2025-08-24 02:22:27The blindfold scratched against Shayne’s skin.
Synthetic cloth. Not military standard. Designed for psychological discomfort.
He couldn’t move—arms bound, legs pinned by magnetic restraints. He could hear the low hum of a transport drone. The air smelled sterile, overly recycled. Every few seconds, he caught a faint whiff of ozone—like the scent of an old electric burn.
A voice crackled overhead: “Arrival in T-minus one minute. Welcome to Facility Nine.”
So it was real.
Not a rumor. Not a myth whispered by prisoners through the walls of Zone Zero. It existed—and now, it waited for him.
The pod shuddered. Landed.
Boots approached.
Rough hands dragged him forward. Through a scanner. Through a long corridor. Through something that hummed like metal but pulsed like flesh. Every step made the air denser.
They stopped.
The blindfold came off.
The light was white. Too white. The kind of light that erased detail instead of revealing it.
He was inside a glass chamber, no wider than a walk-in closet. The walls pulsed faintly—monitored. Observed. A mirror took up one side of the chamber. Except Shayne knew it wasn’t a mirror. It was a window. Someone was watching.
Always.
The restraints retracted.
He turned slowly, taking it in. No bed. No chair. No toilet. No visible cameras. Just glass. Sterile glass, meant to dismantle the mind.
Then the voice came.
Calm. Smooth. Not artificial, but chillingly composed.
“Welcome, Shayne Marrow. I’m Dr. Marin Hale.”
A faint buzz. Then the mirror-wall flickered—and revealed a woman on the other side.
Dark bobbed hair. Crimson lips. A white coat over a black suit. Her eyes were impossibly still, as if nothing had ever startled her. Not even death.
“I must say,” she continued, “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. The system feared you. The soldiers chased you. But me?” She smiled faintly. “I study you.”
Shayne’s jaw clenched.
Dr. Hale clasped her hands in front of her.
“You’ve been asking the wrong question,” she said. “Not ‘What is Facility 9?’ but ‘Why do they never speak of it?’”
He said nothing.
“That silence,” she continued, “is where we operate. Facility 9 isn’t a prison. It’s a removal chamber. Here, we don’t just contain threats—we erase them. Not their bodies. Their meaning.”
She tapped a console.
A holoscreen projected behind her. It showed Elysia Vorn—hands cuffed, sitting before a tribunal screen. Audio off. Face unreadable.
“She disobeyed direct protocol for you,” Dr. Hale said. “You have quite the effect on the faithful.”
Shayne stepped forward.
“If you hurt her—”
Hale held up a finger. “Please. I’m not a barbarian. I’m a scientist. Your survival, your resistance, your belief—it all makes you a data anomaly. One I intend to study.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes to untangle the equation of your soul.”
The mirror-wall flickered back to opaque.
A new voice replaced her. Cold. Robotic.
“Cycle One Commencing: Isolation Calibration.”
The glass walls flashed red.
Shayne staggered backward as an ultrasonic pulse rang through the chamber. It wasn’t painful, but disorienting—designed to fracture thought, make prayer impossible, memory unstable.
He fell to his knees.
But he didn’t scream.
He closed his eyes.
And whispered, barely audibly:
“Even if I make my bed in Sheol… You are there.”
The pulse stopped.
Silence again.
⸻
Meanwhile, across the city, Elysia sat in a dark, windowless tribunal chamber.
The screen before her displayed her charges: Insubordination. Breach of Command. Emotional Compromise. Failure to Contain Subject.
She kept her chin lifted.
Chancellor Riven’s voice crackled through the speakers.
“You were handpicked for your loyalty. For your immunity to doctrine. For your precision. And you betrayed every one of those metrics.”
Elysia didn’t flinch.
Riven leaned forward on the screen.
“You saw what he did. You let him broadcast. You delayed his arrest.”
“I didn’t delay,” she said. “I calculated.”
“You gave him time.”
“He was already dead the moment you found him. You just didn’t want the world to hear it.”
A pause.
Then Riven’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re lucky the Council voted against full extraction. For now, you’re reassigned. No field work. No command. You’ll sit at the back of a surveillance chamber and watch the man you spared… until he breaks.”
The screen shut off.
The door opened.
Two guards entered, but they didn’t bind her.
Instead, they handed her a datapad.
Subject: Marrow, Shayne.
Status: Phase One Complete.
Next Step: Memory Harvest.
Viewer Access: Authorized.
Elysia stared at it.
It was his chamber feed.
Every heartbeat, every blink, every whisper.
She was meant to watch.
Not as a soldier.
As a witness.
In Facility 9, Shayne sat slumped against the glass wall.
He was bleeding from his ear. His fingers trembled. But his eyes burned.
And in the silence, a voice not his own echoed through the chamber wall.
Not a broadcast.
Not a command.
But a whisper. A woman’s whisper.
“Shayne… Can you hear me?”
He looked up.
The voice was coming from inside his head.
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Chapter Seventeen: Fracture
Light swallowed everything.For a moment Shayne thought he was dead. No sound, no weight, no edges to cling to—only searing brilliance flooding his senses. His lungs strained for breath in the void, and he wondered if Grant had burned the world down to nothing.Then the light cracked.It spiderwebbed like glass, shards breaking apart to reveal flashes of reality beneath: stone, steel, fractured circuitry. The ground lurched and the brilliance splintered, collapsing into a storm of jagged fragments that rained around him. Shayne stumbled, shielding his face as the pieces of light dissolved to ash.He hit solid ground again. His knees slammed into fractured stone, ribs aching with the impact. He sucked in a ragged breath and forced his eyes open.The ruins were unrecognizable.The chamber’s arches had buckled, steel beams twisted and warped by the blast. Walls bled sparks, streams of corrupted code bleeding down their surfaces like oil. The air shimmered with residual heat, carrying the
Chapter Sixteen: The Choice of Fire
Shayne’s lungs locked as the ground beneath him pulsed, alive with the rhythm of the Accord’s trap. The sigils carved into the steel floor weren’t just glowing—they were breathing, expanding with each surge of energy like a beast drawing in air before the strike.“Shayne.” Elysia’s voice cracked sharp, pulling him back from paralysis. Her eyes tracked the widening circle of red light beneath them, her hands flexing on the grip of her pulse-blade. “This isn’t just a kill-switch. They’ve primed a dimensional rupture. If it blows—”“It won’t just take this block,” Shayne finished grimly. His chest burned as the Seal pulsed against his ribs. “It’ll take the city.”All around them, Accord soldiers tightened their formation, weapons gleaming silver in the strobing light of the countdown. Their helmets obscured human features, eyes glowing with the cold blue of the Accord’s AI link. They weren’t afraid. They were waiting.Waiting for him to choose wrong.Elysia leaned closer, her whisper a k
Chapter Fifteen: Fire in the Veins
Shayne’s heart pounded as the reinforced steel doors exploded inward. Sparks sprayed across the chamber, the concussion rattling his teeth. Accord soldiers poured through in perfect formation—black armor gleaming beneath the strobing emergency lights, rifles raised, visors blank.He didn’t wait.The Seal in his chest pulsed hot, raw fire licking his veins. His fists ignited in a burst of crimson light as he lunged forward, intercepting the first wave. His knuckles slammed into a soldier’s chestplate—the man flew backward, armor shrieking as it dented. Another swung his rifle toward Shayne, but the weapon melted to slag before the trigger could be pulled.Gunfire erupted.Elysia Vorn dove beside him, cloak whipping behind her. She moved with the precision of a blade unsheathed—pistol in one hand, a jagged short-sword in the other. Two soldiers dropped in quick succession, bullets piercing weak seams in their armor. She spun low, kicking one man’s knee backward before slashing his throa
Chapter Fourteen: The Hand That Opens the Gate
The silence after the illusions broke was almost unbearable. Shayne sat slumped against the cold wall, chest heaving, his hand pressed to the cracked Seal glowing faintly beneath his shirt. The air smelled of rust and ozone, and every flicker of the lights made him wonder if another ghost would materialize to torment him.But no ghosts came. No Shiloh. No phantom twin. Only the raw ache of knowing his mind had been bent, played like a broken string.His thoughts spun. Serah’s plea still echoed—find Shiloh—but now he couldn’t trust what he had seen. Was she real? Was anything?The hiss of a sliding door cut through his spiraling thoughts.Shayne lurched upright, ready to fight with nothing but his fists. But instead of a soldier or another phantom, a figure walked in with deliberate calm. Her boots clicked softly against the steel floor.Elysia Vorn.Tall, sharp-featured, dressed in a black coat lined with crimson threading, she looked like someone who didn’t walk into chaos—she direct
Chapter Thirteen: The Lie That Binds
Shayne’s breath came ragged, burning his throat as he staggered down the endless corridor. The alarms had quieted, but inside his head the ringing never stopped. Each footfall echoed too loud, too sharp—like someone else was following just a half-step behind.He knew better than to turn around. Every time he looked, the shadows rearranged themselves into something familiar. A silhouette. A face. The faint glimmer of golden eyes that could not exist.Shiloh.He forced the name from his mind, gritting his teeth. No. Not real. Not her. Not me.But the memory of the voice lingered. You are incomplete. They severed us. Without me, you’ll burn out before the prophecy completes.The words had felt true—achingly true—but Shayne had been trained to spot manipulation. The Accord had refined illusions into a science. They didn’t just project false images; they rewrote the senses, stitched false emotion into memory until you couldn’t tell what belonged to you anymore.And yet… hadn’t he felt her
Chapter Twelve: The Shadow of a Twin
Shayne staggered to his feet, heart hammering. The figure before him—hooded, eyes glowing faintly like his own—had spoken his name.“Shayne.”The voice was soft, yet it rang in his bones. He whispered back, “Shiloh…”The hood slipped away, and there it was again: her face, identical yet not. Eyes carved from firelight, lips pressed with sorrow, features shaped from the same blueprint as his. For a breath, his chest cracked wide with recognition.“You’re real,” he said, voice hoarse. “You—”“No.” She shook her head, stepping closer. “Not as you think. I’m only what you lost. What they tore away when they split you from yourself.”The words cut like glass. Shayne staggered back. “I don’t—”“You do,” the not-Shiloh whispered. “You’ve felt the hollow in your chest. The flame that sputters instead of burns. You’ve always known it wasn’t whole.”Shayne pressed his fists against his temples. His skull throbbed. The chamber around them—the stone walls, the corridor—flickered, static bleeding
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