2025-03-01 13:00:02The Overseers Move First
The 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 twisted things around just to see what would happen. My stomach churned, and I barely had time to brace myself before vomiting onto the ground. The moment replayed in my head, jagged and disjointed. One second, I had been searching for Kane. The next—I wasn’t anywhere at all. No air. No ground beneath my feet. No time. Just a vast, infinite emptiness pressing against me, studying me. Then—that voice. "You were never meant to exist." And now… I was back. Bleeding. Dizzy. Alive? I wasn’t sure anymore. I stumbled forward, forcing my legs to work, my pulse hammering against my ribs. I needed to get out of here, back to my car, back to something that made sense. But as I moved, I realized something else. The town was gone. Not destroyed. Not abandoned. Just… absent. Where the diner had been, where the docks had stretched over the water—there was nothing but untouched coastline, as if no one had ever built there. As if the town had never existed. Panic clawed at my chest. I turned in circles, searching for anything familiar. But it was all wrong. The air smelled different—crisp and electric, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm. The stars overhead burned brighter than I’d ever seen. I was somewhere else. Or somewhere else. I sucked in a shaky breath. My instincts screamed at me to move, to run, but where? A crunch of gravel behind me. I spun, reaching for my gun. A man stood there. Or at least, something shaped like a man. His face was smooth. Too smooth—like skin stretched over something that had never been human. His eyes, where they should have been, were shifting pools of black, swirling with distant galaxies. He tilted his head. "You persist." His voice wasn’t a voice. It was inside me. Crawling through my skull. I gritted my teeth. "Yeah, I have a bad habit of that." The thing took a step closer, hands clasped behind its back in an almost human gesture. "You were corrected. And yet, you remain." "Yeah, sorry about that. Maybe try harder next time." A pause. Then a slow, deliberate smile spread across its unnatural face. "You are wrong, Tony." The way it said my name sent a spike of ice down my spine. "That’s funny," I shot back. "You sound just like my ex." The thing didn’t react. Just studied me, as if it had all the time in the universe. Maybe it did. I tightened my grip on my gun. "Where the hell am I?" The entity didn’t answer. Instead, it lifted a hand—and with a flick of its fingers, reality bent. The world shattered like glass. I dropped to my knees as everything warped around me—fractals of places I had never been, glimpses of impossible futures, and rewritten pasts. A city burned in reverse, its ashes pulling together into towering skyscrapers. A sun blinked out, leaving behind a void that screamed without sound. I saw myself in a thousand different moments—living, dying, choosing, failing. Then, all at once, it stopped. The lighthouse was back. The ground was solid. My body ached like hell. The thing was gone. And yet, I knew—it wasn’t done with me. The blood was still dripping from my nose. My ears rang with the echo of something I couldn't understand. But I was alive. For now. I pushed myself to my feet, swallowing the bile in my throat. The lighthouse beacon turned, steady and unfazed, as if the universe hadn’t just tried to erase me. I let out a shaky laugh. "Well. That was new." I took a step forward, and a folded piece of paper crunched under my boot. Frowning, I bent down and picked it up. The edges were torn, the paper old and worn. I unfolded it, and my breath caught in my throat. Scrawled across it, in the same sharp handwriting as the first message I had received, were three words: KEEP LOOKING, TONY. I exhaled through my teeth, rolling my shoulders. If they thought this was enough to stop me, they were in for one hell of a disappointment. I pocketed the note and walked back toward whatever the hell was left of my world.
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CHAPTER 39
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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
