LOGINWhen Jack opened his eyes, he wasn't in heaven. He was in a storm drain.
The air was damp and cold. Water trickled nearby. He was lying on a mattress made of old pallets and discarded sofa cushions."He's awake!" Hailey’s voice.Jack tried to sit up, but a hand pushed him gently back down. Elena."Don't move," his mother said sternly. "You have three broken ribs, a hairline fracture in your pelvis, and a concussion. If you move, you'll puncture a lung."Jack blinked, his vision adjusting to the dim light of battery-powered lanterns. They were in a large, circular junction of the old storm drain system. It was dry here, mostly.His team was gathered around him.Catherine was sitting against the curved wall, her arm in a sling, typing on a laptop that was hooked up to a car battery. Ben was pacing, looking terrified. Marcus was asleep on another pallet, his leg bandaged, looking like a fallen statue. Olivia was holding Jack's hand, her face strThe ground didn't shake. It screamed.A wave of purple light erupted from the point where Jack's hand touched the rock. It wasn't an explosion. It was a pulse.The pulse swept outward, passing through the God-Soldiers, passing through the walls, passing through Valerius.It didn't kill them.It froze them.Not with ice. With time.The God-Soldiers stopped mid-charge. Their muscles locked. Their eyes went dim. The serum in their veins turned inert.Valerius stumbled, clutching his chest. His staff flickered and died."What... what is this?" Valerius gasped. He looked at his hand. It was trembling. "My power... it's gone.""It's not gone," Jack said, standing up. He looked different.His skin was pale. His eyes were entirely black, with no whites, just the golden slit pupils burning like stars in a void. His obsidian arm had grown—the black armor now covered his chest, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat.He was glowing. A da
The ventilation shaft overlooking the sub-basement of the Sterling Tower ruins was a corridor of rusted metal and stale air. Jack Sterling crouched in the darkness, his new obsidian arm humming with a low, menacing vibration that only he could feel. It was a sensation of raw potential, a coiled spring waiting to be released."Target confirmed," Marcus whispered through the comms. The big man was positioned on the opposite side of the massive excavation chamber, hidden in the skeletal remains of the parking garage. "Valerius's lab. Sector 4. They're processing the samples now."Jack peered through the grate. The scene below was a high-tech nightmare. The cavernous basement, once the foundation of his empire, had been transformed into a field laboratory. Prefabricated clean rooms glowed with harsh white light amidst the rubble. Men in yellow hazmat suits moved with ant-like efficiency, transporting canisters of glowing green fluid—the "God-Soldier" serum.But the
Waking up was getting harder. The line between nightmare and reality was blurring. When Jack opened his eyes, he wasn't in a tunnel. He was in a clean, white room. The air smelled of antiseptic and... strawberries? "He's awake," a voice said. Jack sat up. He was in a medical bed in Gary's bunker. The disco ball was still there, but the lights were dimmed to a soothing blue. Olivia was sitting next to him, peeling a strawberry. She looked cleaner, her face washed, wearing a borrowed tie-dye t-shirt that said "Make Love, Not War." "How long?" Jack asked. "Two days," Olivia handed him a slice of fruit. "You exhausted your core. The Tinker warned you about overusing the Hand." "We have Arthur?" "We do," Ben Carter's voice came from the command chair. "And boy, does he have stories. We thawed him out yesterday. He's... traumatized, but talking." "Where is he?" "In the server room, helping Gary decrypt Valerius's files. Turns out, Arthur b
The Ghost Train was not built for passengers; it was built for silence and suffering. The interior of the rear car was a dimly lit corridor of steel cages. The air was frigid, kept at near-freezing temperatures to sedate the occupants.Jack Sterling, limping heavily on his PVC crutch, moved through the shadows. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the tracks beneath them was deafening, masking their footsteps."Don't look at them," Olivia whispered, gripping Jack's arm.But Jack looked. He had to.Inside the cages were the discards of Valerius's ambition. Men and women with limbs twisted into impossible shapes, skin grafted with metal plates, eyes glowing with the dull, sickly green of unstable runic energy. Most were unconscious, drugged into oblivion. But some stared back with hollow, pleading eyes."We can't save them," Marcus said, his voice tight. "Not now. We have to secure the engine.""We'll come back," Jack promised, his voice low and dangerous. "
While Jack and his team navigated the subterranean labyrinth, the world above had transformed into a nightmare of steel and shadow. Victor Valerius stood on the balcony of what used to be the Mayor's office. He had redecorated. The colonial furniture was gone, replaced by stark, black obsidian desks and wolf-skin rugs. The American flag had been burned; in its place hung the banner of the New Order—a golden wolf's head on a field of blood red. He wore a suit that cost more than most people earned in a lifetime, but beneath the fine silk, his body was a war zone of muscle and scar tissue. Around his neck, hidden beneath his collar, hung a small vial containing a sliver of white bone—a fragment of the Progenitor. "Report," Valerius commanded, not turning around. He was watching the smoke rise from the Sterling Tower excavation site miles away. "The blast was successful, my Lord," a lieutenant in tactical gear said, kneeling. "We have breached the outer seal of
The digital disco of Gary "The Phantom" hummed with the quiet, frenetic energy of an invisible war. The mirrored walls reflected not dancers, but the exhausted faces of fugitives staring at screens.Jack Sterling sat in the command chair, his leg propped up on a velvet ottoman. The pain in his hip was a constant, gnawing reminder of his mortality, but his mind was sharp, focused on the scrolling lines of code Ben Carter was projecting onto the wall."He's panicking," Jack said, his voice low."Who?" Hailey asked, looking up from where she was braiding Bessie the cow's tail."Valerius. Look at the data traffic." Jack pointed to the screen. "Encryption levels on his personal server just tripled. He's locking down. He knows we're alive, and he knows we're close.""He doesn't just know," Ben said, tapping a key. "He's reacting. Check the Dark Web forums."A new window popped up. It was a site called The Red Ledger—a notorious marketplace for assassins







