2025-03-06 23:28:37The Assassin’s Precision
The bruises haven’t even set in yet, but the ache is already spreading, bone-deep. I sit on the edge of the motel bed, staring at my hands, flexing my fingers, trying to ignore the tremor running through them. The adrenaline is fading, but my mind keeps replaying the fight in sharp, unforgiving detail. Zero didn’t just outmatch me. He anticipated me. Every move, every breath, every shift of muscle—I wasn’t just fighting him, I was walking a path he had already mapped out. That wasn’t human. Kane paces near the door, arms crossed, jaw tight. She’s usually the first to break a tense silence, but now she just walks back and forth, her boots scuffing against the old carpet. Her gun is still in her hand, but she hasn’t checked it in minutes. That’s how I know she’s shaken. Eventually, she exhales sharply. “He wasn’t real.” I look up. “What?” She stops, turning toward me, eyes darker than usual. “Zero. He wasn’t real. No one moves like that. No one reacts like that.” She clenches her fists. “It’s like he knew. Like he was already inside our heads before we even saw him.” I shake my head. “It’s more than that. He wasn’t dodging—he wasn’t responding to me. It was like I was on a script and he was the director.” Kane drags a hand through her hair, frustrated. “You’re saying he’s reading us?” “No.” I meet her eyes, the words tasting like rust on my tongue. “I’m saying he already knows.” Her mouth parts slightly, then she snaps it shut. That’s what scares her. Not that Zero is fast. Not that he’s strong. But that he isn’t reacting—he’s executing. Like this was decided before we even walked into that alley. The thought makes my stomach twist. Kane takes a slow breath, but it’s not steady. “I’ve seen a lot of killers. Trained with some of the best. But him?” She shakes her head. “I don’t think he’s normal.” She doesn’t say human, but the word is hanging in the air between us. I rub a hand down my face. My body is screaming from the beating, but my mind won’t slow down. “You think he’s enhanced?” She considers it, tilting her head. “Maybe. Some underground programs push cybernetics, genetic alterations… but even then, no one moves that perfect.” She hesitates. “It was like he wasn’t even trying.” I hate how much that makes sense. I let my head drop back against the wall, exhaling hard. “If he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” Silence. Kane knows it’s true. I glance at her. “So why didn’t he kill me?” She doesn’t have an answer. Neither do I. I replay every second of that fight, dissecting it, looking for anything—anything—that might explain what just happened. But all I see is myself losing. Zero hit me before I moved. He blocked me before I struck. He threw Kane like she was weightless, and I couldn’t even stop him. And I still don’t know what he is. A machine? A program? A person so well-trained that he might as well be a machine? None of the options make me feel any better. Kane’s voice is quieter when she finally speaks. “We have to disappear.” I snap my gaze to her. “You want to run?” She glares at me. “I want to survive. There’s a difference.” She’s right. I hate it, but she’s right. If the Overseers marked me as a Corrupt Variable, then Zero isn’t the last threat coming my way. He was the warning. The next one won’t leave me breathing. Kane holsters her gun, shoulders set. “We ditch everything. Phones, cards, anything that can be tracked. Get off the grid.” I roll my shoulders, wincing at the pull in my ribs. “I’m not used to running.” She smirks, but there’s no humor in it. “Yeah, well, you’re not used to losing either.” That one lands. I let out a slow breath, running a hand through my hair. “Alright. Disappear. But if we’re going underground, we need a plan. We can’t just sit and wait for him to come knocking again.” Kane’s eyes flicker with something unreadable. “You thinking what I think you’re thinking?” I meet her gaze. “We stop hiding, and we start hunting.” A slow smile spreads across her lips. “Now that’s the Tony I know.” It’s reckless. It’s probably stupid. But I’m not waiting around for another fight where I don’t even get to throw a punch. Zero was too perfect. Too precise. He had a playbook on me. I need to find a way to burn that book before he uses it to bury me. Kane moves toward the door, already switching into action mode. “First, we need a safe house.” I stand, my ribs protesting. “Know a place?” She glances at me over her shoulder. “I know a place.” There’s something in her tone that makes me pause. “You sure?” She hesitates for just a second. “No. But I trust them more than I trust staying here.” It’s not a great answer, but it’s the best one I’m going to get. I nod. “Then let’s go.” We grab what little we have, leaving the motel behind. As we step out into the night, I glance back one last time, half-expecting to see Zero standing in the shadows. He isn’t there. But I know he will be.
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Understanding ZeroThe screen flickers as line after line of encrypted data unravels before my eyes. Kane’s fingers fly over the keyboard, her expression set in grim determination.We shouldn’t be doing this.If the Overseers are watching—and they are watching—then breaking into their classified files is the equivalent of setting ourselves on fire and running straight toward them.But I need answers.Zero isn’t just some assassin. He’s a force of nature, an executioner sent after people like me—people the Overseers have marked for elimination.And I need to know why.Kane exhales sharply, adjusting the code as another firewall tries to push us out. “They’re good.”I glance at her. “You’re better.”She snorts. “Damn right.” A few keystrokes later, the security barriers crumble. “We’re in.”A list of names fills the screen.The air in the room shifts.Kane stops typing, her shoulders tightening as she scans the data.I lean in, my gut twisting.The list is long. Too long.Each name is f
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An Unseen HandSomething is wrong.I know it the moment the patrol unit spots me.Their helmets tilt slightly, their scanners flaring red. The nearest officer moves, reaching for his weapon—too fast, too precise.And then—Glitch.It’s like the world hiccups.The patrol unit freezes mid-motion. Their bodies flicker, just for a split second, like a skipped frame in a broken video. Their weapons don’t come up. Their commands don’t execute.I don’t wait to question it.I run.My heart slams against my ribs as I dart into a side alley, my boots kicking up debris. Kane is already ahead, moving like she expected me to follow.I hear a voice behind me—metallic, confused. “Recalibrating.”I don’t look back.The city stretches out before us, towering skyscrapers slicing into the night sky. Neon signs flicker, casting fractured reflections onto the wet pavement. We cut through the backstreets, slipping through shadows, moving faster than the system can correct itself.I should be dead.The patr
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A Desperate GambleThe city is a cage.Every street, every neon-lit alley, every surveillance drone hovering above—I can feel the walls closing in. Zero isn’t going to stop. The system isn’t going to stop. And now, with memories that don’t belong to me bleeding into my mind, I’m running out of time.We have one choice.“We find The Core,” I say, my voice firm.Kane stops mid-motion, her hands tightening over the table we’re using as a makeshift map station. “You’re serious.”“Completely.”She lets out a breath, pressing her knuckles against her forehead. “Tony… The Core is a myth.”“No,” I shake my head. “It’s real. And it’s the heart of the system. The Overseers have to protect it at all costs—because if we reach it, we can shut everything down.”Kane’s eyes flick to mine, sharp and assessing. She’s trying to find the flaw in my logic.“Reaching it is impossible,” she mutters. “If anyone even got close, the system would—” She stops, her expression twisting as the truth clicks into pl
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 31
The Hunt ContinuesEvery breath burned like fire in my chest, every step like dragging a corpse—only the corpse was mine. Blood trickled down my side, staining my already ruined shirt. Kane kept moving ahead, barely sparing me a glance, but I caught the tension in her shoulders. She was worried. She wouldn’t say it, but I knew."Slow down," I gritted out, forcing my legs to keep up."We don’t have time for slow," she shot back without looking at me. "Zero is right behind us, and if we stop, we die."I hated how right she was. But I hated the feeling in my gut even more—the helplessness. The system had rewritten the world so many times that I wasn’t even sure if the sky had always been this shade of deep violet or if the buildings crumbling around us had ever been whole. I could feel the shift in the air, the quiet hum of the Overseers watching, adjusting, twisting reality to fit their sick little game.A street that had been empty seconds ago suddenly flickered—blinked—and now a wreck
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
