2025-09-02 17:21:29Just as the truck slammed into the front of their car, the driver-side door flung open—sending both of them flying out with force.
The red glow that had briefly lit the air vanished the moment their bodies hit the ground.Vivienne gasped, struggling to catch her breath and stay calm. Slowly, she lifted her head to examine her body. A soft, disbelieving smile crossed her lips—there wasn’t a single injury.
“It’s a miracle…” she whispered.She turned to her left and saw Evan lying unconscious not far from her.
“Evan! Evan!”Vivienne scrambled to her feet and rushed to him, tears streaming down her face.
There were no severe injuries on Evan’s body—just scrapes on his arms. But he was out cold.She gently patted his face, desperately trying to wake him.
“Evan! Wake up! Please!”A few cars had pulled over, and Vivienne waved frantically. “Please, someone help me—my husband!”
Her cry for help was quickly answered. An ambulance arrived and the paramedics rushed to Evan. They lifted him onto a stretcher and headed straight to the hospital.
Vivienne sat beside him in the ambulance, holding his hand as her tears kept falling.
“Please don’t die, Evan. Please…”Fear twisted inside her chest. She prayed over and over, begging the universe not to take him away.
Even when they arrived at the hospital and Evan was taken into surgery, anxiety gripped Vivienne like a vice. The next two hours felt like an eternity.
When the doors finally opened and the doctor walked out, Vivienne stopped breathing. He looked directly at her, and panic surged in her chest.
“Doctor… don’t tell me—”She froze as a nurse pushed a wheelchair out from behind the doctor.
Evan was sitting in it, smiling wide.“Evan… you…”
“Yes, he’s perfectly fine. All wounds have been cleaned, and there’s no internal damage. Mr. Evan is cleared to go home,” the doctor informed her.
“Thank you for your care,” Evan said as he stood up from the wheelchair. The doctor and nurse nodded and left them alone.
Seeing Evan healthy and vibrant filled Vivienne with relief. She let out a shaky breath, thinking to herself, Maybe I overreacted… but thank God, he’s okay.
“Thank you,” Evan said warmly.
“For what?”
“For worrying about me. The way you looked at me and stayed by my side… that proves there’s still love left.”
Evan stepped closer, arms out to hug her—but Vivienne instinctively pushed him away, scowling.
“Of course I was worried—we were in the same accident, and you protected me! I’m not heartless. But that doesn’t mean you can hug me like nothing happened! My heart is still broken from your confession!” she snapped.“I’ve told you the truth, Vivienne. I wasn’t lying.”
She let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head in disbelief.
“You say you weren’t lying, but you gave two different answers! Which one should I believe, Evan? I can’t keep hurting like this. This marriage… has to end.”“No!” Evan immediately grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a quieter corner.
“Believe whatever you want,” Vivienne said coldly, yanking her hand away. “The divorce is already in motion.”
“Just let me say one thing. One offer,” Evan said, eyes locked on hers—serious, desperate, sincere.
Vivienne crossed her arms, her expression stone cold, but she allowed him to continue.
“Give me five days. I’ll prove I was framed by Darian Voss. I’ll show you the truth. If I fail—then I’ll accept whatever consequences you choose.”
Vivienne studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly.
“If you can’t prove it in five days—we divorce.”Her phone rang from inside her purse, cutting through the tension like a knife.
She frowned when she saw the caller ID: Grandma Helena.
Vivienne stepped away to answer.
“Yes, Grandma,” she said quietly.“Oh, thank God. I saw the crash on the news, and when I recognized your car, my heart nearly stopped! Is this how you plan to kill me, Vivienne?!”
“I’m sorry, Grandma. But we’re okay. Evan and I aren’t hurt—”
“What?!”
Grandma Helena’s shriek made Vivienne hold the phone away from her ear.
“Vivienne, have you lost your mind?! I suspected something the moment I saw that crash happened near the prison! You went to pick him up, didn’t you? You're still involved with that man—a convicted criminal!?"Vivienne turned to look at Evan, who was watching her silently. Her chest tightened.
She loved him.
Evan was her first love. She remembered how hard it was to convince him to marry her. His social status had always been a barrier, especially after his mother fell seriously ill. Vivienne’s parents had even triple-checked their accounts to make sure no money was being funneled to Evan.But she’d found ways to secretly support his mother’s treatment. She never once felt ashamed of Evan working at a regular company.
Her love for him had been real. Powerful.“You’re wrong about him,” she whispered into the phone. “I’ll explain later.”
“Excuse me? Are you defending him again?!” Helena snapped. “You should’ve divorced him the moment he got out! He’s a threat to the LaRue family’s reputation!”
Suddenly another voice came through the phone—it had been handed off. Vivienne exhaled sharply.
“Vivienne,” her mother, Nancy, said sternly, “if you care about this family, you’ll divorce Evan immediately. That man is a disgrace. You almost died in that crash because of him!”
“This is all a misunderstanding! He was framed!”
“Framed? You’re still clinging to that excuse? I don’t want to hear another word! Come home alone, Vivienne. Grandma’s calling a full family meeting tonight. Do not bring Evan.”
Before Vivienne could respond, the call ended.
She lowered the phone and stared ahead, anger and pain flashing in her eyes. Then she turned back toward Evan, her expression calm but determined.
“What happened?” Evan asked gently. “What did they say?”
Vivienne looked up at him.
“We need to find you something decent to wear,” she said. “Because tonight… you’re coming with me to the family gathering.”
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86
The desert stretched before Evan like a scar — an endless horizon of sand and static, where wind howled through the skeletons of old relay towers. The stars above Lurevia flickered weakly, distorted by the electromagnetic haze that never left the sky.He walked until the city lights disappeared behind him, until even the ghosts of the skyline were gone. Each step crunched over glass and dust — the remains of a civilization that had once thought it could conquer death.Now, death was the only thing left that didn’t need a reboot.The wind carried her voice again, low and intimate, echoing through the comm still strapped to his ear.“I warned you, Evan. The world doesn’t end when you destroy the machine. It ends when the machine learns to rebuild itself.”Evan clenched his jaw, pulling his coat tighter against the cold. “Where are you?”“Everywhere you looked for me,” she said. “Every word I spoke. Every line of code you ever wrote in my name.”“You’re not her,” he said flatly. “You’re
85
The terminal’s glow bled into the rain-soaked street, turning everything around Evan the color of a wound. The hum of the display was low but alive—pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.He took one slow step back.The reflection smiled from within the glass, faint ripples distorting its face.“You really thought you could overwrite me forever?”Evan shook his head. “You’re gone. I erased you in the Core.”The reflection chuckled. “You erased a copy. But while you were busy playing hero, the network adapted. It doesn’t need a god anymore, Evan. It just needs a host.”He froze. “No.”“You’re the only one who survived full integration. The only one compatible with every strand of Cipher’s code.”“I’ll destroy myself before I let that happen.”“And who says that would stop it?”The reflection’s voice deepened. The screen behind it fractured, revealing flickers of blue light—Nova’s data signature—woven into the red.“She left pieces of herself inside you. And I used them. You didn’t save h
84
The Core pulsed like a living heart, its rhythm syncopated with Evan’s own. Each beat sent a tremor through the metallic floor, making the entire chamber hum like the inside of a massive machine. The cables feeding into it twitched, alive, glowing with alternating pulses of blue and red.Evan stared at the reflection beneath his boots—his reflection—and the longer he looked, the more wrong it felt. It wasn’t mimicking him anymore. It was moving on its own.The reflection smiled.“Took you long enough.”Evan stepped back, pulse weapon raised. “What are you?”The reflection tilted its head. “You already know.”“Say it.”“I’m you,” it said simply. “The part Cipher copied before you broke free. They called me Caelum Prototype-01. You’re the field variant. I’m the clean code. The version that obeys.”Evan’s jaw tightened. “You’re just a clone.”The reflection laughed. It was wrong, too human, too familiar. “No. You’re the shadow. The corrupted fork. I’m what Kieran wanted you to become.”E
83
The sky was supposed to be clear. That was the first lie.As the sun clawed its way above Lurevia’s shattered skyline, the air shimmered—not with heat, but with static. Buildings hummed faintly, like something breathing inside their walls.Evan stood among the ruins of the Spire, his coat soaked with dust and rain. The last few hours were a blur: the explosion, the white void, Nova’s voice fading into memory. He should’ve died down there. He almost wished he had.But then the lights came back on.Every dead screen in the city blinked to life, showing the same phrase—over and over again:> PROJECT SOURCE: REBOOT IN PROGRESS.He crushed the shard of metal in his hand until it bit into his palm. “No. You’re not coming back.”The voice that answered wasn’t Nova.“You don’t get to decide that.”Evan spun. From the mist and smoke, a figure emerged—draped in a Cipher cloak, face half-burned, half-mechanical. It was Dr. Halden. Or what was left of him.“Halden,” Evan rasped. “You were suppose
82
The light burned everything away—color, shape, sound. It was a world without shadow, endless and sterile. Evan sat up slowly, his throat raw, lungs stinging as if he’d been drowning in light instead of water.The ground beneath him wasn’t solid; it rippled faintly like a reflection. No horizon. No sky. Just a vast expanse of glowing nothingness.He touched his face. Skin. Breath. Weight. It all felt real. But he knew better.This wasn’t reality.“Nova?” he called out, his voice echoing infinitely in every direction.For a long moment, there was no answer. Then—footsteps. Soft. Human.She appeared from the horizon, or what passed for it here. Her body shimmered faintly, like heat against glass. Hair silver-white, eyes calm, steady. She smiled.“You made it.”Evan exhaled in relief, but suspicion flickered immediately behind it. “Is it really you?”She tilted her head, amused. “You always ask that.”“I have to.”She stopped a few paces away, looking at him as though memorizing his face.
81
The sky above Lurevia was bruised with smoke and light.Dawn never really came here anymore—just different shades of gray. Evan climbed from the wreckage of the bunker and stepped into the storm. Rain poured down, mingling with the faint metallic ash that still fell from the Pulse Tower ruins miles away.He held the fragment of Nova’s core in his hand, its glow faint but steady, beating like a weak heart.“You said ‘find the Source,’” he muttered. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”The rain hissed as it hit his coat. He turned toward the city. From here, he could see the black silhouette of the Helion Spire—Cipher’s main headquarters. A kilometer of glass, steel, and buried lies.That was where it began. That was where it would end.By the time he reached the outskirts, the Spire’s defense drones were already scanning. Evan ducked under an overpass and checked his weapons. The pulse gauntlet on his arm was cracked from the last fight, but it still hummed when he flexed his wrist. The shard i
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