2025-08-01 07:29:00Ethan crouched behind a fractured wall, pulling up the tactical feed on his wrist console. The map was fragmented, distorted by EMP interference, but one crimson blip pulsed steady—a heartbeat buried beneath layers of encrypted signals. It was the Core. The last stronghold of the Consortium’s command matrix.
“They’ve barricaded the inner sanctum,” Viera whispered, her eyes scanning the spiral stairwell that coiled downward into the darkness. “Thermal signatures confirm at least two sentry mechs and six—no, seven—Consortium elite. Probably engineered.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ethan said grimly. “We go through them.”
“No more delays?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No more secrets. We end it now.”
They descended.
The stairwell walls were scorched, pocked with impact craters from earlier skirmishes. The scent of ozone and ash choked the air. Et
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Chapter 247 – Echoes Beneath the Ashes
The rain fell harder now, slashing across the fractured windows of the Sanctuary like knives. Ethan Cross stood in silence, the flickering emergency lights casting long, distorted shadows behind him. The air was thick with smoke and the acrid scent of burning synthetics—a brutal reminder of what had been lost in the siege of the Hollow Archive.Beside him, Iris kept one hand pressed against her side, where her jacket was dark with blood. Still, she didn’t waver. Her eyes stayed on the burnt remains of the central relay—a tangled wreck of scorched cables and shattered interface glass. The map of the Dominion that once hovered in light above the console was gone now, reduced to static and silence.“We’re too late,” Iris said, her voice a low rasp. “They burned the data hub. Everything—every name, every algorithm, every node—wiped.”Ethan shook his head. “No. Not everything.” He turned back to
Chapter 246 – The Reckoning Begins
The rain lashed harder against the broken glass of the Citadel as the last echoes of Selene’s voice died down. Her final confession hung thick in the air like the smoke rising from the detonated vaults beneath the Archive Tower.Ethan stood in the wreckage, eyes blazing with betrayal and resolve. The memory crystal in his hand—now glowing dimly—contained everything. The truth about the Lazarus Protocol. The truth about the Citadel’s founding. And above all, the truth about who had betrayed them from within.Behind him, Darya limped forward, blood streaking her temple, her pulse fast but focused.“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked, voice hoarse. “You saw what she did.”He nodded grimly. “I saw all of it. She sold us out to the Consortium. Every move we made, they knew in advance because of her. The ambushes. The disappearances. The damn Omega File leak—it was all her.”They did
Chapter 245 – The Earth Vessel
Ethan Cross stood against the reinforced viewport of the Citadel’s upper observation deck, watching the horizon writhe with tremors. From here, he could see the aurora-like glow ascending along the polar shelf where the Dominion’s network had originated. It pulsed in rhythms that matched Nadia’s altered heartbeat—an unholy resonance between vessel and host.Behind him, Selene, Aria, Donovan, and Malik gathered—faces drawn, every one of them braced for an impossible reckoning.“Seismic readings are off the charts,” Donovan reported, voice tight. “The conduit under the ice is expanding. It’s reshaping the crust.”Ethan didn’t flinch. “Nadia—the Seed—she said Earth is the vessel. Not the Citadel. Not just us. The whole planet.”Aria’s hand flew to her mouth. “Then this isn’t a battle we win with bullets. It’s a reclamation of the wo
Chapter 244 – The Prime Ascension
The transmission crackled to life just as the last node in the Triarch Array surged with light. A pulse rolled through the Citadel’s network like a tidal wave—data streams flared in frantic motion, scattering red and blue across every screen in the Command Atrium. Ethan Cross stood frozen, his eyes locked on the main display where the final encryption layer collapsed. The Dominion Core was no longer dormant.“Talk to me, Amara,” Ethan said, his voice steady despite the tremor beneath his skin.Across the console, Amara’s fingers flew, her face a study in both awe and anxiety. “The Dominion’s prime code is awake. The last firewalls are gone—we have full access to the system. All of it.”Keller stepped forward, gun still drawn though the immediate danger had subsided. “Define full.”Amara looked up. “Control over the Sentinel grid. The blacksite armories. Project Lazarus… Every c
Chapter 243: Echoes of an Unwritten Future
The fallout was immediate.Within hours of the Dominion’s core being obliterated, global data streams destabilized. The carefully veiled surveillance grids—the “Sentinets”—began crashing in synchronized failure. News stations flickered with partial truths, governments issued hasty denials, and in underground networks across Berlin, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, and Lagos, whispers spread fast: The Dominion has fallen.But with collapse came vacuum—and in that vacuum, chaos.Ethan, Aria, Malik, Selene, and Donovan regrouped in an abandoned listening post in Lucerne, Switzerland—a former Consortium relay site now dark, its satellite dishes snapped like brittle bones against the snow-covered mountainside. Inside, they stood around a central terminal broadcasting intercepted frequencies.“Sixteen sovereign military units have gone dark,” Donovan said, scrolling through encrypted feeds. “Looks like they were
Chapter 242: The Pact Beyond Shadows
The moment Ethan stepped through the obsidian archway, the air turned static, charged with a pressure that wrapped around his lungs like chains. The chamber was not part of any known architecture—angular shadows twisted at unnatural angles, and the ceiling, if it existed at all, bled into a sky of swirling gray oblivion. This was the Dominion’s spine—the true nerve center of the Consortium’s ancient machine.Behind him, Selene, Aria, Malik, and Donovan followed, eyes narrowed, weapons drawn, but hands trembling with the raw truth they were standing inside. There was no map here, no beacon. Only silence and the low, pulsing thrum of something alive.Ethan advanced slowly, the skin at the back of his neck prickling. “We’re not alone.”From the far end of the hall, something moved—fluid, like oil given form. It solidified into a figure cloaked in jagged smoke, faceless, but undeniably watching. The Shadow Archivist. I
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