2025-09-09 00:09:06The black sedan idled at the curb outside Selene’s apartment, its tinted windows reflecting the pale light of dawn. Two men in dark suits stood by the rear door, their posture sharp, precise, not hired bodyguards, but military.
Selene clutched her coat tighter around her shoulders. Every nerve screamed at her to run back upstairs, lock the door, and pretend none of this was happening. But the weight in the air, the cold authority in the voice that had called her, made it clear she didn’t have a choice.
The taller of the two men opened the door. “Mrs. Carter. Please.”
Her feet moved before her mind could catch up. She slid into the leather seat, heart pounding, the scent of polished steel and antiseptic sharp in the air.
The man beside her shut the door, the locks clicking into place with finality. The sedan pulled away from the curb.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
“Headquarters,” the man answered simply. No explanation. No reassurance.
Selene’s throat tightened. Headquarters. Of all the places she never imagined she’d be invited, or dragged, this was at the top of the list.
The ride was silent. Too silent. Selene’s thoughts swirled, each one heavier than the last. Adrian’s face. His warning. Damon’s voice at her door. And now this.
By the time the sedan turned into a secured compound, her palms were damp. Fences topped with razor wire gleamed in the morning light. Guards with rifles flanked the gates, saluting as the car rolled past.
The vehicle stopped before a building of glass and steel that loomed like a fortress. Selene’s stomach flipped as the door opened again.
“Inside,” one of the men instructed.
She stepped out, her heels clicking against the pavement, her every movement scrutinized by eyes that made her feel more like a suspect than a guest.
The room they led her into was bare, metal table, two chairs, a faint hum of fluorescent lights. She sat stiffly, the cold from the steel seeping into her skin.
Moments later, the door opened.
A woman strode in, tall, composed, her tailored uniform pristine. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, the kind that missed nothing. She placed a folder on the table, then sat across from Selene.
“Mrs. Carter,” the woman said. “I’m Director Hale.”
The name struck a chord. Selene had heard it before, Vivienne Hale. Wealthy, powerful, a name whispered in her family’s circles.
Selene’s pulse stumbled.
“Why am I here?” she demanded.
Director Hale’s lips curved in a faint smile. “Because Adrian Kane trusts no one. But for reasons we can’t yet explain… his enemies trust you.”
Selene’s stomach dropped. “Enemies?”
“General Kane has been compromised. His movements, his communications, his mission, all under threat. And we believe someone close to you may be the link.”
The words struck like lightning. Someone close to her?
Her mind raced through names, her mother, her father, Nathan, each possibility worse than the last.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Selene whispered. “I don’t”
“You divorced him,” Hale cut in smoothly. “You’ve distanced yourself. You’re the perfect blind spot. Which is precisely why you’re now a target.”
Selene’s skin went cold.
The door swung open again.
Selene’s breath caught.
Adrian.
He filled the doorway, broad-shouldered and commanding, the weight of his uniform like armor. But his eyes, those eyes. burned straight through her.
She rose instinctively, her chair scraping back, her mouth opening, but no words came.
He stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him with deliberate force. The silence stretched, unbearable.
“Adrian” she finally breathed,
His expression was unreadable, carved from ice. “Why are you here?”
“I was brought here!” Selene snapped, her voice breaking under the tension. “I don’t know what’s happening, I”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said flatly, his tone cutting her off.
Her chest tightened, the same way it had the night he signed the papers without a fight. Always controlled. Always shutting her out.
But his next words shattered her.
“You’ve already made your choice, Selene. Don’t drag yourself into mine.”
The sting was sharp, but before she could respond, the director rose smoothly.
“General Kane,” Hale said, “with all due respect, Mrs. Carter’s involvement may no longer be optional. Damon Locke has taken an interest in her.”
The name hit the air like a curse, Adrian’s eyes snapped to Selene, his jaw tightening.
Selene’s heart thudded painfully. “I told him I wasn’t interested”
“That won’t matter,” Adrian cut in. His voice was low, dangerous. “When Damon Locke wants something, he takes it.”
The air thickened.
Selene’s skin prickled under the weight of his gaze. She wanted to demand answers, about Damon, about the mission, about everything, but the fury simmering beneath Adrian’s controlled exterior made her words die in her throat.
For a moment, they only stared at each other, the chasm between them wider than ever.
Then Adrian leaned forward, his voice quiet but lethal.
“If Damon has touched you, Selene…” His hands curled into fists against the table. “I swear, I will kill him.”
Selene’s breath caught.
Because in Adrian’s eyes, she saw it, an edge sharper than love, darker than hate, And for the first time, she wondered if the man she had once called her husband was capable of far more than silence.
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CHAPTER NINETY-THREE: RESIDUAL CODE
The first thing Damon heard was rain. Real rain cold, heavy, alive.He opened his eyes to a sky bruised violet, clouds shot through with streaks of static lightning that glowed faintly gold before fading. The sound of water against metal filled the silence where cities used to breathe.Damon pushed himself up on shaking arms, coughing out dust and blood. Every joint ached. The ground beneath him was black glass melted sand fused by something that wasn’t quite heat.The ruins of the control tower were gone. The entire perimeter where the Eye’s containment field had existed was now a single, smooth crater, and in the center of it, something hummed.Not loud. Just steady, like a heartbeat. He limped toward it, one hand pressed against his ribs. His comm implant flickered static in his ear, white noise cutting in and out, until a fragment of voice broke through.“on Hale, do you copy?”Damon froze. “Command?”“Copy, signal, unstable, where are you?”He exhaled shakily. “Outside the contai
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO: THE ASH OF LIGHT
It wasn’t an explosion. It was an undoing. Vivienne’s body came apart in silence no fire, no heat, no pain. Just light folding in on itself, peeling her layer by layer until she wasn’t sure where her skin ended and the world began.Every atom of her being was stretched across dimensions she couldn’t name.She heard the sound of her heartbeat disintegrate, not stopping, but splitting into countless versions of itself, each echoing at a different frequency. Somewhere in the swarm of sound, she heard Adrian’s voice again.“Vivienne.”Her name, drawn out like a plea. She tried to reach toward it, but her hands dissolved into light. Her memories followed, fracturing, scattering, moments flickering in random bursts.Her first mission with Adrian. Her laughter under gunfire. Selene’s voice in the corridor, saying, You’ll never understand him. The Eye, whispering, You already do.Then, silence. For a heartbeat, she wasn’t anyone. Something touched her consciousness. A thread. A thought not he
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE: THE FRACTURE POINT
At first, she thought she was breathing again. Then she realized the air didn’t move.It shimmered pixelated. Each inhale brought a brief flicker of reality, like a screen trying to stabilize. When she exhaled, the world blurred, resetting around her.Vivienne sat up slowly, her hand leaving a faint trail of light in the air. Her body was still hers, but wrong, translucent in places, her veins running not with blood but data streams that pulsed faint blue under her skin.The ground beneath her was half glass, half stone. Around her, the ruins of a city towers bending at impossible angles, fragments of sky embedded in pavement, reflections that refused to mirror her correctly.“Adrian?”Her voice echoed with a delay, bouncing back distorted, answering her in a whisper that wasn’t quite her own. “Vivienne.”She turned sharply nothing. Just the hum of static that seemed to live inside her bones.It took her a moment to realize the whisper wasn’t external. It was inside her, threading thr
CHAPTER NINETY: THE BLACK FIELD
There was no waking, only remembering. Vivienne’s eyes opened to a sky that wasn’t a sky, a black expanse textured like oil, rippling with veins of light that pulsed to the rhythm of her heartbeat.The air shimmered around her in slow motion, thick with the scent of ozone and something faintly metallic.The ground beneath her was translucent, a mirror of glass suspended over an abyss. Beneath it, faces shifted like trapped stars, flaring briefly before vanishing again. Some she recognized. Most she didn’t. All of them whispered.Welcome back, You’re late. You shouldn’t have followed him.Her throat burned when she tried to speak. “Adrian”The sound cracked the air literally. A thin fissure of white lightning streaked outward from her mouth, racing into the distance until it was swallowed by the dark, and then, somewhere within the black horizon, a pulse. Slow, familiar.She turned toward it, her pulse syncing to its rhythm, the same rhythm she’d once traced against his wrist in the si
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE: THE ECHO FIELD
She was falling. Not through air, not through space through thought. Every breath tore another layer off her mind, until even the sound of her own heartbeat seemed borrowed. When she hit the ground, there was no pain. Only silence. Vivienne opened her eyes.The world around her was a simulation of memory, too perfect, too symmetrical. The sky above was a shade of impossible blue, unmoving. The grass bowed in the same direction, over and over, like a looped film reel, and in the middle of it all stood him.Adrian Kane. He looked whole. Unscarred. His uniform immaculate, medals gleaming. The wind moved through his hair as if obeying him. When he turned, his smile was slow, gentle, heartbreakingly familiar.“You made it,” he said.Her throat tightened. “Adrian?”He stepped closer, and every instinct in her body screamed no. There was something too steady about the way he moved. No hesitation, no fatigue, none of the subtle human flaws that had always given him away.“You don’t belong her
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT: FRACTURE POINT
The sky was coming apart, not with thunder or flame, but with silence. A soundless rupture split across the horizon, peeling the night like old paint. Beneath it, the city glowed in unnatural stillness, every window reflecting a gold shimmer that wasn’t light but memory.The Eye’s pulse faint, failing bled across the skyline in long, stuttering waves.Vivienne Hale stood on the cracked observation deck of the command outpost, wind whipping her hair into her eyes, headset sparking with static. The air tasted like electricity and fear.“Adrian” she rasped into the comm. “Respond. Please.”Only static answered. A low, intermittent hiss that broke once into the faintest human echo before collapsing again.She closed her eyes, grounding herself against the railing. Her heartbeat thundered in her throat.He’d gone back in, of course he had.She’d watched his signal vanish into the Eye’s dying field, his vitals fragmenting into unreadable patterns. Command had ordered her to shut the system
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