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THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 144
The Cost of Remembering "You’re saying I have to be his anchor," I say, the weight of the words pressing into my chest. Kane nods. "You knew him best. If anyone can hold onto him long enough to pull him back, it’s you." Elias crosses his arms, his jaw locked. "And what happens if Tony can’t handle it?" Kane hesitates. That hesitation alone is enough to make my stomach drop. "Then we lose them both." Silence clamps down on the room. No one moves. No one breathes. The answer is right there, staring us in the face. I already know mine. "We do it." Elias shakes his head, stepping forward like he can physically stop me. "Tony—" "Don’t waste time trying to stop me," I cut in, my voice sharp enough to slice through his arguments before they even form. "We’re doing this." His hands curl into fists at his sides. "Damn it, Tony—" "Enough," I snap. "Darren saved my life more times than I can count. If there’s even a chance I can do the same for him, I take it. No second-gu
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 145
Rebuilding DarrenHe’s standing in an endless void, his form flickering between solid and digital static. Pieces of him dissolve and reappear like he’s barely holding himself together.I take a step forward. "Darren!"He flinches back, his expression unreadable."Who are you?"My chest tightens like a fist has closed around my ribs. The words hit harder than they should, but I force myself to stay steady."It’s me," I say, my voice firm. "Tony."His brow furrows. A flicker of something crosses his face—recognition, hesitation—but it’s gone too fast."Tony…?"The world around us shifts, breaking apart like glass. Sharp edges of memory and reality collide, the pieces distorting, rearranging, refusing to settle.I don’t have much time."You have to come back with me," I say urgently. "We found a way."Darren looks down at his flickering hands, his jaw clenched. "I don’t know how.""Then let me help you."I reach for him, but the moment my fingers graze his wrist, something else makes its
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 146
Fractured PiecesThe world outside should feel normal. It doesn’t.I sit at Darren’s bedside, watching the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. His skin is pale, almost waxy under the harsh medical lights. Alive. Breathing. But he hasn’t spoken since the moment he woke up and whispered—Who am I?The question still rattles in my skull like a broken gear in a machine that refuses to run properly. I should feel relief. I should feel like I won. But something about this victory feels incomplete.Elias leans against the doorway, arms crossed, his dark eyes unreadable. “He’s not waking up right.”“No shit,” I mutter, my voice is raspier than I expected.She stands next to me, her gaze fixed on the monitors, lips pressed into a thin line. “His neural pathways are intact,” she says carefully. “But the damage…” She exhales, shaking her head. “It’s like someone shattered a mirror and put the pieces back in the wrong order.”I squeeze the bridge of my nose, exhaustion pressing down on me l
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 147
Whispers from the VoidThe lights flicker again. Just for a second. Just long enough to send a shiver down my spine.Darren’s grip tightens around my wrist, his skin clammy, his breath uneven. His wide, glassy eyes aren’t just looking at me—they’re looking through me. Past me.“You hear it too,” he murmurs.I do.It’s not a voice, not at first. Just a whisper at the edge of my perception, like wind slipping through cracks in a door. A sensation more than a sound, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.Kane stiffens, scanning the room with sharp eyes. “Electromagnetic interference?”Her fingers fly over the device in her hands, recalibrating. The screen glitches, lines of static crawling across it like fractured veins.“This isn’t interference,” she mutters. “Something’s bleeding through.”Darren flinches. His nails dig into the bedsheet. “It’s not supposed to be here.”Elias, silent until now, steps forward. His usual cool confidence is fraying at the edges. “Define ‘it.’”Darren e
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 148
The System Still WhispersThe voice shouldn’t exist. But it does.It lingers in the air, fractured, stretched thin, but unmistakably real.Darren grips the side of the bed, his knuckles white. His breath comes in shallow bursts.Elias shifts beside me, his stance tense, like a man waiting for the next hit in a fight he doesn’t understand. “Someone explain what the hell is happening.”Darren’s eyes flick to mine, and the look in them—fear, disbelief, something deeper—makes my stomach turn.“It’s him,” he breathes.I frown. “Who?”Darren swallows hard. His voice barely carries.“The other me.”Silence.I feel the words before I process them. They sink into my skin, cold and wrong.“The part that never made it back.”Kane hesitates, fingers hovering over her device. “That’s impossible.”Darren lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh but lacks any humor. “Yeah. Well. So I survived.”The air crackles.And then—The whisper again.“Tony… help…”My spine locks.The voice isn’t just a whisper
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 149
The Shadow at the Edge of RealityWe don’t waste time.Kane’s fingers blur over the screen, calibrating the system with a precision that borders on desperation. The hum of the stabilizer builds as Elias mutters to himself, pacing near the controls. His eyes flick between us, sharp with unspoken frustration.“This is a terrible idea,” he says, for the third time in as many minutes.Darren sits on the edge of the cot, rolling his shoulders as if testing the limits of a body that still isn’t fully his. He’s pale. Tense. But there’s no hesitation in his movements.“If I go back in,” I say, keeping my voice even, “I might not make it out.”Darren shakes his head before I even finish the sentence. “Then I guess we’re both not making it out.”His fingers twitch at his sides, but his eyes are locked onto mine with an intensity that makes my throat go tight. I know that look. It’s the same one I’ve seen when he throws himself into danger without a second thought—when he’s already made up his m
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 150
The New godThe void stretches before me, an endless horizon of shifting dark. It isn’t empty. It never was.I hear the voice before I see him. A whisper threaded through the emptiness, calling my name. It tugs at something deep inside me, a sensation I can’t quite explain—like remembering a dream just before it slips away.And then—I see him.Darren.But not the Darren I know.He stands at the precipice, his body half-formed, flickering between what he was and something more. His edges blur like static, shifting between his usual self and something vast and unknowable. His eyes—once sharp and grounded—hold an unnatural glow now, like something ancient is staring through them.A shiver crawls down my spine.I hesitate.“Darren?”He turns.And smiles.It’s small. Sad.“Tony,” he says quietly. “What have we become?”The weight of his words settles over me like a stone.I don’t know how to answer.Kane's voice crackles through my earpiece. “Tony, I don’t like this. His vitals are—” She s
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 151
Echoes of the Old WorldI woke up gasping. The air felt thick, pressing against my skin like an unseen force. My body ached as if I had been running for days, yet I couldn’t remember why. My mind swam through fragments of memories that didn’t fit together.The ceiling above me was wrong. It was my apartment—wasn’t it? The familiar crack near the window, the faint scent of old coffee lingering in the air—but the walls were a shade too dark, the window frame a little too sleek. My breath hitched.I sat up, my hands trembling as I rubbed my temples, willing the dizziness to subside. The moment my feet touched the cold floor, a wave of something unexplainable surged through me—like stepping into a past that wasn’t mine.Outside, the city hummed with life, but the rhythm was off. I stepped onto my balcony, eyes scanning the streets below. People bustled about, but their faces blurred at the edges, like unfinished sketches. The skyline—God, the skyline. Some buildings stood where there shou
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CHAPTER 180
The Untouched ShadowThe broken metal and wires of the Overseers’ control room were all around us. We had done this. We had broken their system, bit by bit, and fought through their guards. But looking at the mess, I didn’t feel good. Just empty and annoyed.Kane kicked a broken piece of a machine. It made a noise in the big, ruined room. “We took down their system, destroyed their buildings…” Her voice was tight like she was trying not to be angry. “…but it feels like we didn’t even touch the real problem.”Elias nodded, looking sad, as he looked at the mess. “The Overseers were just tools. Complicated ones, but still just a way to get what they wanted.” He looked out at the empty land through a hole in the wall. “The real power… it’s still out there, untouched.”Darren sat in a corner, looking white and tired. The memories he found had hurt him a lot. “And if they could control something like the Ascension System…” His voice was soft, like a whisper. “…what else can they
CHAPTER 179
The Unseen WatcherKane walked back and forth in the room we were using as a lab. Her boots made soft sounds on the floor. The air felt heavy like we hadn't done anything right. Tony… I still saw his fading eyes. What had that thing done to him? Was he still… Tony?Elias played with his machines, looking annoyed. “It’s like we’re fighting a ghost, Kane,” he said quietly. “A power that doesn’t follow any rules we know. The Overseers… they were just toys, weren’t they?”That thought made me cold. Toys. And we were so focused on them, we didn’t see the real person in charge.I suddenly felt cold, even though the room was warm. It wasn’t just cold; it was… something else. A feeling. Like when you know someone is behind you, even if you can’t see them.“It’s not just the system,” I said slowly, looking around the room. Nothing looked wrong. The machines hummed softly, the lights made long shadows. But… “I feel like… someone is watching us.”Elias stopped what he was doing and l
CHAPTER 178
Slipping AwayThe white light still hurt my eyes, even if I wasn’t seeing it now. Was I? Everything felt blurry, like a bad dream. Kane… her face… was she there? I remember a quick look like she was worried. Or maybe the bright light tricked me.The sounds around me were wrong. They twisted and broke, like talking underwater. Or maybe there was no sound, just a buzzing in my head that ate my thoughts. Words floated around, pieces of talk, but they didn’t stay. They didn’t make sense anymore.My own hand looked far away. Like it belonged to someone else. I tried to close my fingers, but it felt slow, like moving through thick mud. Was this still my hand? Was I still me?A cold fear grabbed me, worse than before. Not fear of pain, but fear of… disappearing. Like a picture in the sun, the colors faded away until nothing was left.Don’t forget me… please… The thought went around in my empty head, a soft cry against the growing confusion. Who was I asking? Kane? Elias? Darren…
CHAPTER 177
The Glitch in the MemoryMy fingers moved fast on the screen. The broken data from the Overseers jumped and changed. Kane looked closely, her face showing she was thinking hard. “If they were scared,” she asked quietly, “why did they want to control Tony so much?”Elias touched a black, shiny piece they found. His small machine showed strange power inside it. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “control was how they protected themselves. Maybe it was a way to use what they didn’t understand as a weapon.”Darren, still looking white and shaky, moved restlessly. He didn’t want to think about the things put in his mind, but we needed answers. Now, his eyes moved around the room like he could still hear bad things. “There was a name…” he whispered, his voice soft. “I think I heard… something about a ‘Conduit’…”Conduit. The word stayed in the quiet room. It felt important and dangerous. Kane and Elias looked at each other, knowing this could be something big. My own mind raced. Was I t
CHAPTER 176
A Pledge of AidBlue light from Kane’s key blinked in the dark. Fake Kane made a scary noise. My head still hurts from the changed memories. Kane’s light helped."I don’t know all they did, but they feared something… something they couldn't control."A voice cut through the air. Darren stood in the doorway. He looked sure now, not unsure. His eyes looked at Kane with hope.Kane looked at him, not sure but hoping. "Why now, Darren? After all the bad things?"Darren stepped in. He looked at Kane, then Elias with his weapon. "Because I see what they took from me… from all of us. I won’t let it happen again."I need to think clearly. My body felt heavy. The floor was cold.His words felt important. Darren used to work for the bad guys. Trusting him felt wrong.Kane looked hard at Darren. "Feared what, Darren? They controlled everything. What scared them?"Darren looked worried. "There were whispers… about something old. Before everything changed. They called it… the Unmake
CHAPTER 175
The Rewriting BeginsMy breath was short. The shiny building across the street felt wrong. I looked hard, a cold knot in my stomach. The bright picture Kane made on the wall was gone. Now there was a plain, creepy shape.Need to be strong. My muscles hurt, but it felt a little real."The street… not… different…" I said quietly. The air felt still and wrong. The buildings looked a little off, the signs making weird shadows.A quick thought of Kane and me here, laughing about her drawing. Her smart face… it felt far away. Did that happen here? Or was my brain playing tricks?More. Focus, Tony, focus. The metal hurt, but it felt real.I tried to remember talking to Kane about the bad things coming, the quiet talks about a power that could change everything. But the words were mixed up. Her voice sounded strange."Did I say that? Or… someone else?" The question stayed in my head, making the bad feeling worse. The outside and my memories felt wrong.I felt dizzy. I leaned on the
CHAPTER 174
Tracking the Ghost SignalsMy back hurts. It always did after bending over Elias’s weird machine for hours. Wires snaked all over the dusty floor like metal snakes connecting old parts. The air buzzed a little, like the nervous lights on the screens. The screens showed numbers and letters that didn't make sense. It felt like they were asking questions we couldn't answer.“There!” Elias said suddenly, his voice tight. He pointed at a tiny light that flashed and disappeared on a screen. “A weak signal… it’s not coming from anywhere we know.”Kane leaned closer, her dark eyes looking hard. The dim light in our hidden room made her face look serious. “Can you find it?” she asked, her voice quiet but strong.Elias shook his head. “It’s like a ghost. It shows up and then vanishes. One second it’s strong, the next… nothing.” He messed up his hair with his hand, something he did when he was frustrated.“But it’s connected to the leftover energy from their system, right?” Kane asked
CHAPTER 173
Darren's AwakeningA shake went through me, not from being cold, but from something deep inside, like the ground moving in my head. It was like a wall broke, and a rush of pictures, sharp and scary, filled my mind. White rooms with nothing in them. Shiny metal tools. Faces that didn't show any feelings, just watching. Overseers. The word sounded again in the new parts of my memory that had just woken up. Feel your muscles work hard."It was me…" The words barely came out of my throat, rough and sound strange even to me. "All this time… the things I remember… they really happened." My hands squeezed tight, and I could almost feel chains digging into my wrists, even though they weren't there. It wasn't just a feeling; it was something I remembered. Something awful.Kane and Elias were standing in front of me. Their faces looked worried. They had been trying to help me remember things, to get through the confusion in my head. Now, the confusion was gone, and everything was cl
CHAPTER 172
Kane's UneaseThe silence in our makeshift base camp used to be a relief, a breath after the storm of the Overseers. Now, it’s a heavy blanket, suffocating me with a sense of wrongness I can’t quite place. The emergency lights we rigged up flicker erratically, throwing long, dancing shadows that make the sterile white walls seem to breathe.Outside, the usual city sounds – the distant sirens, the rumble of traffic – are still there, but underneath it all, there’s a low hum, a vibration in the air that makes my teeth ache. It’s like the world itself is holding its breath.Kane paces in front of Elias’s makeshift console, her brow furrowed like a stormy sky. She stops abruptly, her gaze fixed on the chaotic display of flickering lights and jagged lines. “Something’s wrong,” she says, her voice tight with a concern that mirrors the knot in my own nonexistent stomach. “The readings are fluctuating wildly, more than before.”Elias, hunched over the equipment, his fingers flying acros
