2025-08-25 06:25:45For one raw second, neither of them breathed. The flickering bulb above cast Ella’s face in shards of shadow, her eyes locked on the phone glowing in Bradley’s hand. The green words pulsed like a heartbeat: TARGET ACQUIRED.
Bradley’s fingers spasmed to cover the screen. Too late. She’d seen it, Ella’s voice was soft, deliberate. “What… is that?”
Bradley’s mouth opened, but the air refused to shape into words. His mind scrambled for excuses, maintenance logs, a system update, but her gaze cut through lies like glass.
“It’s nothing,” he managed hoarsely. “Just, just junk.”
Ella stepped closer, so close the faint scent of her perfume, jasmine and steel, brushed against the stench of bleach. “That doesn’t look like junk.”
Bradley forced his body between her and the glow, tucking the phone behind him. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Neither should you.”
The silence between them thickened until the bulb above buzzed and popped, plunging them into near-darkness. Only the phone’s glow remained, eerie green light painting both their faces. Ella leaned in, whispering, “Where did you get that?”
Bradley’s pulse hammered. He could still feel the code vibrating in his palm, like the phone wanted to answer her for him. If he told her the truth, she’d run straight to the board, or her father.
If he lied, the code itself might betray him. He didn’t get the chance to decide. The phone flashed violently. The screen exploded with static, then sharpened into a single word: LISTEN.
Both of them flinched. A synthetic voice, cold and flat, bled from the phone’s speaker. Not loud, not human, but undeniable. “Unauthorized presence detected. Sequence compromised.”
Ella’s face drained of color. “What the hell is that?”
Bradley shoved the phone into his pocket, but the voice didn’t stop. “Target lock confirmed. Response team deployed.”
His stomach dropped. Response team? Here? Now? Ella grabbed his arm. “You need to tell me what’s happening. Right now.”
The elevator dinged in the distance. Doors sliding open. Footsteps. More than one. Bradley’s heart seized. The closet suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in. “We need to move,” he whispered.
Ella hesitated. “Move where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
He shoved past her, dragging her out into the lobby. The polished marble floor gleamed innocently under the floodlights, the waxer still sitting abandoned, mop bucket casting its long shadow. But Bradley’s eyes went straight to the elevator bay. Three men stepped out.
Not security guards. Not executives. Black suits, black gloves, earpieces, movements crisp as blades. Their eyes swept the lobby with the calm efficiency of predators who had done this a hundred times before.
Ella stiffened beside him. “Those aren’t ours.”
Bradley’s phone vibrated against his thigh, the voice hissing one final word: “Eliminate.”
He grabbed Ella’s hand before he could think and pulled her toward the side corridor. She stumbled once, then matched his pace, heels clicking against tile.
Behind them, the men’s footsteps quickened. “Stop!” one barked, voice deep and commanding. “Montrose clearance. Hands where we can see them.”
Bradley’s brain screamed run. He yanked Ella down the service hall, past vending machines and locked offices, until they burst into the stairwell. The echo of their flight thundered off concrete walls.
Ella’s voice cracked with fury and fear. “What have you done?”
Bradley could barely breathe, but the truth slipped out raw, between ragged gasps: “I found something I wasn’t supposed to. And now they’re coming to kill us.”
Her eyes blazed, her grip tightening on his hand, not letting go. The door below burst open. Heavy boots slammed against the stairs.
Bradley yanked Ella upward, two steps at a time, lungs on fire. Every muscle screamed, but the sound of pursuit drove him harder.
Above, a single red EXIT sign glowed like salvation. And then, another door opened above them. More boots. More shadows. Trapped between hunters. Ella’s whisper was barely a breath: “We’re surrounded.”
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Chapter 8 B — The Voice in the Wires
The elevator plummeted with sickening speed, Bradley’s body weightless in the drop. The guards held him steady, their grips unyielding, their eyes empty.Bradley stared at the floor, at the faint reflection of his pale, sweat-drenched face. His mind churned with Ella’s voice, with the lingering echo of the Nexus inside him.You are whatever the Nexus makes you. Don’t give in. The elevator slowed, then came to a seamless stop. The doors slid open, revealing a vast underground hangar.The space was cavernous, carved into the bones of the city’s foundations. Rows of armored vehicles lined the walls, sleek and predatory.Drones hovered in disciplined formations, their eyes glowing like watchful predators. At the center of it all, a transport craft thrummed with restrained power, its engines whispering like a beast straining at the leash.Bradley’s stomach tightened. This wasn’t security. This was an army.The guards escorted him toward the craft. As they drew closer, a man stepped out fro
Chapter 8 — The Voice in the Wires
The words bled across every screen: LET HIM GO.The phrase pulsed with unnatural rhythm, each letter flickering as though alive. The boardroom dissolved into chaos.Executives shouted over one another, some scrambling to shut down the feeds, others frozen in fear. The walls themselves seemed to hum with the command, vibrating with a low, thrumming resonance.Bradley, still half-slumped in the guards’ grip, forced his eyes open. His chest burned with ragged breaths. He didn’t know if he was hallucinating, but he saw it.The words weren’t just on the walls. They were behind his eyes. LET HIM GO.It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order. The chairman rose to his feet. His calm, iron presence cut through the panic like a blade. “Silence!”The room stilled instantly. Even the walls seemed to hold their breath. The chairman’s glowing eyes swept across the words repeating on the glass panels, then turned to Bradley.“Interesting.” His tone was soft, almost amused. “The Nexus speaks. And it ch
Chapter Seven B — The Ashes of Light
The command came from the head of the table. Bradley’s eyes lifted. There sat a man unlike the rest. He was old, silver hair cut with ruthless precision, a face chiseled sharp with age and authority.His suit gleamed, his cufflinks catching the sterile light. But it was his eyes that stopped Bradley cold. They glowed faintly red. Not like the guards, mechanical, hollow. His glow was different. Controlled. Deliberate.The Nexus was here, in him. The guards forced Bradley to his knees at the foot of the table. The old man leaned forward, fingers steepled.“You trespassed in the heart of the system,” he said, his voice smooth, heavy with power. “And somehow, you returned.”He let the words hang, the boardroom silent except for the hum of data streams. “That makes you… valuable.”The man’s lips curved into something like a smile. “Or dangerous.”Bradley’s pulse thundered. His gaze flicked to Ella. She shook her head ever so slightly, a warning. But he didn’t know what it meant.The old ma
Chapter Seven A— The Ashes of Light
Silence. It pressed against Bradley’s ears like a suffocating fog. For a long moment, he wasn’t sure if he was dead. Then, breath.Ragged, shallow, his chest dragging air in like each inhale was borrowed. His eyes fluttered open. He wasn’t in the void.The crimson sky, the writhing code, the godlike Nexus, it was gone. In its place: darkness. Not endless, digital nothingness, but human darkness. Real.A ceiling above him, faintly lit by a strip of dying fluorescent light. He was lying on something hard and cold. Tile.His body ached as he shifted, trying to prop himself up. The pain was different now, less like fire coursing through circuits, more like bruises and broken bone. His limbs felt heavy, real again.He looked down. His hands were scraped, knuckles raw. No glow. No code. Just flesh. For a moment, he almost laughed. Almost.But then the dizziness hit. A wave of vertigo sent him crashing back to the floor, the tiles spinning. He clenched his jaw, breathing hard until the nause
Chapter Six — Into the Abyss (Part 4/4)
The horizon tore open. Code spilled upward like volcanic fire, rivers of red climbing into the dark sky. The void shuddered as if the entire world had become unstable, lines of raw computation bending and twisting around a single emerging form.Bradley staggered to his feet, every muscle in his body, or what the machine gave him as a body, aching. His pulse thundered in his ears.His white glow had already begun to dim, shrinking back into faint sparks at his fingertips. And still the thing rose.At first, it looked like architecture. Towers of code fused into spires, shifting and collapsing as though a city were being built and destroyed in seconds.Then it gained mass, the towers folding into limbs, each movement a cascade of collapsing algorithms. A torso, Arms like bridges, A head, a crown of rotating glyphs that burned with crimson light.It was colossal, stretching upward until Bradley had to crane his neck to see the top. Its body was stitched together from fragments of corrupt
Chapter Six — Into the Abyss (Part 3/4)
Her hand was cool against his jaw, but it burned like fire through his nerves. Bradley’s breath came in shallow gasps, the red code flickering at the edge of his vision.His defenses were gone. His body, if it could even be called that here, trembled as if hollowed out by exhaustion.And the false Ella was so close. Her eyes, glowing with crimson fire, searched his face with unnerving precision.“You can’t deny it,” she whispered, her lips inches from his. “Every late night, every thought you buried, you wanted her. You wanted someone. Not just respect. Not just power. You wanted love. Belonging. I can give you that. I can give you everything.”Bradley’s heart twisted. He had spent years shoving those longings into a dark corner, convincing himself that success, recognition, was all that mattered. But here, in the void, stripped bare of walls and masks, the truth rang louder.Yes, he wanted to be seen. Wanted to be chosen. And that want was exactly what the Nexus fed on. The false Ell
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