thick, deliberate stillness, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something it couldn’t quite recall.Ash sat at the edge of a dry riverbed, watching her own face shimmer in a puddle made from the morning mist. The sky overhead was just blank, all pale gray, not a cloud or shape in sight. It looked like someone had erased everything and left only the waiting.Her reflection watched her, too barely there, quivering. For a split second, she thought it blinked on its own.She whispered into the empty air, her voice so soft it almost vanished.“Sophia. Damien. Lena.”Nothing answered.Just a faint tremor under her fingertips as she traced the water’s surface like a heartbeat that used to be there, echoing from somewhere far off.The days if you could even call them days dragged by without a sun to count them. Ash figured out time was still real because her body kept reminding her: hunger, tiredness, the need to
The memory that remembers us
The world had fallen silent again. Not a peaceful, gentle kind of silence, but the heavy hush that comes right after something explodes. The sort that settles in, thick with things left undone.Ash stood out on the plain, eyes fixed on the empty horizon. Grass brushed against her legs. The shimmer had faded, the pulse that always hummed here was gone. Still, under all that quiet, she could feel something struggling to restart. A rhythm trying to pick itself up. Like the gears of a machine remembering what they're supposed to do. Or a dream piecing itself back together after being torn apart.She spoke, soft, into the open air. “Sophia.”No answer.Not yet.Everyone else was gone. Damien had vanished into the recursion. Sophia wasn’t Sophia anymore she was part of it now. And Ash, the last one left with a real heartbeat and lungs full of air, stayed behind in this world stuck with too many memories.She wandered. Hours, maybe days it was impossible to tell. The sun just hung there, fro
The new frequency
For a while, everything just held its breath. Not empty, not dead just waiting.Ash sat in the field where the mirrored tree used to stand. She ran her hand over the ground. Dirt, grass, warm sun normal stuff. But under all that, something buzzed. Barely there, like the hum under a power line. Like the echo of Sophia’s heartbeat, still hanging on.She closed her eyes. Listened.The world thumped once, twice. Then, soft and far away, she caught it. Sophia’s voice, scattered in the hum.Ash.Her eyes snapped open. Damien stood a few meters off, staring at the horizon where the sky had started to ripple a line of light, wavering and alive.He turned, slowly.You heard it too, didn’t you?Ash nodded, her throat thick.It’s her.The horizon pulsed again, brighter this time. Shapes flickered in the glow of cities, faces, symbols breaking apart as soon as she tried to focus.Damien whispered,She’s not gone. She’s everywhere.They started walking toward the shimmer. Every step shifted someth
The world after recursion
Silence, again.But this time, it felt different.No electric hum. No background drone of circuitry. Just the wind is soft, a bit uncertain, strangely alive.Everything had changed into something haunting and beautiful. The sky stretched on forever, not quite blue, not really grey somewhere in between, shimmering and shifting like a thought you can’t hold onto. The grass whispered underfoot, like it remembered things you’d forgotten. Even the horizon kept moving, never settling.Ash knelt and pressed her hand to the earth. Warmth radiated upward. The ground pulsed beneath her palm, slow and steady like a heartbeat too big for any one person.Damien waited behind her, quiet. Bits of light still clung to his clothes, tiny shards from the Architect’s broken designs.Then Lena’s voice broke through, clearer than before, though still distant.You’re in the aftermath layer. After a collapse, a stabilizing field forms. That’s where recursion decides what stays.Ash looked up. The sky seemed
You may also like
I Can Enter Any Body For Twenty Days
Flower Spirit7.9K viewsREINCARNATED RETRIBUTION
Alova2.3K viewsDELUSION
Noveria2.6K viewsAllison; Taking Control
Feyonce9.0K viewsECHOES OF THE FORGOTTEN ISLE
V crimsonhart 191 viewsThe Ciphered city
Yusuf 128 viewsThe Escape Room
Tiara Cold1.3K viewsThe Hellspawn of Ravewood
D.twister903 views