2025-02-27 13:00:24Escape and Revelation
Smoke burned my lungs, every breath a reminder that I was running out of time. The alarms screamed overhead, red lights flashing across the steel corridors, casting jagged shadows that moved like ghosts. My boots pounded against the grated floor, every step echoing like a countdown to my own death. Elias was right behind me, bleeding, staggering—but he never slowed. His sharp, silver eyes burned with a determination that almost made me believe we could make it out. Almost. “Left,” he rasped, shoving me forward. “Stairwell—hurry!” The door was just ahead. Freedom was beyond it. And yet, I hesitated. My instincts screamed at me—something was wrong. Elias turned back, lifting his gun toward the security panel, but before he could fire, the metal barrier behind us slammed shut. The sound was final, like the lid of a coffin. His jaw tightened. He knew what this meant. “No,” I said. “We both go.” He didn’t answer. Just looked at me with that quiet resolve, the kind that made my stomach sink. I lunged for him, but he stepped back, pressing a hand against the wound in his side. Blood oozed between his fingers. “You know that’s not possible, Tony,” he said. His voice was steady, but his body swayed. “They’ve already locked me in.” My fists clenched. “Then I’ll find a way to unlock it.” “There is no time.” He was right. The facility’s lockdown sequence was nearly complete. Soon, the entire lower level would be flooded with neurotoxic gas. I could already see it seeping through the vents. But I wasn’t leaving him. Elias sighed as if I was some stubborn kid refusing to see reality. “Listen,” he said, stepping closer. “You have to go. You are the only one who can finish this.” “Elias—” His hand shot up, gripping my shoulder, his strength barely holding. He pulled me in, and I could see the flicker of regret in his eyes. Maybe he had always known it would end this way. “Find Valeria Kane,” he whispered. “She built this nightmare.” A chill crawled up my spine. Valeria Kane. The name felt like a loaded gun pressed to my skull. I’d heard whispers before—never confirmed, never traced—but the weight in his voice told me everything. She was the mastermind. The architect. The reason we were here. I had to find her. The floor trembled. The gas hissed louder, thickening in the air. Elias shoved me backward, slamming the access panel with his palm. The stairwell door hissed open, and fresh air rushed in. I tried to grab him. “No—” His other hand pressed against my chest, forcing me through the door. “Live,” he ordered. “Finish this.” The door slammed shut between us. I banged against the glass panel, my vision blurring. Elias turned away from me, raising his gun toward the approaching guards, his stance unshaken. He was already gone, and he knew it. The last thing I saw before the gas consumed him was the fire in his eyes. A warrior’s death. A hero’s sacrifice. Then the world blurred, and I ran. The system was against me. As I barreled up the stairwell, gasping for clean air, the AI’s voice echoed in my earpiece, cold and calculated. [Probability of Survival: <12%.] It was like hearing my own eulogy. The ceiling groaned above me as an explosion rocked the upper level. The bastards were trying to bury me alive. I gritted my teeth and pushed harder. The stairwell spiraled up endlessly, my legs burning with every step. My mind raced alongside my heart. Valeria Kane. A ghost in the system. If Elias was right, she was the one pulling the strings, the reason this facility even existed. But why? What was the endgame? The AI chimed again. [Five minutes until structural collapse.] Great. Just what I needed. A deafening creak split through the air. Then the floor above me—gone. Steel and concrete collapsed like dominoes, a deadly avalanche tumbling toward me. I didn’t think. I reacted. I lunged sideways, catching the rusted ladder on the wall. My fingers burned as I slid down, but I managed to land on the catwalk below—just in time to watch the stairwell collapse into a hellish abyss. Too close. I staggered forward, my ribs aching. The final checkpoint was ahead—a security scanner blocking the emergency exit. If I didn’t override it in time, I was dead. I stumbled to the panel, hacking into the system as fast as my shaking fingers allowed. [Access denied.] “No, no, no,” I muttered. I tried again. The AI didn’t even flinch. [Security lockdown active. Override unavailable.] My pulse pounded. If I didn’t get through, Elias would’ve died for nothing. A new voice crackled in my earpiece. A woman. “Well, well. You’re persistent.” I froze. That voice… it was smooth, confident, dripping with amusement. It felt like silk wrapping around my throat, ready to squeeze. Valeria Kane. She was watching me. “You’ve been quite the troublemaker, Tony,” she mused. “Elias thought he was protecting you, but he only delayed the inevitable.” Rage burned through me, sharp and blinding. “He died exposing you,” I shot back. “And I’ll make sure the world knows who you are.” She laughed softly. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m counting on it.” What? The door suddenly hissed open. No hacks. No overrides. She had done it herself. An eerie silence followed. I didn’t trust it. But I had no choice. I bolted through the exit, the cold night air hitting my face like a slap. The facility loomed behind me, its structure groaning under its own destruction. Then, just as I made it to the treeline— Boom. The entire facility erupted in fire, metal twisting, collapsing in on itself like a dying beast. Elias was gone. My past was buried beneath the rubble. And Valeria Kane had just let me go. Why? I didn’t have time for answers. I had barely escaped with my life, but this wasn’t over. This was just the beginning.
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THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 16
Hunting for the TruthI had expected this to be easy. A name, a location, and a few well-placed questions should’ve led me straight to Dr. Valeria Kane. Instead, I found nothing.No records. No address. No trace that she ever existed.I leaned back in my chair, staring at the blurry photograph of her that I’d managed to dig up. Short black hair, piercing gray eyes, a sharp intellect written all over her face. A scientist who once worked for Project Nexus before vanishing into thin air. Either she didn’t want to be found, or someone had made damn sure she wouldn’t be.I cracked my knuckles and exhaled. "You’re out there, Kane. I just have to look in the right places."The dingy motel room smelled like old cigarettes and I regretted it. My laptop hummed on the table, a dozen tabs open—government databases, classified reports, underground chatter. But every lead hit a dead end. Whoever erased her did a damn good job.But not perfect
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 17
The Overseers Move FirstThe pain was the first thing I felt. A deep, splintering ache at the base of my skull radiates outward like a shockwave. My vision swam as I tried to push myself up from the cold, wet ground. Gravel bit into my palms. The lighthouse loomed in the distance, its rotating beam slicing through the fog.I had no idea how long I’d been out.Dr. Kane was gone.I wiped my face. Blood smeared across the back of my hand—dripping from my nose, pooling in my ears. A sharp ringing buzzed in my skull, distant and unnatural, like a sound that didn't belong to this world.Then I remembered.That voice."You were never meant to exist."It hadn’t been spoken. It had been placed inside my mind. A weightless, formless presence had invaded my thoughts, speaking with the finality of a death sentence.I staggered to my feet, breathing hard. My body felt wrong—like something had reached inside me and t
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 18
Finding KaneThe deeper I dug, the more the world tried to erase her.Dr. Valeria Kane didn’t just disappear—she was removed.No digital footprint. No public records. No one even remembered working with her. It was like chasing a ghost whose name had been swallowed by time itself.But ghosts leave traces, no matter how hard you try to bury them.After a week of dead ends, encrypted messages, and a few too many close calls, I found the crack in the system. An old, defunct biotech forum buried in the dark web, its posts scrubbed of anything useful—except one.A cryptic reply to a decade-old thread. A set of coordinates. A time.And a warning."Don’t come unless you’re ready to lose everything."That was how I ended up here.A nameless safe house buried beneath an abandoned subway station, the air thick with dust and paranoia. The walls were lined with rusted servers, their lights blinking like dy
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 19
The Overseers’ True PurposeThe first thing I lost was my mother’s voice.I didn’t realize it at the time. The memories were still there—the image of her laughing, the warmth of her embrace. But when I tried to recall the sound of her voice, it was gone. Like a tape that had been erased.Then came the missing streets. The ones I swore existed, where I used to walk home from school. Places I knew, yet when I returned, they weren’t there. No one else remembered them.And now—I didn’t know my brother’s name.Because I had a brother. I knew that much.But when I tried to picture him, I saw only a silhouette.A hollow space where he used to be.And with every use of this power—every moment I defied them—more pieces of my past slipped away.I sat in the dimly lit hideout, gripping the edges of the rickety metal table as if that alone could anchor me to something real. Kane paced before me, her face
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 20
A New Enemy AppearsThe first sign of danger was the silence.Kane had been talking—her voice sharp, urgent, rattling off equations and theories as she tried to piece together a way to keep me from vanishing completely. But suddenly, she stopped.The air turned wrong. Thick. Heavy.My skin prickled.Then—"Target identified."The voice wasn’t human. It came from everywhere and nowhere, distorted and fragmented like a corrupted file trying to play itself.I spun around, instincts flaring.A figure stood at the far end of the hideout.Tall. Masked. A black bodysuit covered every inch of their form, lines of glowing circuitry pulsing along their limbs. The air around them shimmered, distorting like heatwaves on asphalt.A notification flashed in my vision.[Caution: Opponent is using a perfected version of the system.]Perfected.That meant whatever was inside m
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 21
The Unstable PowerThe world wasn’t supposed to bend like this.I reached out, my fingers hovering inches above the glass of water on the table. I concentrated, feeling that strange, pulling sensation deep in my chest. The air around my hand hummed, electric, like the universe itself was holding its breath.For a moment, nothing happened.Then the glass flickered—vanished—reappeared a foot to the right, teetering on the edge."Not bad," I muttered.The next second, the entire table snapped out of existence.I gasped, my balance tipping forward as the space where it once stood was now empty air. I stumbled, barely catching myself before hitting the floor. My stomach churned. The chair beside me flickered, as if it couldn't decide whether it existed or not, before vanishing completely.I forced a slow breath through my teeth."Okay, that wasn’t supposed to happen."A slow clap echoed behind me.I turned, already bracing for the unimpressed stare. Kane stood in the doorway, arms crossed,
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 22
The Overseers’ InfluenceThe city had never felt this quiet before.Even with the usual buzz of people moving, talking, and traffic humming in the background, something felt off. Like the entire world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.Dr. Valeria Kane and I walked side by side down the crowded street, though I wasn’t sure where we were heading. She hadn’t said a word since we left my apartment, just kept moving like she had a destination in mind. Her face was unreadable, her jaw tight.The silence stretched between us until I finally snapped."Are you gonna tell me where we're going, or do I just follow you around like a lost puppy?"Kane didn’t slow down. "Watch."I frowned. "Watch what?"Then I saw it.A man walking ahead of us stopped mid-step. Not a slow pause, not hesitation—he just froze. One foot in the air, eyes open, lips slightly parted.Time didn’t slow down. The world didn’t glitch. He just stopped.A woman walked past him without noticing. A group o
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 23
Learning the LimitsThe alley was quiet, except for the faint hum of the city beyond it. Streetlights flickered in and out, casting long, shifting shadows on the cracked pavement. The air smelled of damp concrete and old metal, a stark contrast to the weight pressing down on my chest.Kane stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching me like I was a puzzle she was half-interested in solving."Try again," she said.I exhaled slowly. My hands trembled at my sides.I focused on the crushed soda can near my feet. The world seemed to shrink around it. The dull silver of the aluminum. The faded red logo. The jagged dent along one side.Change.The thought whispered through me, pulsing like something alive.For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the can twitched. Metal bent, straightening itself out with a slow, unnatural smoothness. The dent disappeared. The logo sharpened. And just like that, the can sat there, untouched, as if it had never been crushed at all.I sucked in a breath.Kane t
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CHAPTER 40
The Overseers’ OfferThe world dissolved around me.One second, I was reaching for Kane, begging her to remember. The next, I was nowhere.Not darkness. Not light. Not even the static void I had grown used to when the system reset itself. This was something else. Deeper. A place between places, where time didn’t flow and space didn’t hold shape.The air was thick, heavy, pressing against my skin like unseen hands trying to crush me into nothing.Then, I saw them.The Overseers.They stood in a line, stretching into infinity, figures draped in shifting code, their bodies flickering between forms—human, machine, something beyond either. Their faces were featureless, but I could feel their eyes on me, studying, measuring.And then I saw them.The frozen figures standing behind them, trapped mid-motion, their bodies flickering with incomplete memories. My heart slammed against my ribs.They were all me.Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Versions of myself, erased, rewritten, trapped in a moment
CHAPTER 39
Kane’s ChoiceThe world was unraveling.It wasn’t just the usual flickers at the edges of my vision, the skips in time that made me question whether I had just blinked or lost an entire second of my life. No—this was different. Bigger. The walls around us pulsed, shifting like waves of data crashing against the fragile shore of reality. The system was reacting, rewriting, adapting.Zero wasn’t moving. Not yet. He stood at the center of it all, watching, waiting. His face was unreadable, but his stance said everything. If I made the wrong move, if I hesitated for even a second, he would end this.I wasn’t sure if I was ready for what that meant.Kane didn’t hesitate. She never did.“Elias,” she snapped, her voice sharp, urgent. “Failsafe. Now.”Elias looked at her, his fingers hovering over the tablet. “Are you insane?”“Do it.”He hesitated, just for a second, just long enough for the weight of what she was asking to sink in. I didn’t know what the failsafe would do, but the look in E
CHAPTER 38
Zero’s BetrayalThe air around us shifted, carrying the faint hum of something unnatural. A disturbance, subtle but undeniable. It crawled beneath my skin, setting every nerve on edge.Kane, ever perceptive, caught it too. Her hand hovered near her weapon, muscles coiled, ready. Elias was already scanning the hallway ahead, fingers twitching against his tablet.Something was waiting for us.Then, the shadows twisted.A ripple ran through the air, distorting the space in front of us like heat bending over asphalt. And from that shifting darkness, he stepped forward.Zero.For a moment, the sight of him made something in my chest tighten—an old reflex, an instinct carved from trust. He looked exactly as I remembered. Same sharp eyes, same knowing smirk, the same way he carried himself like he was always one step ahead.But something was wrong.His movements were too precise. His presence, too still. The flicker of life in his expression was nothing more than a well-crafted illusion.I r
CHAPTER 37
A Code Written in BloodThe vault smelled like cold metal and something else—something rotten, like data that had spoiled. The walls pulsed with dim red lights, stretching into endless rows of glass cases. At first glance, they looked empty.They weren’t.I stepped forward, breath fogging against the glass as I peered inside. A face stared back at me. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open, like he’d been caught mid-sentence. A man frozen in time.Not dead. Not alive.Just gone.Kane moved beside me, her fingers hovering inches from the glass. “What the hell is this?”Elias was already moving, his bag slung over his shoulder as he pulled out a tablet. “A graveyard,” he muttered, running his fingers over the control panel. “Or a prison, depending on how you look at it.”My stomach twisted. “They’re trapped?”“They’re rewritten.” His voice was grim. “The system didn’t just erase them. It repurposed them.”I forced myself to look again. The man in the glass had no scars, no wrinkles, nothing tha
CHAPTER 36
The Fractured SelfThe road ahead stretched endlessly, a ghost of a world flickering in and out like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to exist. My boots kicked up dust, but even that felt artificial, like it was programmed to react the way I expected. Kane walked beside me, silent, her sharp eyes scanning the ruins ahead. Elias trailed behind, muttering calculations under his breath.I knew where we were going. The Overseers’ domain. A place where reality wasn’t a certainty, where time looped back on itself and people became echoes.But for some reason, I couldn’t remember why we were going there.I frowned, shaking my head. Something was missing—like a word on the tip of my tongue, slipping further away the harder I tried to catch it.Kane noticed. She always did. “What’s wrong?”“I…” I opened my mouth, but hesitation stopped me cold. What was wrong? I couldn’t explain it, but I felt lighter, like pieces of me were missing.“Tony,” she pressed, voice firm but not unkind. “Talk to me.”
CHAPTER 35
A World Outside the SystemThe world around us wasn’t fully formed. Buildings stood half-finished, their structures dissolving into static at the edges. The sky above flickered between shades of gray and deep violet, glitching in and out like a bad signal. It was a place that wasn’t supposed to exist—an abandoned zone, untouched by The Overseers.Kane and I stood in the middle of the street, our breaths visible in the eerie cold air. She kept a tight grip on the device we’d stolen, her knuckles white from the pressure.“This place feels wrong,” she murmured. “Like it’s waiting to disappear.”I agreed. The world here wasn’t stable. It was like standing on the edge of a dream, just before waking up.Then, a figure emerged from the shadows. A man, dressed in a dark, tattered coat, his face partially hidden beneath the hood. He stepped forward with a calculated slowness, his hands raised in a gesture of peace.“I was wondering when you’d find your way here,” he said.Kane tensed beside me
CHAPTER 34
The Core’s CoordinatesThe screen flickered, casting a cold blue glow over Kane’s tense face. Lines of encrypted data scrolled rapidly, filling the air with the soft hum of technology at work. My fingers danced across the keyboard, heart pounding as I decrypted the last layer. Then—Coordinates. A list of possible locations. The Core.Kane exhaled sharply beside me. "This is it." Her voice was quiet, but beneath it, a current of urgency rippled through.I swallowed. "We finally have something real."But before the words could settle, a chill ran through the room. The lights dimmed, not flickering—shifting, like the walls themselves were second-guessing their existence. Kane and I locked eyes. Outside the window, the city moved in ways it shouldn’t. A building that had been across the street was now beside us. People walked in slow, deliberate steps, their faces expressionless, heads subtly tilting in unison."The Overseers," Kane murmured, reaching instinctively for the knife at her b
CHAPTER 33
The Price of RebellionThe air here was heavy, thick with the weight of things that didn’t belong.I could feel it pressing down on my skin, humming through my bones—a silent scream buried in the fabric of reality. Kane and I moved cautiously through the remnants of what had once been someone’s last stand. The place had the same eerie stillness as the hideout before, but worse. This wasn’t just abandoned.It was frozen.A street half-formed, cutting off into an expanse of nothing. A doorway leading to nowhere, hanging in the air like it had been sliced from existence mid-thought. Cars, chairs, even the dust in the air—stuck in a single moment, refusing to move.Like time had decided to give up.Kane ran a hand over a rusted terminal embedded in the wall, her fingers pressing against dead keys. "Whoever they were… they didn’t get far."I crouched near a stack of papers scattered across the cracked pavement. Words scrawled in desperate handwriting, some neat, others jagged and frantic.
CHAPTER 32
The First RemnantI woke to the taste of blood in my mouth.For a second, everything was wrong—blurry, twisted. The world flickered like a broken screen, and shadows stretched in directions they shouldn’t. My heartbeat was loud, too loud, like it was trying to hammer its way out of my chest. Then, just as quickly as it started, the distortion snapped back into place, leaving me gasping on a cold, cracked floor.Kane's voice cut through the haze. "Tony."She was crouched beside me, eyes sharp, body tense. There was dust in her dark hair, and a thin cut ran along her jaw, but she looked intact. Alive."You're okay," she said, like she was trying to convince herself. "I caught you before you hit the ground. Mostly."My head throbbed. I forced myself upright, biting back a groan. "Define 'mostly'?""You didn’t die. You’re welcome."I let out a weak, breathy laugh. "Guess I owe you one."She stood, scanning the room we’d landed in. It was some kind of hideout—low ceilings, metal walls, the
