2025-03-06 23:52:39Kane’s Choice
The 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 Elias’s eyes told me it wasn’t good. Kane knew that too. “Do it,” she repeated, softer this time, but no less firm. “Before it’s too late.” Zero shifted, his smirk returning, slower, deliberate. “Now that is interesting.” I forced my voice to stay steady. “You don’t have to do this.” Kane didn’t even look at me. “I do.” The tablet in Elias’s hands flickered, the screen glitching as if even it was afraid of what was about to happen. “You know what this will cost,” Elias said. Kane’s jaw tightened. “I don’t care.” Elias cursed, fingers flying over the interface. The moment he confirmed the activation, the world lurched. Everything around us fractured. The walls split like shattered glass, reality itself breaking apart at the seams. The floor beneath my feet buckled, the lights above us flaring too bright before bursting into darkness. Sound warped—distant echoes, voices overlapping, time folding in on itself like a collapsing star. I turned toward Kane, reaching for her before I even knew why. And that was when I saw it. The way she staggered. The way her hand shot up to her temple, fingers digging into her skull like she was trying to hold something in place, something slipping away. Her breath hitched. Her eyes went wide. And I knew. The failsafe hadn’t erased Zero. It hadn’t erased me. It had erased part of her. I moved without thinking, catching her before she could fall. “Kane.” She blinked up at me, dazed. “What…?” I could see it happening. The way the confusion flickered across her face, the way she looked at me—not like she was shocked, not like she was processing something terrifying. Like she was looking at a stranger. No. No, no, no— My hands tightened on her arms. “Kane. It’s me.” She pulled back, slow, uncertain. “Who…” Her voice was quieter now, softer, carrying none of the sharpness I had come to rely on. None of the certainty. Her brows furrowed. “Who are you?” The words hit harder than any punch. I felt my grip loosen, something in my chest caving in under the weight of it. Elias’s breath caught. Zero exhaled sharply, something unreadable in his expression. And I— I felt myself glitch. Not just a skip. Not just a flicker. A break. Because Kane—the one person who had stood beside me through everything, the one who had fought for me even when I didn’t know if I deserved it—was looking at me like I was nothing. Like I wasn’t even real. The static in my head roared, and I staggered back, feeling the world around me shift, reassemble itself, and fail to complete. Kane looked around, frowning at the collapsing environment, but there was no fear in her eyes. Just confusion. Zero let out a low chuckle, tilting his head. “Fascinating. I didn’t think you had it in you, Kane.” She turned to him sharply. “Who are you?” That was the moment I realized how deep the damage went. Not just me. Not just this moment. She didn’t remember him. Zero raised an eyebrow, the smirk never quite leaving his face. “Oh, that’s interesting. You didn’t just erase a moment, did you? You erased a connection.” Kane looked back at me. “Did I know you?” Elias moved closer cautiously, his voice lower, gentler than I’d ever heard it. “Kane, listen. You activated the failsafe. It was meant to erase someone, but—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Who the hell are you?” Elias stopped short. His mouth opened, then closed, like he couldn’t decide what to say. Zero chuckled again. “Oh, this is better than I expected. Kane, you might not remember, but trust me when I say—you chose this.” She shot him a glare. “I don’t even know you.” Zero grinned. “Exactly.” Something inside me cracked. It wasn’t just that she’d lost a piece of time. It was us. Every battle we fought. Every mission we survived. Every night we spent arguing about plans, every moment of trust built over chaos and fire. Gone. And she didn’t even know it was missing. I took a slow step forward, carefully, like she was an unstable program that could crash at any second. “Kane.” My voice barely made it past my throat. “I’m Tony.” She stared at me, waiting. Not reacting. Not recognizing. Nothing. Zero’s voice was a whisper now, laced with amusement. “How does it feel, Tony? Watching someone forget you exist?” I turned sharply to him, rage burning under my skin, but I couldn’t afford to break now. Not yet. I turned back to Kane. “You do know me.” My voice was firmer now, desperate. “You trusted me. We fought together. You—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember you.” Elias looked down at the tablet, his fingers trembling slightly. “It took too much.” Zero took a step forward, his eyes glinting. “Tell me, Tony. If she doesn’t remember who she was to you, then does it even matter? If her history is rewritten, if you were erased from it, is she still the Kane you knew?” I clenched my jaw. “She’s Kane.” Zero smirked. “Then prove it.” The air around us crackled. The system was reacting, recalculating, shifting the rules. The failsafe had rewritten something it wasn’t meant to touch, and now reality itself was unsure how to proceed. Kane’s confusion was turning to frustration. I could see it in the way her body tensed, the way she clenched her fists, like she was grasping for something just beyond reach. I had to reach her first. Before Zero got in her head. Before the system made a choice for her. Before I lost her for good. I took a deep breath, steadying myself. Then I held out my hand. “Kane, please. Just trust me.” Her eyes flickered to my outstretched hand. And for one agonizing moment, she hesitated.
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CHAPTER 40
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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
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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
