LOGIN"Annie, now!" Jinyan shouted into his comms.
The lab’s lights flickered. A high-pitched siren began to wail.
"I’ve breached the cooling system!" Annie’s voice crackled. "Jinyan, the pods are going into an emergency lockdown! You have three minutes before the backup security team arrives!"
Jinyan pulled a compact submachine gun from beneath his silk shirt. Panni drew the tactical knife she had hidden in her thigh holster.
"We’re not staying, Vira," Jinyan said, his voice a low growl. "And we’re not letting these children become your 'software.'"
V
Panni followed, her lungs burning, her heart a frantic drum. She burst through the final gopura and onto the Great Terrace.The view was staggering—a five-hundred-meter drop into the emerald sea of the Cambodian jungle, the horizon stretching out into an endless, hazy blue. But in the center of the terrace, standing at the very precipice, was a stone altar.Jian was there.He was dressed in a simple white linen suit, looking like a ghost in the midday sun. He held the "Seventh Ledger" in his hand, the silver edges glinting. Beside him, strapped into a high-backed stone chair, was Grace.She looked small, her yellow raincoat a vivid spark against the
[The Altar of the Iron Cliff]The ascent to Prasat Preah Vihear was not a journey; it was a penance. The ancient Khmer temple sat like a jagged stone crown atop a five-hundred-meter cliff in the Dangrek Mountains, straddling the border between Cambodia and Thailand. To reach it, Panni and the fractured shell of Jinyan had to navigate the "Ancient Stair," a crumbling stone artery that spiraled upward through a canopy so thick it felt like a subterranean tunnel.The monsoon had passed, leaving behind a heat that was nearly liquid. Panni wiped the sweat from her brow, her indigo shawl now a rag used to bind the scaling knife to her thigh. Beside her, Jinyan moved with the unsettling precision of a clockwork soldier. He didn't pant. He didn't stumble. He merely climbed, his obsidian eyes scanning the treeline for the "Corrected" mo
"I don't know who the Vincents are," Panni said, her voice shaking but defiant. "And I don't know you. But I know that no honorable man threatens an old woman."Jinyan smiled—a thin, joyless line. "Honor is a Panni delusion. There is only the Protocol."He moved.It wasn't a human movement; it was a blur of calculated violence. He swung the staff in a wide arc, meant to sweep Panni’s legs. She dove into the mud, her body remembering reflexes her mind had forgotten. She rolled, coming up near a rack of drying fish. She grabbed a heavy wooden scaling knife—a crude, rusted blade, but it felt right in her hand."You fight like a Saint," Jinyan said, stepping over a kneeling fisherman without looking down. "Always reacting. Always
[The Amnesia of the Monsoon]The world began not with a bang, but with the sound of a wooden paddle cutting through stagnant water.Panni opened her eyes to a ceiling of woven palm fronds. The air was thick enough to chew, a humid soup of dried fish, river mud, and the sharp, medicinal sting of eucalyptus. She tried to sit up, but her body felt like it was made of lead and broken glass. A jagged, white-hot pain bloomed behind her eyes, and with it came the terrifying realization: the world was a blank canvas.She knew how to breathe. She knew the taste of copper in her mouth was blood. But her name, her history, and the reason her hands were covered in silver-grey scars were gone—dissolved in a green mist she could almost still smell."Don't move, Sr
"Who are you?" Panni breathed, her world spinning."I am Arthur’s masterpiece," the man said. "The Architect had two sets of twins. But he also had a Draft. I am the first successful 'Equilibrium' specimen. I am the one who survived the Great Purge of 1998. You can call me Jian-2, if you like labels. But Jinyan calls me 'Brother.'""He’s a clone?" Panni whispered to Vira."No," Vira said, his voice a death rattle. "He is the Fourth Twin. The one the Architect hid in the East to act as the 'Overseer.' Jinyan knew about him. He’s been working with him since Romania."Panni looked at Jinyan on the altar. Jinyan’s eyes were filled with tears. "I had to, Panni. He promised... he promised to protect Grace from Kyoto. I didn't know... I didn't know
[The Ossuary of the Saints]The heat of the Cambodian interior was a physical entity, a thick, humid weight that smelled of rot, wet stone, and the iron tang of ancient dust. As Panni, Grace, and the elder Vira pushed through the dense undergrowth of the Angkor Archaeological Park, the modern world seemed to dissolve. Here, the borders between history and nightmare were porous. They were no longer in the territory of corporations or global protocols; they were in the Dominion of the Architect.The path they followed was not a trail, but a sequence of half-buried stone markers—serpent heads carved from laterite, their eyes pointed toward a destination that didn't appear on any tourist map."The Vault is not beneath the great temple of Angkor Wat," Vira whispered, his breath coming in shallow hitches. He leaned heavily on his iron st







