2025-10-22 15:41:43Charlie had never felt so out of place. The grand office that now bore his name seemed more like a stage set than reality, a glittering cage of power where every move carried weight he wasn’t ready to bear. Linda, however, wasted no time. By the next morning, she had transformed his confusion into a carefully structured routine.
“From today, you begin relearning what you built,” she said firmly, her eyes leaving no room for argument.
And so began the crash course.
Finance was first. A senior analyst from Skydome’s investment division filled the conference room with projections and charts. At first, Charlie sat stiffly, certain he would drown in the numbers. But as the analyst spoke, something strange happened. The formulas, ratios, and market movements began to untangle themselves in his head. His hand moved across the notepad, sketching corrections to forecasts before he realized it.
The analyst froze mid-sentence. “Sir… that’s… that’s precisely the adjustment we were planning for next quarter. How did you—”
Charlie blinked, startled. “I don’t know. It just… felt wrong the way you presented it.”
Linda’s lips curved into the faintest smile. She didn’t explain; she didn’t need to. The man who had once conquered industries wasn’t gone—he was merely buried under the fog of memory.
Medicine came next. They handed him case studies of rare conditions, detailed histories of patients Skydome had treated under his direction. Charlie’s eyes skimmed the symptoms, and his pulse quickened. Images surfaced unbidden: the precise placement of a scalpel, the smell of disinfectant, the steady rhythm of a heart monitor.
Instinct overrode doubt. He scrawled a treatment outline across the page, shocking the gathered doctors with its precision.
“This protocol hasn’t even been published yet,” one of them murmured, disbelief heavy in his voice.
Charlie leaned back, shaken by his own hand. “I… I don’t remember learning it. But I know it’s right.”
Linda’s gaze lingered on him, sharp as glass. “That’s because you didn’t learn it. You created it.”
The weight of her words sat heavy in the room.
Corporate etiquette followed. Linda had arranged private tutors to drill him in the language of boardrooms and the subtleties of negotiation. Here, Charlie struggled most. He had no patience for empty pleasantries or rehearsed smiles. More than once, Linda had to interrupt and remind him, “Power isn’t just force. Sometimes it’s restraint.”
But even in these lessons, fragments of the old Charlie bled through. When executives came to test him, whispering doubts in hushed tones, he sat silently. Their disdain grew louder, their arrogance more brazen. Finally, one dared to voice what all were thinking:
“Chairman, with respect, you’ve been gone too long. Skydome cannot be led by a man who doesn’t remember who he is.”
Gasps rippled through the room. Linda bristled, ready to cut the man down, but Charlie raised a hand.
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “If that’s true, then tell me—who authorized the covert purchase of the Helios patent three years ago? The one buried under shell corporations to keep the regulators blind?”
The room went silent. The executive who had spoken went pale. That knowledge was locked behind sealed files, accessible only to Charlie himself.
Charlie didn’t know how he knew. He simply did. The memory came not as a picture but as certainty, undeniable and sharp.
“Sit down,” he said coldly.
The man obeyed without another word. For the first time, Charlie saw fear in their eyes.
Linda’s faint smile returned.
Later, she took him to a restricted wing of the building, past biometric locks and steel doors. The air inside was cool, tinged with the faint medicinal scent of alcohol and herbs. Here, rows of cabinets held vials and tablets, formulas glowing under careful containment.
“These,” Linda said, her voice hushed with reverence, “are your true legacy. Medicines and treatments decades ahead of their time. Some healers would burn kingdoms to ash for a single vial in this room. Governments have already tried to take them. You—Charlie—created these.”
He stepped closer, eyes fixed on a vial glowing faintly in its case. His reflection warped against the glass. “I don’t even remember doing it.”
Linda touched his shoulder. “But your enemies remember. They remember too well. And they will not stop until you are erased for good.”
Her words haunted him.
That night, alone in his suite, Charlie’s dreams dragged him back to a world of blood and chaos. He saw fire tearing through a battlefield, smelled the acrid bite of smoke. Screams echoed. In the haze, a shadow stood—a figure he trusted, someone close. And then betrayal. A blade at his back, the shock of it freezing his lungs.
He woke with a violent gasp, drenched in sweat. His chest heaved, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was. The skyscraper’s city lights glimmered through the glass, mocking the storm inside him.
The door creaked. Linda stood there, her expression grim, as though she had been waiting.
“Charlie,” she said quietly, “news just broke. Carl has declared himself Nancy’s fiancé. And more than that… he’s announced a takeover attempt on Skydome.”
Her words struck like thunder.
Charlie’s pulse roared in his ears. Carl—again. First Nancy, now Skydome. His enemy wasn’t just mocking him; he was challenging everything Charlie had left.
Linda’s eyes met his. “This is only the beginning. If you don’t reclaim your throne, Carl won’t just take the company. He’ll destroy you.”
Charlie clenched his fists. For the first time since awakening, fire stirred in his chest. He might not remember the man he was, but he knew one thing for certain—he would not let Carl, or anyone else, strip away what was his.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
You may also like
The Almighty Dragon General
Crazy Carriage6.6M viewsRise From Prison: Married To A Beautiful CEO
Rex Magnus167.5K viewsThe Lowly Son in Law is Quadrillionaire
Riku Ormstrom92.8K viewsHidden Billionaire Son-in-law
Deliaha Shine124.8K viewsThe Blood Harem-Three Fates
Novel Eva945 viewsOUT OF PRISON, HIS REVENGE BEGINS
Author E318 viewsA Divorce She Regrets
Rachel Holt1.0K viewsThe Hidden Dragon Son-in-Law
Amy Precious878 views