Nobela ni Toyosi Alibaba

Darkness flooded the room like water. I didn't wait for my eyes to adjust. I grabbed Bryan’s hand, his skin felt rough and real, and pulled him toward where I knew the wall should be. The guards were still there, but they were lost. I had cut the power to the entire floor, and their high-tech gear depended on the light."Stay close," I said. My heart was going a hundred miles an hour.A flash of light went off nearby. Someone had turned on a manual flare. The room lit up in a harsh, orange glow. I saw the guards fumbling with their guns, trying to find their targets in the sudden shift. We didn't give them a chance. Bryan kicked a heavy metal crate, sliding it into the path of the nearest guard. The man went down with a grunt."The chute is behind the weapons rack!" Bryan said.

The Publisher stood there, looking calm and well-fed. He did not know that I had already burned down his office, his city, and his life. He did not know I had seen the back door of his universe. To him, I was just a girl who was about to be part of his new experiment."You look lost, Hazel," the Publisher said. He walked around his big wooden desk and sat down. He didn't offer me a chair. "I suppose you are confused about where you are. Let me guess. You remember some fight, maybe a city in the sky? It’s a common glitch in the early stages of the draft."I looked at the desk. There was a gold pen sitting there. It was the same one. I wanted to reach out and snap it in two, but I stayed still. I had to be smart. If I attacked him now, I would just trigger another reset. The Editor was watching from somewhere, waiting for me to lose control.

I hit the white light and felt like I was being pulled apart. It wasn't pain, exactly. It was like every memory, every thought, and every breath I had ever taken was being turned into ink and spread across a massive page. I shut my eyes tight. When I opened them, the world was back.I was standing on a flat, glass floor. Above me, there was no sky. There were just rows and rows of light bulbs, stretching out forever. Each bulb glowed with a different color. I looked around for the teenager with the gold teeth, but he was gone. I was alone."Where am I?" I called out. My voice didn't echo. It just stopped, like the air was soaking it up."You are in the Draft Room," a voice said.I spun around. Standing a few feet away was a man sitting at a desk that looked like it was m

The blast was blinding. I didn't wait to see if the ground held. I threw my body backward, away from the yawning pit, and rolled into the dirt. The force of the shot tore through the concrete. Debris flew like shrapnel, cutting my arms and face. Everything went dark. For a second, there was only the sound of high-pitched ringing in my ears.When I opened my eyes, the world was shaking. The Bryan-thing was gone. The explosion had sent him flying toward the edge of the pit. I scrambled to my feet, my legs burning with pain. I looked down into the swirling blue energy of the core. He was hanging on by one hand, his fingers digging into the cracked earth. The blue light in his eyes was blinking, erratic and weak."Help me," he said.His voice was small. It wasn't the cold, machine-like tone he had used before. It was th

I stared at the gun in Bryan’s hand. The blue light cast a sharp glare on his face. He didn't look like the man I had loved. He didn't even look human. His eyes were wide and steady, like polished glass, showing nothing. No regret. No love. Just a cold, blank space."The script requires a sacrifice, Hazel," he repeated. His voice did not shake. It was perfectly level. "You are the final piece."My mind spun. I remembered the way he had held my hand in the escape pod. I remembered his warmth. Was that all a lie? Was he always just a machine waiting to turn on me? My heart felt like it had been crushed by a heavy stone. I wanted to cry, but the ink on my arm was growing cold, pulling the heat out of my blood."You are not Bryan," I said. I stood up, ignoring the way my legs wobbled. I kept my eyes on the weapon.

The black ships hung in the air like heavy stones. Blue beams of light hit the streets of Lagos, turning buildings into dust and smoke. People below ran in every direction, but there was nowhere to go. The ships were everywhere, covering the sky like a lid on a pot.I looked at my right arm. The purple ink was moving fast, stretching across my skin like veins. It was forming a map of the city. Every time a ship prepared to fire, a red light pulsed on my arm. It was a warning system. The "Writer" was still part of me, even if I was in the real world now. She was feeding me data from the enemy’s network."They are moving fast," Bryan said. His face was tight with focus. He watched the ships with eyes that had seen too much. "We need to get to the tunnels under the city. The foundation there is thick. It might hold against those beams."