2025-02-28 13:00:05Hunting for the Truth
I 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. I scrolled back to an old interview she had given years ago, back when she was a rising star in bioengineering. A single offhand comment caught my attention: "I never liked the city. Give me a quiet place, the sound of the ocean, and I can work for hours." I smirked. "A woman of habits." If she had truly gone off the grid, she wouldn’t be holed up in some bustling metropolis. She’d be somewhere remote, isolated. I just had to narrow it down. A sharp knock at the door made me freeze. I reached for my gun, flicking off the safety as I moved soundlessly toward the peephole. The hallway outside was empty. No movement. No sound. I opened the door with a crack. A folded piece of paper lay on the floor. I picked it up, heart pounding, and unfolded it. One word was scrawled across it in sharp, hurried handwriting: STOP. I scanned the hallway again—still empty. But someone had been here. Someone was watching. I shut the door and locked it, my mind racing. This wasn’t just a warning. It was a challenge. --- I spent the next two days tracking rumors, bribing informants, and hacking into classified servers. Finally, a hit. A small fishing town off the coast, barely a dot on the map. A place where nobody asked questions, where outsiders were noticed but not welcomed. And more importantly, a place where a woman fitting Kane’s description had been seen buying medical supplies six months ago. That was my best lead. I packed up, paid off the motel clerk to forget I was ever here, and hit the road. The drive was long and relentless, the highway stretching into nothingness. The deeper I went, the fewer cars I saw. The air smelled of salt and damp earth. By the time I pulled into the town, dusk was settling, casting long shadows over the quiet streets. A few fishermen lingered near the docks, their conversations hushed. A stray dog trotted across the road. Everything about this place felt like a secret waiting to be uncovered. I parked near a run-down diner and stepped inside. The bell above the door jingled, and a few heads turned. Conversations dipped, then resumed in murmurs. I took a seat at the counter. The waitress, a woman in her fifties with tired eyes, poured me a cup of coffee without asking. "You’re not from around here." "That obvious?" She smirked. "We don’t get many visitors." I took a sip of the coffee. It was terrible. "I’m looking for someone. Maybe you’ve seen her." I pulled out the blurry photo of Kane and slid it across the counter. The waitress barely glanced at it before shaking her head. "Can’t help you." "That was fast." "Because I don’t know her." "Lying’s a tough skill. You need practice." Her hand tightened around the coffee pot. "You should leave, mister. This town doesn’t like strangers poking around." I leaned in slightly. "See, that’s the thing. I don’t care what this town likes." A flicker of something—fear, maybe—crossed her face before she turned away. She knew something. I was about to press when a low voice behind me said, "You’re making a mistake." I turned slowly. A man in a thick coat, face partially hidden by a beanie, leaned against the jukebox. His stance was casual, but his eyes were sharp, calculating. "And you are?" I asked. "Someone who doesn’t want trouble." "Then we have that in common." He pushed off the jukebox and walked toward me. "If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop looking." I studied him, noting the way his right hand hovered near his jacket—where a weapon probably rested. "Funny. Someone left me the same message a couple nights ago. You wouldn’t happen to be the messenger, would you?" His lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Turn around, get in your car, and drive back to wherever you came from. Last warning." I stood, my heartbeat steady, and adjusted my jacket just enough to reveal my own gun. His eyes flickered to it, and I saw it then—that split-second hesitation. "You don’t want this fight," I said. "And neither do I. But I’m not leaving without answers." The diner went silent. The air thickened. Then, just as quickly, the tension snapped. The man let out a slow breath and muttered, "You’re stubborn as hell." I smirked. "So I’ve been told." He glanced around the diner, then back at me. "If you really want answers, go to the lighthouse. Midnight. Alone." "Why?" "You want Kane?" He stepped back toward the door. "That’s where you’ll find her." Before I could ask more, he slipped out into the night. The waitress let out a shaky breath. "You really don’t know what you’re stepping into, do you?" I downed the rest of my coffee, ignoring the bitter taste. "I rarely do." Then I threw some cash on the counter and walked out. --- The lighthouse loomed ahead, a skeletal figure against the dark sky. The wind howled through the cliffs, and the waves crashed violently below. I checked my watch. 11:58 PM. I stood in the shadows, scanning the area. No movement. No signs of an ambush. Then, footsteps. A silhouette emerged from the darkness. Dr. Valeria Kane. She was thinner than in the photo, her hair longer, her eyes sharper. She stopped a few feet away, arms crossed. "You don’t give up, do you?" "Not my style." She sighed. "You shouldn’t have come." "People keep telling me that." "And yet, here you are." I took a step closer. "Project Nexus. What really happened?" A storm passed over her face. "If I tell you the truth, you’ll wish you never asked." I held her gaze. "Try me." She exhaled, then said something that made my blood run cold. "They’re not just erasing people, Tony. They’re rewriting them." The wind howled louder. And then—before I could respond—movement behind me. A rustle. A shadow. I turned—too late. Something hard cracked against my skull, and the world went black
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
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
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 24
The Cost of PowerThe air crackled around me, like static before a storm. My breath hitched as I stepped forward, boots scuffing against the fractured ground. The world here wasn’t stable—edges of buildings flickered, textures stretched and distorted, like a broken screen trying to hold itself together.And then I saw them.The Glitches.They weren’t just part of the world’s corruption. They were the corruption—figures wrapped in shifting pixels, their bodies stuttering between forms. One moment, they resembled people, but then—snap—their limbs warped, faces split into several versions of themselves, each one talking in overlapping voices. A chorus of broken echoes."Please—help—who—""Fix me—no, no, don’t—please—""Not supposed to be—here—can’t—leave—"Their words folded over each other, some pleading, some just... noise. But the worst part was their eyes—if you could call them that. Empty sockets, filled with fragments of a thousand possible selves.A chill crept down my spine.Thes
Latest Chapter
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
