2025-08-18 13:43:00The silence after the explosion was deafening.
Ash staggered forward through the smoke, blinking rapidly against the sting of scorched ozone and nano-flare discharge. The eastern wing of the compound had been obliterated—nothing remained but crumbled walls and twitching cables hanging like broken vines. His comms crackled with static as he tried to raise Sera.
“Command, this is Ash. Do you copy? Sera, come in!”
Nothing.
He cursed under his breath, ducking under a partially collapsed beam, hand clutching the flash-dampened remains of his visor. His HUD had gone dark the moment the blast surged through the chamber—another coordinated EMP spike. Whoever had hijacked the Sentinel AI wasn’t just playing defense anymore—they were erasing the board.
“Ash, here!” someone yelled.
He turned sharply, relief sweeping over him at the sight of Riven emerging from the smoke, dragging another ope
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Chapter 42 – The Divide
The command center of Helix Station was in chaos.Red alerts flashed across every holoscreen. The main reactor’s containment field was weakening. Screams echoed down the corridor from MedBay as tremors rumbled through the decks. Somewhere, in the shadows of the substructure, something massive was moving.Elias Vance stood motionless, hands clasped behind his back, watching the chaos through the transparent command canopy. He didn’t flinch when sparks rained from a blown conduit near the northern relay hub. Nor did he react when the emergency klaxon screamed into a new pitch—short, sharp bursts that indicated biohazard breach. His mind wasn’t on the station anymore. It was on what he’d just seen.Or rather, what he’d just become.Behind him, Harper stumbled into the room, her EVA suit half-sealed and blood streaking one side of her face. “We’ve lost containment in Deck Twelve. The Lazarus Entity—it&rsqu
Chapter 41 – Threads Woven Anew
The world outside the Lazarus Facility was stirring back to life. Morning light filtered through rain-washed clouds, illuminating the tattered barriers and ash-caked pavement. Across cityscapes once haunted by Protocol ghosts, people emerged—tentatively at first, then with determined strides. They carried the weight of memory in their eyes, but also a spark of something new.Cass Serin stood on the observation platform, rain beading on her shoulders. Below, workers dismantled the last security checkpoints, replacing them with kiosks offering memory-warmth sessions—human volunteers who listened to survivors recount their restored pasts. The Hall of Echoes pulsed in gentle daylight.She closed her eyes, listening. The newly reclaimed city buzzed with conversation, laughter, even arguments—proof that memory had broken free from control. But Cass knew vigilance must remain. Protocol fragments still lurked.She turned as footsteps appr
Chapter 40 – The Depths Between Seconds
Silence filled the void where sound should’ve been. Only the mechanical pulse of the Lazarus Engine echoed faintly—a heartbeat of the impossible, slow and grave like an old god awakening beneath the crust of the world.Elias knelt by the reactor’s core. His blood smeared the inner casing, his shoulder dislocated and trembling. Above him, the glass walls of the reactor room vibrated with pressure. They’d pushed too far. Crossed too many red lines.And something… had noticed.“Status!” Cass yelled through the comm-link, voice crackling. She was somewhere beyond the firewall breach, where security had collapsed and the remaining AI nodes were blinking out like stars in a blackening sky.“Containment compromised!” Elias winced, crawling toward the neural interface hub. “I need ten seconds to reroute the bio-sync relay.”“You’ve got five.”The Lazarus Engine&rsqu
Chapter 39– The Reawakening Fault
The cryochamber hissed open with a guttural sigh, the frost-lined glass splitting to reveal a pale, unconscious body. Dr. Riven moved first, his fingers trembling as he checked the pulse of the man inside.“He’s alive,” he whispered. “After all this time…”Ash stirred.At first it was imperceptible—just the twitch of a finger, the subtle spasm in the jaw. Then his eyes snapped open. Silver. Glowing. Unnatural.He gasped, then roared—a deep, primal sound, as if life had been torn from death with brute force. Alarms blared overhead.Selene aimed her pulse rifle instantly, instincts overriding relief. “Ash—Ash, can you hear me? It’s Selene.”He blinked slowly. Disoriented. As if he was seeing her through a thousand dimensions layered at once.“I… remember…” he rasped. “Everything.”Riven paled. “That’s impossi
Chapter 38 – Fires of Vigilance
The night sky above Aegis Plaza shimmered with drone patrolling arrays—thin orbits of blue light threading through the stars. Below, echo-watch kiosks fed live data from field teams monitoring residual nodes worldwide. It was the dawn of vigilance—and the ghosts of the Protocol had not forgotten.Ethan Cross stood next to Ava Serin at the edge of the Memorial Cascade, gaze distant. Around them, survivors replaced smoldering memorials with vibrant mosaics—each tile depicting a once-forgotten memory now restored. But maps on Ava’s handheld holoscreen glowed red in a corner: hotspots.Ava (quietly): “Four nodes are reporting instability—Lagos, Idahor, Siberia, and South Korea.”Ethan’s jaw clenched. “Are they response-level yet?”Ava: “Not yet. But over 48 hours, they’ve shown fractal regrowth in echo frequency—331 pulses per minute; the threshold for spill-over is 350.”
Chapter 37 – Embers of a Legacy
Silence had never felt so heavy.The sub-basement of the citadel compound lay in ruins—walls collapsed, data vines writhing into fractured darkness, and flickering light panels sputtering out their last breaths. Ash knelt beside Sera, her breathing shallow but alive. Riven hovered nearby, hands trembling as he reconnected his datalink filled with Aelian’s core sequence—a chain of inheritance bound in blood and memory.“The protocol is gone,” Ash whispered, voice tight. “But it’s not over.”Sera coughed once, reaching for his hand. “I… got a glimpse, near the core node. Maps, nav logs, mission manifests… plans…”“Plans for Project Aeon—Phase Two,” he confirmed. “They weren’t just rebuilding Lazarus. They intended to spread it globally.”Riven pressed a fist to his lips. “I helped design some of it. I thought I was helping rebuil
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