2025-08-09 07:53:00The drone footage flickered on the tablet in Mara’s hands as Ethan adjusted the strap of his ballistic vest. They stood in the back of a stolen delivery truck, surrounded by gear, blueprints, and suppressed tension. On the screen, the target glowed in grayscale: Gridpoint-7, a subterranean Rayburn Technologies relay hub, camouflaged beneath a hollowed-out textile factory in Port Harrow.
“You sure about this?” Mara asked, eyes flicking to Ethan’s as the hum of the engine vibrated beneath their feet.
“I have to be,” Ethan replied, loading a fresh mag into his sidearm. “They’re storing more than comms down there. We hit that relay, we expose the list.”
The list. A coded ledger Ethan had recovered from Dr. Thorne’s encrypted server, filled with names and codenames—all connected to the Lazarus Protocol. Scientists, operatives, politicians. Some long thought dead, others still very much in
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Chapter 31 – Ashes of the Machine
The old sewer tunnels beneath Neo-Providence seemed to stretch on forever, their walls slick with condensation and age-old grime. Zaire and Alea plunged ahead, the Divergence Shard’s faint pulse echoing through Zaire’s pocket like a warning. Above them, echoes of rain and thunder pounded through the city’s twisted metal veins; below, they navigated labyrinthine conduits mapped only in nightmares.Behind them, Quinn’s voice crackled in their earpieces. “Lockdown sequence initiated. Perimeter gates closing. Thermal suppression grid activated. They can’t follow you past Sector C.”Zaire exhaled, glancing at Alea. “We’ve got a ten-minute window before they reroute the grid.”She nodded, eyes sharp. “Then let’s not waste it.”They rounded a corner into a wider chamber—an abandoned pump room where rusted pipes rose like skeletal fingers. A single access hatch dominated the far w
Chapter 30 – The Fault in the Code
The rain didn’t stop falling.High above the shattered skyline of Neo-Providence, thunderclouds rolled like battalions of wrath. Beneath them, Zaire stood alone on the helipad of a half-destroyed biotech tower, the lights of the city reflecting off the wet concrete like molten glass. Behind him, the wind howled through broken windows and steel girders. In his hand: the last data shard from Cell Zero.Still warm.Still blinking.Still alive.He didn’t dare plug it in yet.“Zaire, we have movement,” Quinn’s voice crackled through his comms. “South quad. Multiple thermal signatures approaching. Not Consortium. These are heavier. Cleaner.”“Recon?” he asked, watching a drone sweep low past the spire.“No, hunters,” Quinn said. “Wearing Lazarus tags.”Zaire’s knuckles whitened. “That’s not possible. Lazarus was wiped after the Gene
Chapter 29 – Aurora’s First Light
The corridors of the Aethra hummed with low, steady life support as Jax Reeve made his way toward the command deck. Each step echoed—metal on metal—through compartments half-lit by emergency luminescence. He carried no weapons; his steel-blue eyes were more than enough for what lay ahead. Still, his grip tightened on the railing as he passed crew quarters, each hatch hiding stories of sacrifice and survival.At the starboard junction he paused, glancing at a flickering console: an alert from Sector Twelve, Earth. The pulse of residual echoes, though diminished, was stirring again—this time in the Pacific Northwest. Reports mentioned shared hallucinations of lost loved ones, phantom broadcasts promising Paradise beyond the collapse. The hallmarks of Project Aurora.He exhaled, steeling himself. Aurora had gone live.Behind him, Selene emerged from the shadows. She carried a data-slate scrolling with new disruptions. “They’ve triggere
Chapter 28 – Brothers of Ash
The Lazarus Engine’s core flickered in the sudden darkness, casting broken shadows across the ice-lined chamber. Red emergency strips sputtered to life, revealing the two identical men standing mere paces apart—Jax Reeve and the Echo.Jax’s breath came hard. He steadied himself against the control console, fingers pressed into the frost. “Who are you?” he rasped. “Another prototype? An earlier version?”The Echo’s eyes glowed with an inner light—pale blue, almost ethereal. He took a single step forward, his voice the same gravelly tone, yet hauntingly hollow. “I am the one who survived. The first you never knew. The one they couldn’t overwrite.”Jax clenched his jaw. “I’m the one who escaped.” He raised his pistol shakily. “Don’t test me.”The Echo’s lips curved into the barest smile. “No tests. Just truth.”A distant groan
Chapter 27 – Revenant Signal
The searing red glow of the remote horizon painted eerie patterns on the ocean’s surface as the Aethra sliced through the black water. Jax stood at the prow of the ship, his coat flapping violently in the gale, eyes trained on the blinking coordinates hovering in his augmented HUD. They were almost at Site Sigma—one of the last known Project Lazarus research outposts before the entire protocol went dark two decades ago.Behind him, footsteps. Sera.“You still don’t trust her,” she said, stepping beside him.Jax didn’t turn. “Zhen’s a survivor. Doesn’t mean she’s loyal. People who live through hell usually owe their soul to someone else.”“She risked her neck pulling us out of that compound in Marrakesh. That earns her some credit.”Jax remained silent. His thoughts were on the briefcase they’d recovered—sealed with biometric locks, encoded with a dead man&rsqu
Chapter 26 – Threads of Tomorrow
The dawn’s afterglow had barely settled when the first drone reconnaissance missions launched from Cross Square. Citizen volunteers guided them—recovered subjects once lost to the Lazarus Protocol, now free agents in their own lives. Above, windfarm rotors turned in silent praise. Below, the new world moved with cautious optimism.Ethan Cross stood beside Selene at the edge of a holographic projection table in the Lazarus Archives’ war room. The projection hovered above the table, displaying a shimmering map of global “aftershocks”—sites where memory fragments still glitched, where small Lazarus core nodes still pulsed with residual code.“We’ve got ten hotspots so far,” Selene said, tapping a point in the Siberian tundra. “And more in Southeast Asia, Central America, even one in the heart of Lagos.”Ethan traced the route with his finger. “These fragments are living echoes—memories th
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