2025-10-22 15:40:00Charlie watched the door slowly close behind Linda as Carl followed, her last words echoing in his mind like a long-forgotten melody—You’re someone they all feared once.
He stared at the sealed envelope in his hand, his heart thudding—not with fear, but with something else. A strange calmness. The feeling that, for once, he held the pieces of the game.
Nancy crossed her arms and let out a scoff. “Well, that was a fun little performance. You sure know how to attract clowns, Charlie. Must be a new talent.”
Charlie turned his gaze to her, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “You really think Carl found the miracle doctor?”
Nancy’s smile faltered for the briefest second. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Charlie leaned back, ignoring the weakness in his limbs. “I’m saying—what if I told you Carl never found the real doctor? What if he never even got close?”
Nancy laughed coldly. “Please. Carl isn’t like you. He actually gets things done.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Right. Gets things done… by faking a doctor to trick you into marriage?”
Her expression froze.
He saw it then—the faintest flicker of doubt in her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” she snapped, masking it quickly.
Charlie’s smile deepened, mocking. “You think you’re the one in control, don’t you? But Carl doesn’t want your mother cured. He wants your name—your resources. The rest? He’s willing to fake.”
Nancy took a step forward, fuming. “You’re just bitter because I chose someone better than you.”
“Better?” Charlie asked quietly. “If you say so.”
Nancy snatched her bag and dug through it furiously. “You want out, fine. You’ve been dragging your useless self through my life long enough.” She pulled out a folded document and slapped it on the side table beside his bed. “Here. Divorce agreement. I dare you to sign it.”
Charlie glanced at the papers, then back at her.
She tilted her head, smirking. “Oh? Suddenly you’re quiet? What happened to that fake confidence?”
Without a word, Charlie reached for the pen resting nearby, picked it up, and signed his name at the bottom in smooth, bold strokes.
Nancy blinked.
He set the pen down gently. “There. Signed. You’re free.”
For a long moment, Nancy said nothing. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
Then she laughed again, though it sounded more forced than before. “You really think you’re doing something here? That little act means nothing. Once the miracle doctor gets here, you’ll be irrelevant.”
Charlie’s eyes remained steady. “You’re right. Once the real doctor gets here, everything will change.”
She rolled her eyes and gathered the signed document. “Whatever. You’ll be out of this hospital bed soon enough. And when you are, don’t expect anyone to care what happens to you.”
Charlie didn’t respond. There was no need. Nancy was still playing a game that was ending right before her eyes.
She turned to leave, muttering something under her breath, when the door creaked open again.
Linda stepped inside.
The timing was surgical.
She walked with quiet elegance, holding a small vial in one hand and a folder in the other. Her eyes flicked over to Charlie, then to Nancy, who froze mid-step.
“What is she doing here again?” Nancy hissed.
Linda’s voice was cool. “I’m here for my patient.”
“Patient?” Nancy scoffed. “He’s not even worth calling a stray, and now you’re acting like he matters?”
Charlie raised an eyebrow, amused. “Funny. You didn’t think that way when you were taking my blood for your mother.”
Nancy spun around, eyes burning. “Don’t twist things, Charlie! Everything I did, I did because I had no choice!”
“Yet somehow, Carl was always your first choice,” he replied coldly.
Linda moved to Charlie’s side and rested a hand gently on his shoulder. “He doesn’t belong here anymore.”
Nancy’s face twisted with rage. “So this is it, huh? You two were together all along. That explains everything. The attitude. The confidence. You’ve been cheating behind my back—”
“Cheating?” Charlie let out a quiet laugh. “You’re accusing me… of cheating?”
Linda didn’t even bother replying. She simply opened the folder and pulled out a few pages. “The test results show traces of forced blood extraction, stress-induced collapse, and malnutrition. If he hadn’t contacted me when he did, he wouldn’t have lasted another forty-eight hours.”
Nancy scoffed again, trying to regain control of the room. “And who are you to come in here throwing accusations?”
Linda looked her in the eye. “The only person here who actually wants to keep him alive.”
Silence fell over the room like a blanket.
Charlie stood up slowly, wobbling only for a second before regaining his balance.
“From now on,” he said quietly, “don’t talk to me. Don’t call me. Don’t act like I owe you anything. You’ve signed me away. I suggest you start living like it.”
Nancy looked at him like she barely recognized him.
And truthfully, she didn’t.
This Charlie—the one who stood calmly while the world around him began to shift—was not the man she had trampled for years.
He walked to the door with Linda beside him, not even looking back.
Only when they stepped into the hallway did he whisper, “Thank you.”
Linda gave him a small nod. “You haven’t even started yet.” And he knew she was right.
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Chapter 142
The monument stood where the city’s old spine used to be, a stretch of polished stone and alloy rising from ground that had once been scorched black. From above, it looked clean, even hopeful. People gathered there every day. They brought flowers grown in rebuilt soil, names etched onto thin metal strips, quiet prayers spoken in languages that had nearly been erased. On the surface, it was a place of closure. A marker set down so the world could tell itself that something had ended.Beneath it, far below the reach of sunlight and ceremony, the ground told a different story.Deep under the foundation, past layers of reinforced bedrock and forgotten access tunnels, old systems still breathed. They were not loud. They did not announce themselves. A low, steady hum moved through the metal veins buried there, subtle enough to be mistaken for the planet’s own shifting weight. Power cycled carefully, sparingly, as if whatever lay below had learned patience.Cables ran through sealed corridor
Chapter 141
The monument rose from the center of the rebuilt city like a thought given shape. It did not try to impress with height or ornament. It simply stood there, steady and plain, as if it had always belonged. One half was metal, brushed and scarred, the surface dulled by heat and impact. The other half was stone, pale and rough, cut from the same bedrock that once lay buried under the city’s old foundations. The seam where the two materials met was not hidden. It was visible, uneven in places, a deliberate choice that refused to smooth over the join.Morning light slid across it slowly. As the sun climbed, the metal caught the glow first, reflecting it outward in a muted sheen. The stone followed later, warming in color, pulling the light inward instead of throwing it back. Together they formed something balanced, not symmetrical, but honest.At the base of the monument, the words were carved deep enough to last longer than memory.Freedom is the flaw that saved us.Raiden stood a few step
Chapter 140
The provisional council did not meet in a grand hall or behind polished glass. There were no banners, no speeches rehearsed to sound historic. They gathered in a converted transit terminal on the outskirts of what used to be the Skydome district, a place that still smelled faintly of smoke and salt from the sea. The roof had been repaired with mismatched panels scavenged from nearby ruins. Sunlight leaked through the seams in thin, uneven lines, falling across long tables built from old doors and cargo pallets.People arrived quietly. Some came in official vehicles. Others walked. A few limped. Many carried tablets filled with data rescued from dying servers. Some carried nothing at all except notebooks and the weight of what they had survived.This was not a meeting born from victory. It was born from exhaustion.Charlie stood near the back at first, unnoticed, watching the room fill. He recognized faces from every chapter of the war. Scientists who once argued over funding now sat b
Chapter 139
The data shard arrived without ceremony. No alarms. No dramatic announcement. It appeared the way so many things did after the war, quietly, almost apologetically, as if unsure it still belonged in a world trying to move forward.Hana found it first.She had been cataloging remnants from the Genesis archives, the fragments no one had the heart to delete and no one quite trusted enough to restore. Most were corrupted beyond use. Broken code. Half-formed neural maps. Echoes of ideas that once carried too much power. She worked alone in the lower levels of the rebuilt Skydome annex, where the lights were softer and the air still smelled faintly of burned circuitry and dust sealed into concrete.The shard did not announce itself as important. It sat in the queue like any other recovery artifact, flagged only by an anomaly marker that refused to clear. Hana frowned, fingers pausing over the interface. The system kept trying to classify the signal and failed.She leaned closer, eyes narrowi
Chapter 138
The first reports came quietly, buried in hospital intake logs and research footnotes. Doctors noticed it before governments did, before networks had time to argue over what it meant. Children born after the Collapse were not reacting the way anyone expected. The nanotech residue that still lingered in the air, the soil, even the bloodstreams of adults simply did not take hold in them. It passed through their systems like rain through open hands. No seizures. No neural interference. No signs of forced adaptation.They were healthy. Calm. Strangely steady.At first, the pattern was dismissed as coincidence. A statistical anomaly in a world still trying to stitch itself back together. But as the months passed, the numbers grew harder to ignore. Every region told the same story. Infants born after the Collapse showed a natural resistance to hybridization. Not rejection, not dominance, but balance. The machines could not claim them. Biology did not reject the technology either. It simply
Chapter 137
The first thing Raiden noticed was the quiet. Not the peaceful kind people talked about when wars ended, but the exhausted kind, the kind that settled over a place after everything had already been spent.The city that used to be called New Geneva no longer looked like a city in the old sense. The skyline was uneven, half-standing towers stitched together with scaffolding and cables. Smoke no longer rose in thick columns. Instead, thin plumes drifted lazily from cooking fires and makeshift generators. The air smelled of wet concrete, burned wiring, and something faintly organic, like soil that had been turned for the first time in years.Raiden stood at the edge of a collapsed transit hub, boots planted in a shallow pool of rainwater, watching people work. There were no uniforms anymore. No insignia. No clean lines separating sides. Just humans in layers of scavenged clothing, sleeves rolled up, hands dirty.Some of them still carried the subtle signs of Eden’s touch. A faint metallic
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