MasukChapter 15 – The White RoomThe monitor screamed.A flat, piercing tone cut through the hum of the machines, slicing the air into jagged edges.Harris shouted something she couldn’t hear over the alarm. Shapes moved white coats, flashes of metal, the blur of hands pressing, voices counting. The world flickered between frames: light dark light.Then a rush like the whole room inhale and the sound collapsed into silence.For a moment there was nothing. No colour, no weight, no body. Just a thin thread of sound, a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.Beep.A pause.Beep.The world tilted.She was lying down, but it felt as though the bed itself floated in water. Every sound came wrapped in cotton. Someone said her name once, softly“Clara” and the syllables drifted away like smoke.Light pressed against her eyelids. Too white, too bright. She turned her head; the pillow whispered beneath her cheek. A rhythm ticked beside her steady, mechanical.The monitor.Clara opened her eyes.The ceiling above
Chapter 14 – The Mirror CollapseThe world was burning in pixels.Clara ran.The corridor around her stuttered between reality and static walls phasing from concrete to glass to endless black. The air pulsed with the sound of alarms, a low mechanical heartbeat that shook the floor beneath her feet. Somewhere far off, metal groaned like a dying animal.She didn’t remember how she’d gotten here only the flash of light, the scream of tearing steel, and Harris shouting her name before the world folded inward.Now there was only this: a building half-real, half-dream, dying around her.“Clara!” Harris’s voice broke through the distortion, warped but desperate. “Keep moving! Get out now!”She turned a corner and stopped dead.Ahead of her, the hallway ended in nothing. A yawning void, black and bottomless, stretched where the floor should’ve been. The far side flickered in and out of existence a broken bridge of light.She backed up, breath ragged. Behind her, the corridor was dissolving, c
Chapter 13 – The Hollow NetworkThe river glowed faintly under the fractured moon, its surface slick with oil and ash.Clara stood knee-deep in mud, staring at the tag in her hand. PHASE C – ACTIVE. The letters seemed to breathe, their etched grooves shimmering as if lit from within.Behind her, the city whispered distant sirens, power lines humming, the ghost of traffic that no longer moved. Every sound felt amplified, yet hollow, like an echo from somewhere that didn’t quite exist.She tucked the tag into her coat and followed the compass. The cracked needle twitched, locked north, toward the skyline where the tallest tower blinked red in the fog.Rowen’s voice lingered in her mind: Truth doesn’t save. It exposes.Now, Clara wondered if exposure was the point or the trap.By dawn, she reached the edge of the financial district.The air was thick with dust and static. Glass towers leaned like monuments to something half-forgotten. When she passed a shop window, her reflection flicker
Chapter 12 – The Depth BelowThe train screamed into the dark, a long metallic wail swallowed by the storm.Clara clung to the ladder of the freight car, wind tearing at her hair, the flash drive clutched tight in her palm. Beside her, Rowen’s breathing was shallow, her wounded side pressed against the metal, eyes half-lidded but burning with defiance.Below them, the world blurred into streaks of silver and black. The rain came harder, cold and unrelenting, washing soot and blood from their faces.“We’re close,” Rowen gasped. “The quarry… it’s past the next valley.”Clara nodded, though her hands shook with exhaustion. Every part of her screamed to stop to rest but the image of Mark’s face on that video burned behind her eyes, keeping her moving.When the train slowed to take a curve, Clara jumped. The ground hit her like a wave of knives and mud. She rolled, coughing, as Rowen landed beside her with a strangled cry.They lay there for a moment, staring up at the bruised sky, the rai
Chapter 11 – Ashes and EchoesThe world came back in pieces light, smoke, and the roar of her own heartbeat.Clara’s ears rang with a high, keening note that didn’t belong to anything real. The ground beneath her trembled, warm and slick with something she didn’t want to name. She opened her eyes to a ceiling torn open by fire. The night sky hung above, red and trembling.She coughed. The air was thick with dust and ash. Somewhere close, metal groaned the dying breath of the warehouse.“Rowen” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “Rowen!”Nothing. Just the crackle of flames and the slow hiss of something leaking nearby.Clara dragged herself up, her palms scraping across broken glass. The flash drive gone. The compass keychain still clenched in her fist. The needle spun wildly, trembling in the smoke.She forced herself to her feet. The world tilted sideways, blood rushing to her temples. Shapes blurred through the haze fragments of blueprint pages floating like dying birds, a collapse
Chapter 10 – The Reckoning GlassThe door slammed shut behind Clara, muting the storm outside. The cabin smelled of smoke and damp earth. A single lamp burned on the table, casting a fragile pool of light across the room.Rowen locked the door, then crossed to the window and drew the curtains. Her movements were quick, deliberate, rehearsed the motions of someone who’d spent too long running.Clara stood frozen. “I thought you were dead.”Rowen didn’t turn. “You’re not the first to think that.”“What happened at the warehouse? You vanished.”“I didn’t vanish,” Rowen said quietly. “I was taken. They wanted the drive. I gave them a decoy.”Clara’s pulse thudded. “Then the real one”“Hidden.” Rowen finally faced her. “And if you’re here, it means Harris didn’t make it.”Clara’s throat tightened. “He-he told me to run.”A flicker of something sorrow, maybe guilt crossed Rowen’s face. “He was a good man once. But they had him by the throat. Same as me.”“You worked for them,” Clara said, v