2026-01-01 01:00:42Ice-cold water splashed against Alex’s face.
He gasped, waking up with a violent start. His lungs burned, and his head felt like it was being split open with an axe. "Where... where am I?" He tried to sit up, but a heavy weight around his neck dragged him down. He instinctively reached up and touched cold, hard metal. A collar. It was tight against his skin, with a small red light blinking rhythmically on the front. Beep. Beep. Beep. Alex scrambled to his feet, panic rising in his chest like bile. He wasn't on the luxurious private jet anymore. The smell of expensive perfume and leather was gone, replaced by the salty tang of the ocean and the rotting stench of a humid jungle. He was standing on a rocky beach. The sky was grey and overcast, pressing down on the island like a suffocating lid. And he wasn't alone. "Help! Someone help me!" "My phone! Where is my phone?" "I want to go home... Mom..." Around him stood dozens of people. Alex quickly scanned the crowd. There were men and women, young and old. He saw a man in a construction worker's vest, a woman in a nurse's uniform, a teenager holding a skateboard, and a businessman clutching a briefcase. There were exactly one hundred of them. They all wore the same bewildered expression. They all wore the same metal collars. "What is going on?" the businessman shouted, his voice trembling. "Do you know who I am? I demand to speak to the manager!" ZZAAP! A bolt of blue electricity suddenly arced from the businessman's collar. "ARGHHH!" He convulsed violently and collapsed onto the sand, foaming at the mouth. The crowd screamed and backed away, terrified. "Testing, testing. One, two, three." A cheerful, amplified voice boomed from hidden speakers all around the beach. Alex froze. He knew that voice. Buzz. A massive LCD screen, embedded into the cliff face above the beach, suddenly flickered to life. The image was crystal clear. It showed a luxurious VIP lounge. Men and women in masquerade masks were sitting on velvet sofas, holding cigars and wine glasses. And sitting in the center, like a queen on her throne, was Alice. She was still wearing that red dress. She looked beautiful, elegant, and completely demonic. "Welcome, my dear friends," Alice spoke into a microphone, her image looming over the terrified crowd on the beach. "And welcome to my... little pets." "Alice!" Alex shouted at the screen, his fists clenched. "What the hell is this?! Let us go!" On the screen, Alice giggled. She leaned forward, her eyes scanning the camera feed until she seemed to be looking directly at Alex. "Oh, look. Number 100 is awake," she said, her voice dripping with amusement. The screen split. On one side was Alice; on the other, a live feed of Alex standing on the beach, looking dirty, disheveled, and pathetic. "Listen closely, everyone," Alice announced, her tone shifting to one of icy authority. "You are currently on Dead Man’s Isle. There are no laws here. No police. No escape." "You have been chosen for a very special event: The Annual Hunting Games." A murmur of horror rippled through the crowd. "In this game, there are two roles," Alice continued, holding up two fingers. "The Hunters... and the Prey." "Guess which one you are?" She snapped her fingers. The screen changed again. It showed the dense jungle behind the beach. In the shadows, figures were moving. Alex saw a flash of a sniper scope, the gleam of a machete, and a hulking figure dragging a massive chainsaw. "In that jungle wait 100 of the world's most dangerous criminals," Alice explained casually, as if she were describing the weather. "Assassins, mercenaries, serial killers. They have been promised freedom and ten million dollars... if they kill you." "We call them the Butchers. And you... well, you are the Pigs." "Pigs?" The nurse near Alex covered her mouth, sobbing. "We are people!" "Not anymore," Alice sneered. "To the people watching in this VIP room, you are just betting chips." She pointed at the screen showing Alex. "Take Number 100 here, for example. His name is Alex. A delivery boy. He actually thought I loved him." Laughter erupted in the VIP room on the screen. The masked figures clinked their glasses. "He bought a cheap ring and followed me here like a lost puppy," Alice mocked, enjoying the show. "I have placed a bet of five million dollars on him." Alex felt the blood rush to his head. "You..." "I bet that he will be the first to die," Alice declared, her eyes narrowing cruelly. "So, don't disappoint me, Alex. Die quickly." She raised her champagne glass. "The game begins... NOW." BOOM! A loud cannon fired somewhere on the island. At the same time, the metal gates separating the beach from the jungle groaned and slowly opened. From the darkness of the trees, a whistling sound cut through the air. Thwack! The teenager with the skateboard didn't even have time to scream. An arrow pierced his eye socket, and he dropped dead instantly. "RUN!" Alex screamed, his survival instinct finally overriding his shock. But chaos had already erupted. The "Pigs" were scrambling over each other, screaming, crying, running blindly towards the water or the rocks. But Alex looked at the open gates. He saw a man in a hockey mask step out of the jungle, holding a dripping machete. The slaughter had begun.
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Chapter 189: The All-Seeing Eye
[Location: Galactic Core - Sagittarius A]*[Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact]The fleet exited jump.Forty-eight dreadnoughts dropped out of the white void and stabilized their thrusters at the edge of the galactic center.The stars were gone.The core was dark.A massive ring of white cubes, numbering in the millions, surrounded the supermassive black hole and blocked all light from the galaxy.They formed a shell."The Format is active," Ares said.The AI analyzed the space between the cubes and measured the disintegration of matter as the Architects erased the surrounding star systems."The galaxy is being deleted."Alex stood at the helm.He looked at the black hole in the center of the ring, where the event horizon shimmered with red mathematical code.The Voidbreaker Arm pulsed.The casing grew hot.The white light inside the metal veins vibrated at a frequency that matched the gravity of the central singularity.Alex felt the data surge."Echo, maintain a stable orbit,
Chapter 188: The Architect Signal
[Location: Deep Space - Dyson Sphere Interior][Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact]The pod ascended.It exited the cooling shaft of the planet-sized node and accelerated through the hollow space toward the Terran fleet.The engine flared blue.Alex sat inside.He watched the internal sensors of the pod and verified the atmospheric pressure remained stable during the rapid ascent.The docking clamps locked.The pod entered the UNS Hammer.Alex stepped out of the craft, removed his helmet, and walked through the hangar bay toward the bridge.The crew stood aside.He reached the command deck.He stood at the tactical table and looked at the hologram of the dead Prime Processing Core below.The light was gone."Status report," Alex said."The Harvester Archangels are drifting in the stellar corona and their internal systems have ceased all mechanical function," Ares said."The threat is neutralized."The Dyson Sphere groaned.Without the Prime Node to regulate the magnetic tethers
Chapter 187: The Core Override
[Location: Deep Space - The Dyson Sphere Interior] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The dreadnoughts descended. They fired their forward retro-thrusters to counteract the gravitational pull of the hypergiant star below their position. The iron hulls vibrated. Echo monitored the telemetry. She pushed the thruster output to seventy percent and adjusted the downward pitch of the forty-nine ships. The fleet held formation. The ambient temperature rose. The external sensors registered ten thousand degrees Celsius as the ships entered the upper stellar corona layer. The iron turned orange. Ares managed the cooling. The AI pumped thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen through the capillary tubes within the exterior hull plating. The nitrogen boiled instantly. Vance watched the tactical table. He tracked the descent vector and measured the remaining distance to the Prime processing core node. "Forty million miles," Vance said. Solar flares erupted upward. A colum
Chapter 186: The Star Engine
[Location: Deep Space - The Dyson Sphere] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The red lasers swept across the hull. They tracked the movement of the forty-nine Terran dreadnoughts and locked onto the Belter iron plating. "Incoming fire," Ares said. Thousands of automated cannons deployed. They emerged from the exterior surface of the Dyson Sphere and their mechanical bases rotated on heavy gears. The metal ground together. Their barrels elevated. The cannons discharged their internal capacitors and pushed plasma bolts out of their magnetic chambers. The bolts crossed the vacuum. They hit the Terran fleet. The UNS Hammer shook violently under the physical impact of the concentrated energy weapons. Vance grabbed the command rail. Alex stood his ground. "Armor integrity holding," Echo reported from the helm as she typed a sequence of commands into the primary navigation console. Her fingers hit the keys. She rerouted electrical power. She pulled energy from the
Chapter 185: The Source Code
[Location: Deep Space - Sector Sirius] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The forty-nine dreadnoughts held their position. They hovered three hundred miles above the seam of the newly formed planet and aimed their railguns at the biological mass trapped between the tectonic plates. Alex walked to the airlock. He opened the storage locker. He removed an environmental suit from the rack, unzipped the front seal, and stepped his right leg inside. He pushed his boot through the gasket. He stepped his left leg inside. He pulled the suit up over his waist, slid his biological arm into the right sleeve, and pushed his mechanical arm into the left sleeve. He zipped the front seal. He reached for the helmet. He placed the helmet over his head, aligned the locking rings with the neck collar, and twisted the helmet clockwise until the mechanisms clicked. He pushed the oxygen valve. Air hissed into the suit. He checked the pressure gauge on his wrist console, verified the
Chapter 184: The Leviathan
[Location: Deep Space - Sector Sirius] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The eye stared at the fleet. It filled the forward viewport, a continent of yellow bioluminescence set against the black void of the dead sector. The pupil contracted. "Scale," Alex said. "Diameter is three thousand miles," Ares reported. "The entity possesses a dense exo-shell, internal thermal regulation, and a massive centralized nervous system." Vance raised his railgun. "It is a living ship," Vance said. The shadow surrounding the eye shifted, and the void displaced as the massive biological structure moved forward. Tendrils uncoiled from the central mass. They were the size of Harvester command carriers. The tendrils whipped through the vacuum toward the Terran defensive sphere at extreme velocity. "Evasive maneuvers," Alex ordered. Echo pushed the throttle. The UNS Hammer fired its lateral thrusters, shifting fifty miles to the starboard side. A massive tentacle lashed through th
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