Chapter 20: Anchor Theft For a heartbeat, the room held its breath. Mai lay still. The medical monitor blinked like…

Chapter 19: The Seam They Didn’t See They walked back up the service corridor like prisoners who hadn’t been told…

Chapter 18: Subdeck Exit Bright moved like a man who had already decided what he was willing to lose. No…

Chapter 17: Wake Protocol Ace’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Not because she was weak—because the adrenaline dump had nowhere to…

Chapter 16: Dream Interface Sleep didn’t arrive like a blanket. It arrived like a trapdoor. Ace’s consciousness dipped, caught, dipped…

Chapter 15: The Test Nobody Ordered The platform’s idea of “night” was mostly psychological. The lights dimmed. The hallway traffic…

Chapter 14: Offshore Rules The boat didn’t feel like escape. It felt like a corridor that happened to float. Open…

Chapter 13: Salt and Silence The truck kept moving like nothing had happened. That was the part that made Ace’s…

Chapter 12: The Knock That Knows Your Name The freight doors didn’t unlatch. They complied. Metal that should’ve needed keys…

Chapter 11: Steel Water Six hours in a sealed room felt longer than six hours in a city. Time didn’t…

Chapter 10: Clean Map The Foundation didn’t do airports unless they had to. Too many cameras. Too many public chokepoints.…

Chapter 9: Extraction Noise The ladder was older than it had any right to be—metal rungs smoothed by decades of…