2025-09-29 17:46:48The journey passed in silence, the only sound being Jake’s steady snoring as he slept, worn out by the long drive.
“Wake up,” Damian said.
Jake jolted awake, blinking around in confusion. Damian motioned for him to follow as the car stopped.
“At my place, of course.”
They stepped into the elevator, Jake’s wary gaze never leaving Damian.
When the doors opened, Jake froze. Plush red carpet cushioned his feet, and the glass walls reflected the glow of the city lights.
Damian strode calmly into his office, pressing a code on the massive safe’s panel. The door swung open, revealing stacks of cash, bars of gold, and piles of documents.
Damian glanced at him, a faint smile on his lips. “All of this could be yours.”
“Do as I say.” Damian shut the safe slowly. “I know who you are. I know your strength. The world out there rejects you, Jake. But I… I can give you a place. You could have more than even this penthouse.”
Jake took a step back. “And if I refuse?”
Silence wrapped the room. Jake stood rigid, torn between the temptation of wealth and the weight of suspicion. Outside, lightning split the Ashborne sky.
Jake sat in a black leather chair in Damian Crowne’s penthouse meeting room. A crystal chandelier glittered above, casting light over a long table strewn with files, digital maps, and bottles of expensive wine. He felt out of place—like a street thief suddenly dropped onto the chessboard of kings.
Damian leaned back, lighting a cigar. “I won’t waste words. You’re here because I see something in you, Jake. Something no one else has.”
Damian’s smile was subtle. “Not muscle. You… can’t be tracked. That’s both a gift and a curse, isn’t it? You’re an anomaly.”
Jake fell silent, his pulse quickening. Damian knew more than he should.
Before Jake could ask, the door opened. A man in a white suit walked in, slick blond hair combed back. His eyes were sharp, calculating.
Jake only gave a curt nod.
Everett dropped a thick folder on the table, then looked at Damian. “Tell me this is a joke. We’re talking about a multi-billion-dollar project, and you bring in… a street thief? Being untraceable doesn’t mean he can pull off something this big.”
Jake pulled it closer. Inside were satellite photos of a warehouse, distribution route diagrams, and sketches of a long metallic object—like a miniature missile.
“Vanguard-7,” Damian said. “Next-gen military tech. Remote control, capable of scrambling any nation’s defenses. It’s still in trial at a northwestern base. Its value? Immeasurable.”
Jake shut the folder slowly. “And you want me to steal it?”
Damian blew a stream of smoke. “Impossible for everyone… except him.”
Jake held Everett’s stare, fighting the urge to snap back. “Why me?”
Damian leaned forward, voice low but cutting. “Because surveillance can’t detect you. Cameras don’t register your face. Satellites can’t read your body’s signal. You… are a ghost. That’s why their project failed to make you a soldier. But that failure, Jake, is our key to success.”
Jake swallowed hard. Memories of the lab clawed back—sterile stench, needles, children who never came back.
Everett shook his head. “You’re betting everything on a failed experiment? You’re insane.”
Damian flicked on the massive wall screen. A digital map appeared, crisscrossed with red lines and blinking points.
Jake leaned in, eyes narrowing.
Everett cut in. “You’re forgetting thermal drones. Not even a rat can slip by.”
Jake slumped back in the chair. “So I sneak in on a truck, reach the hangar, and grab it?”
Everett slammed the table. “This is madness! Even if he gets in, how does he get out? The whole base will go into lockdown once the vault opens.”
Jake let out a long breath, still processing. Silence filled the room, broken only by the rain outside the glass walls. Everett glared at him with open disdain.
Jake met his gaze. “I’ve been dead since I was twelve. So what’s the difference?”
Damian grinned, satisfied. “That’s the answer I wanted.”
He opened a drawer, pulling out a briefcase. He set it in front of Jake. Inside—stacks of cash. A hundred thousand dollars.
Jake stared at the case for a long moment, then closed his eyes. The memory of himself in that filthy alley, beaten and bleeding under the rain, flashed in his mind.
He opened his eyes. “When do I start?”
Jake stood, locking eyes with Damian. “If everyone says it’s impossible, then it’s the right job for me.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
55
Fear did not arrive with thunder, nor with the violent crack of earth splitting open beneath careless feet; instead, it arrived like a subtle pressure against the mind, a tightening sensation that crawled beneath the skin and whispered warnings with a voice too ancient to belong to any living creature.The First City of Light woke to this tension, its luminous towers flickering in unsteady rhythms that betrayed the calm façade its architecture tried desperately to maintain. There was no disaster yet, no visible threat on the horizon, but every person who stepped outside felt a tightening in their chest as if the world had decided to breathe through them whether they permitted it or not. This was not panic created by imagination; this was the world’s fear bleeding through its lungs.Mira felt it instantly when she stepped out from the central root-chamber, the ground beneath her boots vibrating with an uneven pulse that matched the thrum of an anxious heartbeat. The sky hovered in a su
54
The morning began with a taste of iron in the air, the kind that drifted across the landscape right before a storm decides to tear the horizon open. People in the First City of Light paused mid-stride, instinctively lifting their faces toward the shifting sky as it rippled with pale green threads. The sensation wasn’t quite fear and not quite awe; it sat somewhere in the space between, like a word unspoken but ready to burn on someone’s tongue.Mira stepped out onto her balcony, letting the cold wind rush across her face. She inhaled deeply, and her chest tightened. The city’s bioluminescent towers were glowing with an unusual intensity, pulsing like frantic hearts. It wasn’t the gentle rhythm she had grown used to since the world’s rebirth. It was sharper. Faster. Uneven.The city was feeling something it had never felt before.Rage.She whispered, “Elen… what are you doing?”But she already knew the truth.It wasn’t Elen acting out.It was the world itself responding to something bu
53
The dream began the way most dreams begin—softly, without edges, drifting through the mind of a child who still believed the world was a place where everything could be understood if one only stared long enough. Lio had always been quiet, the kind of Resonant boy who listened more than he spoke, sensing the faint whispers of the living earth with more ease than he understood his own thoughts. When other children played near the glowing terraces of the First City, he lingered near the roots, tracing their subtle vibrations with curious fingers.But this dream felt different.It began with light, pale and trembling, flickering like a candle trapped inside fog. Then the light bent inward, collapsing into a tunnel of crimson haze. Lio walked through it instinctively, drawn by a voice that wasn’t a voice, a warmth that wasn’t warm, a call that carried familiarity he could not explain.When the haze cleared, he found himself standing in an enormous cavern lit by threads of dark red luminesc
52
The dream began the way most dreams begin—softly, without edges, drifting through the mind of a child who still believed the world was a place where everything could be understood if one only stared long enough. Lio had always been quiet, the kind of Resonant boy who listened more than he spoke, sensing the faint whispers of the living earth with more ease than he understood his own thoughts. When other children played near the glowing terraces of the First City, he lingered near the roots, tracing their subtle vibrations with curious fingers.But this dream felt different.It began with light, pale and trembling, flickering like a candle trapped inside fog. Then the light bent inward, collapsing into a tunnel of crimson haze. Lio walked through it instinctively, drawn by a voice that wasn’t a voice, a warmth that wasn’t warm, a call that carried familiarity he could not explain.When the haze cleared, he found himself standing in an enormous cavern lit by threads of dark red luminesc
51
The first warning was not a sound but a distortion, a subtle warping of the air that sent a faint metallic taste across the horizon. It drifted above the southern ridges like heat rising from cracked asphalt, except it carried weight—an awareness pressing against the senses of everyone attuned to the living world. Even those who lacked Resonant abilities felt the change, pausing mid-step as goosebumps crawled along their arms, triggered by a shift they could not name but instinctively feared.Mira registered the disturbance seconds before the shockwave hit. She straightened sharply, her gaze snapping to the far south where the sky rippled with unnatural tension. The clouds bent inward, as though pulled by a gravitational breath from deep beneath the crust.She whispered, “It’s happening again.”A Resonant guard rushed toward her, eyes wide. “The southern plates are vibrating in fractured sequences. They’re not following Elen’s rhythm anymore.”Mira inhaled slowly and felt the strain r
50
The city did not rise from blueprints or scaffolding or human ambition; it grew, inch by trembling inch, like a luminous creature testing its limbs beneath the dawning sky. The earth shaped its walls from living stone that pulsed with bioenergetic veins, and every tower curved toward the sun the way flowers tilt for warmth. When viewed from afar, the First City of Light shimmered like a cluster of breathing lanterns—alive, watchful, and intimately aware of every heartbeat wandering through its corridors.Yet even in its beauty, something restless simmered beneath the surface.A hum threaded through the city streets, too rhythmic to be natural, too intentional to be dismissed. Humans and Resonants alike paused mid-step, drawn by the echo vibrating through the root-grown bridges connecting each district. Even the glowing archways, shaped from crystalline sap, brightened and dimmed in uneven intervals, as though responding to a pulse no one understood.Mira stood at the center of the mai
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