2025-04-30 00:49:39The cheers in the boardroom had barely settled when the sound of footsteps echoed down the hall—heavy, urgent, deliberate.
Frank backed away from the terminal, still breathless from the high of cracking the code. His mind buzzed with adrenaline, with hope. This was it—his redemption.
Winston Wrenford turned to him, stunned. “You… You really did it.”
“I told you,” Frank said quietly.
One of the board members clapped him on the back. “Son, you just saved a multi-billion dollar company.”
But across the room, Corbin stared coldly at Frank. No applause. No congratulations. Just a phone in his hand and a look that could slice glass.
Outside the WrenTech building, a sleek black van sat parked by the curb. Inside, a man in tactical gear adjusted the scope of a silenced rifle. On his earpiece, a voice crackled.
“Advance.”
The assassin stepped out of the van, blending into the crowd. He moved with precision toward the executive wing, his rifle concealed in a guitar case. The target was simple: eliminate Winston Wrenford—quietly.
Inside, Ella burst into the boardroom. “Dad!” she gasped, “I just heard—Frank actually—”
She stopped short, seeing Frank at the center of attention.
“You did it,” she whispered.
Frank smiled at her. For the first time in what felt like years, her eyes weren’t filled with pity—but admiration.
Winston pointed to Frank. “This young man is the reason we’re not filing for bankruptcy today. And according to our terms—”
“You can’t be serious,” Corbin snapped.
“Oh, I’m deadly serious,” Winston said. “I made a vow. Whoever cracks this code leads the company forward.”
Corbin’s voice sharpened. “This janitor—this nobody—can’t just waltz in here and take the reins of WrenTech!”
“Would you rather the company be sold to foreign investors?” Winston snapped. “He saved us. That’s all that matters.”
Frank stepped forward. “I don’t want to run the company alone. I just want to help. I have ideas—”
“You don’t get to speak,” Corbin hissed.
Ella stepped between them. “Yes, he does.”
A silence settled, electric and dangerous.
Then—
CRASH.
The sound of breaking glass. A single suppressed gunshot shattered the moment.
Winston gasped—his shoulder exploding in blood.
Screams erupted.
Frank ducked, pulling Ella down with him. Board members scrambled for cover as more glass rained from above.
“Sniper!” someone shouted.
Chaos.
Frank spotted Corbin slipping toward the door in the confusion, his phone still in hand.
“Security!” Winston roared from the floor, clutching his shoulder.
Frank’s mind raced. This wasn’t random. This was planned. Corbin was making his move.
Frank bolted after him.
Corbin ran down the hallway like a man on fire, ditching his phone into a waste bin and pulling off his blazer. He moved fast, cutting through the staff hallway toward the parking garage.
Frank followed, heart pounding.
As Corbin rounded a corner, he slammed straight into a uniformed guard.
“Mr. Corbin—!”
Without hesitation, Corbin punched the guard in the throat, grabbed his taser, and shoved him into a wall.
Frank reached the scene seconds later, too late to stop him.
The guard groaned on the floor. “He’s… he’s heading for the exit…”
Frank didn’t think—he sprinted after him.
In the parking garage, Corbin reached his black sports car and threw open the door. But just as he slid into the seat—
“Stop!” Frank shouted.
Corbin turned, startled.
“You tried to have him killed!” Frank yelled. “Why? You’d risk everything—just to take control?”
Corbin smirked. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“I understand enough,” Frank growled.
Corbin stepped out of the car, slowly, keeping his hands visible. “This company is too valuable to be led by janitors and idealists. Wrenford was weak. You just made it worse.”
Frank balled his fists.
“You think I did this for money?” Corbin hissed. “I did this for power. Control. Something a mop boy like you will never understand.”
Frank charged him.
The two collided violently, slamming into the side of the car. Corbin swung the taser, but Frank ducked and drove his knee into Corbin’s ribs. The older man grunted, then caught Frank’s shirt and slammed him onto the concrete.
“You should’ve stayed in your lane,” he snarled.
Frank kicked his legs up, catching Corbin in the chest and sending him backward. He grabbed the taser, turned it on—and fired.
Corbin collapsed in a twitching heap.
Frank stood, panting, just as security poured into the garage.
“He planned the hit!” Frank shouted. “Get him! Check his phone. The assassin is still out there!”
Meanwhile, on a nearby rooftop, the sniper packed up swiftly. His comms were dead. Plan aborted.
But before he left, he opened a small metal case. Inside: a dossier marked “FRANK SUTTON.”
New orders.
New target.
And somewhere, high above the city, a second finger hovered over a second trigger.
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CHAPTER 290 — THE WORD HE COULDN’T SAY
Darkness didn’t fall. It filled. Thick. Heavy. Absolute. A darkness that wasn’t the absence of light, but the absence of memory.Callen felt himself floating in it, suspended like a thought that had been half-erased. Ember’s hand was still gripping his, but even her warmth felt distant, muffled behind layers of dissolving recollection. Her voice finally pierced the void. “Calle, Callen, stay with me!”He couldn’t tell how close she was. Or if she was even real right now. Time had no shape here. Neither did they. Then, A flicker.A tiny spark of gold flared in the dark, buzzing like a firefly trapped behind a wall of ink. Ember. Her glow fought to cohere again, her silhouette glitching into place with sheer force of will.But her face was twisted in horror. “Callen… your eyes”He opened them. There was nothing. Not black irises. Not white sclera. Just blankness. A void where sight should be. Callen choked on panic. “It took my childhood, it took everything connected to”“No.” Ember fra
CHAPTER 289 — THE PRISON THAT REMEMBERS YOU BACK
Light wasn’t supposed to make sound. But this light screamed. It tore through the chamber in jagged brilliance, shredding form, thought, and physics.Ember grabbed Callen’s hand, but her fingers flickered through his, their bodies stuttering between shapes and particles as the explosion of Proto-Memory ruptured around them.Callen couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even think straight. There were too many memories. Too many histories crashing into each other.Too many versions of him trying to claw their way into the present. One thought rose above the static: “The Spine is a prison.”Older Callen’s words echoed through the vacuum-stutter of collapsing reality. A prison. Not a vault. Not an archive. Not a cosmic oracle. A containment structure.Built for something too big, too dangerous, too alive to roam free. The light snapped off like a switch being thrown. Silence. Blackness.And then, A breath. Callen opened his eyes. He wasn’t in the chamber anymore. He stood on a narrow w
CHAPTER 288 — THE FIRST MEMORY TO BREAK
The chamber shuddered. Not from impact. Not from collapse. But from recognition. As if the Spine, the architect of all memory, had just realized who was standing inside it.Callen’s breath fogged the pulsing air. Ember tightened her grip on his arm, embers rippling down her fingers like instinctive armor.Above them, the fused hybrid army, Witnesses entangled with Hollowborn threads, rippled through the chamber walls like living murals.Their bodies were only half-physical, half-narrative, merging and unm e rging between fragments of stories that were not fully theirs.The hybrids didn’t speak. They remembered. And the remembering hit the chamber like a storm. A man’s childhood.A woman’s first lie. A soldier’s last regret. A Hollowborn’s first hunger. A Witness’s first betrayal. All of it poured at once, crashing through the Spine like waves folding over each other.Callen staggered under the pressure. Ember dug her nails into his wrist. “Stay anchored.”“I’m trying,” Callen rasped.
CHAPTER 287 — THE ONE WHO REMEMBERS YOU
The world returned in fragments. White. Then black. Then the shuddering echo of a heartbeat that wasn’t Callen’s, or was his, multiplied through a thousand overlapping timelines.He lay on something soft and warm, like moss woven out of starlight. His chest rose with a shaky breath. His body felt… lighter, as if gravity was arguing about whether to keep him. “Callen…”Miles’ voice pierced the haze. Callen’s eyes snapped open. He lurched upright, wincing immediately as pain carved through his ribs, but he pulled the boy into a fierce embrace.“You’re okay,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “You’re okay.”Miles trembled against him. “I—I thought you were gone.”Callen squeezed him tighter. “Not leaving you. Ever.”The moment lasted one heartbeat too long before they both remembered the same absence. Ember. Callen pulled back. “Where is she?”Miles swallowed, eyes brimming. “I… don’t know. She fell through the rift, and then everything exploded and”A soft hum cut him off. Callen turned sharp
CHAPTER 286 — THE INTERCEPTOR
They fell for an eternity measured not in seconds, but in stolen memories. Images flashed past them in the dark, Callen as a child gripping a broken toy; Ember holding her mother’s hand on a rain-soaked balcony; Miles laughing as he chased fireflies down a fading street.Then darker things, the Hollowborn wars, the burning of the Meridian Tower, the first time Callen heard the Spine whisper his name. The fall ended without impact. They simply stopped.Callen staggered upright, breath ragged, as the darkness peeled away like an unfurling curtain, revealing a titanic chamber of fractured geometry.The walls weren’t walls at all but moving slabs of reality shifting in and out of sync. Pieces of cities floated in suspended cubes. Snatches of other worlds blinked in like faulty holograms.Ember stood beside him, clutching Miles close, her face pale but focused. “Where… is this?” she whispered.Miles scanned the shimmering, broken vistas with widening eyes.“I… I’ve never seen anything like
CHAPTER 285 — THE FRACTURE VOTE
There was no surface, no sky, no body, only a roaring lattice of memory-storms swallowing Callen and Ember whole.Light spun around them in spirals, each strand glowing with moments they had never lived and moments they’d forgotten they had.Callen reached for Ember, but his hand passed through hers like static. “Ember!”“I’m here !”Her voice echoed in the infinite, bending around itself, repeating in younger, older, broken versions. Something was wrong. They weren’t just in the merge.They were inside the decision. The voice of the fused entity, the third being, rippled around them, liquefying into a thousand shapes. “Two choices. Two outcomes. But not two people.”Callen gritted his teeth. “Show yourself!”“I am showing myself,” the being said from everywhere and nowhere. “Look.”A flare of brilliance snapped into form, and suddenly Callen was standing on a quiet shore of black glass.Ember was there too, whole again, stumbling onto her feet. Above them, the sky was a mosaic of mem
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