All Chapters of CHAOS COLLEGE : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

or a long time, Lila didn’t move.The silence in the cabin pressed against her ears until it rang. The flickering lamplight cast trembling shadows across the broken mirror. Her pulse thundered, uneven, as she crawled toward it, each breath heavy with disbelief.“Harper?” she whispered, staring at her reflection.The face that looked back wasn’t hers — not entirely. Her features were there, but subtly wrong. The expression was too calm. The eyes — colder, sharper — held the same unnerving confidence Harper always carried.Lila blinked. The reflection didn’t.Her breath caught.“Stop it,” she said shakily. “This isn’t real.”The reflection smiled.A perfect Harper smile.She stumbled backward, knocking over the lamp. It hit the ground, shattering, plunging the room into half-darkness again. Her heartbeat filled the void, frantic and hollow.“Think,” she told herself. “Think!”She squeezed her temples, trying to force away the haze creeping through her mind. But memories — or fragments o

The world burned.At least, that’s how it felt when Lila opened her eyes — choking smoke, flickering light, the sound of a fire devouring everything around her. The ballroom that once glittered like a dream was now a ruin of molten glass and screaming heat.She coughed, dragging herself across the scorched floor. “Cade—”Her voice broke.He was slumped beside a collapsed pillar, his arm bleeding, half-conscious. The fire roared closer.“Cade! Wake up!”He stirred weakly, groaning. “Lila…”“We have to move!”She pulled him up, her palms blistering from the heat. They stumbled toward a side exit, but the flames licked higher, trapping them. Every escape was closing in.And then — a cold gust of air.A door behind them unlocked itself.Lila froze. “Did you—”“No,” Cade wheezed.The door creaked open. Beyond it — only darkness.Harper’s voice slithered through the smoke.“Do you trust me now?”Lila’s heart lurched. “Not again…”Cade blinked at her. “Who are you talking to?”She didn’t ans

The chamber trembled violently, dust and sparks cascading from the ceiling. The red glow of the shattered nodes painted the walls with hellish streaks. Lila — trapped in her own body, fighting Harper — felt her pulse spike. The whispers in her mind had grown louder, Harper clawing desperately to regain control.I won’t let you win, Lila thought, sending every ounce of her will into her own body. She forced her hand to lift, just enough to knock Riley’s knife sideways. The edge grazed her arm, burning with pain, but she didn’t care.Riley snarled. “Clever. But clever won’t save you now.”Cade dove forward, yanking the central console from the floor. Sparks erupted like fireworks, arcs of electricity crackling through the room. The red symbols pulsed erratically, their energy spiraling into chaos.Harper screamed inside Lila’s mind. Stop him! He’s destabilizing everything!Lila felt a surge of power — a strange fusion of herself and Harper. She realized the nodes’ destruction didn’t jus

The world was smoke and sirens.Lila blinked against the sting in her eyes as the ceiling groaned above her. Sparks rained down like dying fireflies, scattering across the cracked floor. Somewhere in the distance, metal screamed—a sound that used to mean machinery, now only collapse.Her breath hitched. The explosion hadn’t just taken out the corridor; it had gutted half the complex. She could taste ash and something metallic—blood, maybe her own. The emergency lights flickered red, rhythmically pulsing like the heartbeat of something enormous dying around her.“Cade?” Her voice rasped.A muffled groan answered her from the left. She crawled toward it, palms scraping on shattered tiles. Cade lay half-buried beneath twisted beams, his jacket torn, his cheek streaked with soot. His eyes fluttered open when she reached him.“You’re—still here,” he managed, coughing.“Barely.” She braced her hands under the beam and heaved. It didn’t budge. Her vision blurred, whether from exhaustion or t

The air was thick with dust, sparks, and the acrid smell of smoke. Lila struggled to her hands and knees, coughing, vision swimming as the wreckage of The Circle’s base shifted around her. Every step was a gamble; debris cracked and fell beneath her, sending showers of sparks. Her lungs burned with each inhale, but there was no time to pause.Harper’s whispers echoed louder now, no longer distant, no longer soft. They surged inside Lila’s skull, commanding, taunting: You are mine. You’ve never left me. Fight, and you lose. Submit, and you die anyway.Lila shook her head, trying to steady herself. I will not let you win. Not this time.The shadows around her moved. Sparks from broken wires reflected in what looked like eyes—but it wasn’t anyone real. Harper was manifesting her presence within the corridors, projecting herself to confuse and disorient. Every corner Lila turned seemed to hold the ghostly image of Harper, smiling, beckoning.“Stop!” Lila screamed, clutching her head. “Thi