جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 120

Darkness. A shiver ran through me, but it wasn’t cold. It was expectation. Danger. A promise that the nightmare my father had built wasn’t finished—it had only just begun.Jax’s hand squeezed mine, and for a fleeting second, I drew strength from him. But when I blinked, the space around us had shifted again. The lab, the chains, even the virtual air we breathed, were gone. Now, we were floating in a void threaded with glowing neural filaments—like veins of electricity connecting thought to thought, mind to mind, reality to illusion.And there he was. Not Jax, not me, but the perfect replica—my father’s consciousness mirrored in Jax’s body. Every movement, every micro-expression, every breath was Jax, except it wasn’t.“You think you can control this?” the duplicate said, voice velvet and poison. “You think you can save him, save yourself? This is my world now.”I swallowed, trying to steady my racing heart. “You don’t get to make that choice. Jax… fight him. Fight back.”Jax blinked,

The pulse wasn’t just a heartbeat. It was a summons. A dark thread pulling us into the remnants of the system, whispering in tones both familiar and threatening. I didn’t need to see it to know who it belonged to.Jax’s hand tightened around mine, grounding me. “Sienna… are you feeling that?”I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Yeah… it’s him. Or something of him. My father… or maybe something else. But it’s not gone. Not entirely.”The air around us shimmered, like the facility itself was breathing, alive with the lingering neural energy. Every step we took was uncertain, the floor beneath us humming faintly, as if in response to our fear and hope combined.We had no plan. No backup. Only each other—and the faint pulse calling us deeper into the heart of the system.“This is insane,” Jax muttered, voice tight with tension. “We barely survived the last round. Now we’re diving deeper?”I forced a smile, even as my stomach twisted. “If we don’t, it won’t just be him anymore. Th

Silence. Not the kind of calm you can rest in, but the kind that presses down, heavy and suffocating. The neural landscape around us had shifted again, and I could feel the weight of my father’s consciousness pressing against every corner of my mind. Jax’s hand in mine was the only tether keeping me anchored to reality—or what felt like reality.“I don’t like this,” Jax muttered, his voice low, dangerous. “Everything’s… wrong. The system’s changing. It’s alive.”I nodded, trying to push down the dread curling in my stomach. “It’s not just alive. It’s testing us. Like he said—the final trial. But what does that even mean?”Jax squeezed my hand. “Means we’re not done yet. Whatever comes next… we face it together.”I drew a shaky breath and focused. Around us, the neural cathedral stretched infinitely, its architecture bending and twisting like liquid metal. Shadows moved along the walls—some memories, some lies, some fragments of the father I had once known. And hovering in the center w

The moment stretched, taut as a wire, the air—or whatever passed for air in this neural labyrinth—thick with tension. My father’s new form hovered ahead, a hybrid of man and machine, every movement calculated, every strand of code alive. He radiated power, arrogance, and a terrifying clarity that made the hair on my arms stand on end.Jax’s hand found mine, gripping tightly. “Sienna… this… this isn’t him anymore. Not fully. It’s something else. Something… engineered.”I swallowed hard, staring at the figure. “Doesn’t matter what it is. We end this. Together.”The father-figure smiled, impossibly calm. “End this? No, my dear, you misunderstand. This is the culmination. You’ve done well to survive as long as you have. But everything… ends… on my terms.”Jax bristled. “Not today. Not ever.”I felt the surge of his confidence, mirrored in my own determination. This wasn’t just about surviving the neural network. This wasn’t just about saving Jax. This was about ending the nightmare my fat

The cabin was quiet, but it was a deceptive kind of quiet—the sort that feels like the calm before a storm. Jax and I had spent the night poring over what little we knew of the remnants of my father’s neural project. The fragments were still out there, scattered across corrupted networks, and each pulse I felt in my mind reminded me that the fight wasn’t over.Jax sat at the small wooden table, his forearms braced against the surface, eyes fixed on the flickering laptop screen. “We’ve traced some of the signal fragments,” he said, voice low but sharp with tension. “They’re scattered, but they’re communicating… like pieces of a hive mind.”I leaned closer, peering at the chaotic lines of code and network paths. “So he’s not fully gone… he’s evolving. And each time we think we’ve contained him, he adapts.” My throat tightened. “We’ve been running, Jax… but for how long before he catches up?”He reached across the table, gripping my hand. “Long enough for us to finish it. You and me, Doc