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The Imperial Nursery
The Gulfstream's engines hummed at Mach 0.85, a frequency that vibrated through Marcus's molars like a dentist's drill. Through the oval window, the Atlantic was a sheet of hammered steel, the horizon line bleeding into darkness. They'd been airborne for two hours, halfway to Little Cayman, and the cabin's recycled air had grown thick with unspoken calculus.Emma sat across from him, her spine no longer glowing but still rigid with the memory of silver threads. She hadn't spoken since Teterboro. Just stared at her hands, at the faint scar where a wedding band used to live. The cheap one Marcus had bought. The platinum one Richard had melted. The ghost of both still visible.**[FLIGHT MANIFEST: GULFSTREAM G650ER (N-788RS)** **- DEPARTURE: TETERBORO (KTEB) 00:47 EST** **- DESTINATION: LITTLE CAYMAN (LYB) 04:12 EST** **- FLIGHT TIME: 3 HRS 25 MINS** **- RANGE REMAINING: 1,200 NM (ADEQUATE)]**]Elena was in the galley, cleaning her knife with scotch instead of water, the blade ca
The sky deck
The Lincoln's tires whispered on the FDR's asphalt like a snake through dead leaves. Marcus watched Manhattan's glass towers resolve into individual windows—into lives—each one a data point the System could no longer process at altitude. **48% integrity** felt like wearing a leather glove soaked in water: functional but clumsy, heavy with impending rot.Emma's head rested on his thigh, her breathing shallow but steady. The CRISPR counter-injection had stopped the silver threads, but her skin was still cold, clammy with the sweat of someone whose nervous system had been turned into a battleground. Elena sat opposite, sharpening her knife with a ceramic rod in slow, deliberate strokes—the sound of a clock being wound backward.Eleanor Sterling hadn't spoken since the hangar. She just watched the city through tinted glass, her reflection superimposed over Queens' industrial wasteland like a warning.**[SYSTEM CLOCK: 23:14:07]** **[STERLING SKYDECK: 46 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT DEADLINE]**
The sample
**The Gulfstream's cabin was a coffin with Wi-Fi. Emma lay on the leather bench, her breathing shallow enough to vanish. The silver threads on her spine had stopped spreading but hadn't receded—frozen mid-invasion, a stalled occupation. Elena sat guard, knife across her lap, her own scar dark and dormant. Eleanor occupied the jump seat, her Chanel suit unwrinkled despite the G-force of takeoff.**[SYSTEM RANGE: 12,000 FEET—SIGNAL DEGRADED]** **[HERV-CHEN-1 SUPPRESSION: STABLE—99.2% DORMANT]** **[WARNING: EMMA'S CORE TEMPERATURE DROPPING—36.1°C AND FALLING]**Marcus's phone showed Richard's jet still grounded. The **G650ER** was parked in a private hangar at Teterboro, its catering order flagged: *Champagne temperature excursion—maintenance hold pending pilot duty timeout*. Dr. Liao's trick had bought them six hours. They'd burned one getting airborne."She's crashing," Elena said, fingers on Emma's carotid. "The CRISPR therapy is rejecting. Her immune system thinks the dormant vi
Chapter 128
The warehouse explosion didn't sound like a bomb. It sounded like a **server rack hitting a swimming pool**—a short, wet shriek of short-circuiting potential. The Lincoln's bulletproof windows muffled the concussion into a bass note that rattled Marcus's molars. In the back seat, Emma's head snapped back as if she'd been slapped. Elena's knife clattered to the floorboard.**[SYSTEM SURGE: 340% OVERLOAD]** **[CORE INTEGRITY: CRITICAL—41%]** **[GENETIC MARKER DETECTED: HERV-CHEN-1—REACTIVATING]**Marcus had seen that code before. In a medical journal. **HERV** stood for Human Endogenous Retrovirus—ancient viral DNA stitched into human chromosomes over millions of years. Usually dormant. Usually harmless.The Chen variant was neither.Emma's eyes rolled white. Her spine arched, the silver scar tissue along her vertebrae glowing like fiber optics. "It's **resequencing**," she gasped. "The Architect... it wasn't rewriting my memories. It was **activating genes**."**[VIROLOGY FLASH: EN
Imperial achieve
Darkness wasn't a void. It was a library.Marcus's boots hit marble that hummed with quantum resonance. The door slammed shut behind them, sealing with a pressure change that popped his ears. Emma's hand in his was ice—whether from fear or Architect interference, he couldn't tell.**[IMPERIAL ARCHIVE: FULL ACCESS GRANTED]** **[HOST: MARCUS CHEN + EMMA LEYTON-CHEN]** **[ARCHITECT STATUS: CO-LOCATED—WARNING: BIO-HOST DETECTED]**Lights kindled. Not bulbs. **Memory spheres**—glass orbs the size of fists, suspended in mid-air, each containing a frozen moment. A man's life, compressed into light. Jonathan Chen's life."Welcome home," the voice repeated, but it wasn't Emma's anymore. It came from everywhere. From the memory spheres, from the marble floor, from the dragon-shaped door handle that had followed them through. "Heirs to a dream that ate its father."Emma jerked her hand free. Her eyes were wrong—pupils dilated to twin abysses. "Marcus. It's in my spine. I can feel it crawling
Warehouse War
The Lincoln's leather was cold enough to numb regret. Emma sat with her knees pressed together, hands in her lap, spine not touching the seatback—a posture of containment, as if her consciousness might leak out if she relaxed. Marcus watched the city blur past through tinted windows, his reflection fragmented across the glass.**[SYSTEM SYNC: EMMA LEYTON-CHEN—18% INTEGRATED]** **[CORE INTEGRITY: 45%—FLUCTUATING]** **[INVISIBLE HAND: ACTIVE—00:47:12 REMAINING]**The perk had a timer. Of course it did. Nothing powerful came without an expiration date."Where are we going?" Emma's voice was quieter than the engine's purr."Chinatown." Marcus didn't look at her. Looking would mean seeing the scar where the Architect's probes had entered her skull, the fine silver lines barely visible beneath her hairline. "My warehouses.""Your warehouses." She said it like a question she already knew the answer to. "The ones Richard's trying to steal.""Trying." Marcus allowed himself a smile. "Key w
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