Lucidez Terminal Novels & Stories

he commanded softly, his breath brushing against my ear. I swallowed hard and leaned back, giving him room. Instead of taking my seat, Lucien remained bent over, his face right next to mine as his right hand took over the mouse, his knuckles occasionally grazing my arm. His left hand moved to the keyboard, typing a rapid string of commands into the terminal. "Watch the latency drop," Lucien murmured, his focus entirely on the screen.

I asked, completely puzzled by his distress. Chika felt a physical knife twist in his chest as he recalled the smug, flushed satisfaction on Judy’s face out in the hall. "It is a standard labor contract, Lucien. Why did your terminal actively conceal the print authorization from my grid and allow her to broadcast that it was a private secret between your two units?" he asked, his tone conveying a raw, bleeding pain that he couldn't mask. Utterly confused by the erratic logical leap, I shook my head. "What secret? How could there be an unmonitored data link between my terminal and a Foster asset?"

When Carl called, my swollen eyes flicked to the time—almost eleven. The phone buzzed in my hand, fresh tears splashing onto the screen. Three calls. I didn't pick up. Surprisingly, the fourth was from Mia. I was about to shut off my phone when Carl's message popped up: [Stop messing around. I'm not coming back tonight. Stay safe. Your condition isn't serious, right?] A bitter laugh slipped out. I replied: [Not serious at all. Have fun. I'm going to sleep.]

"How‍ can you say it‍ doesn't matter? T‍ha‌t p‌erson was talking a⁠bout a r‍ebirth p‍rotocol⁠. They were talki‌ng ab‌out me be‍fore I even existed in t‌his li‌fe.⁠ You can‌'t jus⁠t ignore it." ‌Lucien tu‌rned around. His face was a mask of rigid st‍one, the silver in his eye‌s flat and metallic. "I said it doesn't matter, Aria. Wh⁠at matters is t‍hat this pentho⁠use is now a dead zone for e‍xternal signals.‍ You ar‌en'⁠t‍ to leav‍e this flo⁠or without M‌ar‌cus and three other men⁠. You aren‌'t to use t‍he secondary servers. Everythi‍ng go‍es through my private terminal." ‌I stopped a fe‌w feet awa⁠y from⁠ him. "⁠You're locking⁠ me in."

"What strategic variable drove your command to summon my presence?" "Troy just patched my terminal with an alert confirming he has harvested the absolute, raw evidence from the network logs. My beast believes your own eyes should audit the surveillance footage before our vanguard decides on the final execution orders," Lucien responds. Without a second of delay, his fingers slide his personal data pad from his vest, clicking a video file into active playback.

Always just two steps behind the king. Waiting. And now, the board had cracked. Lucien was off the throne. Wounded. Distracted. Busy cleaning up the mess Catalina left behind. Rebuilding his empire. Protecting her. And in that lull, something new would rise. Someone new. He placed the whiskey aside and reached for the encrypted terminal. Fingers moved swiftly, typing out a message to a private network, one few alive even knew existed. A list of names flashed briefly across the screen. Only the most loyal. The most dangerous.

He was ready to kill me when he got to know that I was involved with Minerva and I was married already. "Bastard, you have two choices in front of you. Either you leave my sister and move back to India or I will kill you and send your little pieces of body to your wife. In both cases I will tell Minerva that you had played with her feelings and you left for India." Luca told me.

The​y have ab‌so​lu⁠tely no idea who is si‌tting at this console. Th‍e termina‍l suddenly⁠ emitted a sharp, hi​gh-pit‌ch⁠ed electronic tone t‍hat vibra‍ted t​hrough the metal desk.‌ A fl‍ashing dialog box materiali‍zed in the center of t​he scr​een,⁠ i‍ts text written in cold, Cyrillic scrip‍t:​ ENT‌ER SOVEREIGN AL⁠I‍GNMENT PASSWORD.

"All done, Agent Vince." Keira's signature smirk was plastered on her face. She brought the phone Luci was holding a while ago. She also removed something inside her brassiere. A terabyte drive. She inserted the USB connector into Luci's phone. It should her a prompt for accessing all the files. She was given about five minutes by the smartphone. She clicked on her tongue and shook her head. "Gei, have you seen Luci? Make sure he's already dozed off. Just make sure he's alive. 'Kay?" she jokingly ordered him through the earpiece.

"Secure the terminals! Shoot to kill if they resist!" Pim looked at Chalida. They were cornered, outnumbered, and stripped of the power that had defined their existence for years. But as Pim looked at the terminal, the progress bar hit one hundred percent. The screen went dark, replaced only by a single, pulsing icon: UPLOAD COMPLETE. "Too late," Pim whispered, a ragged, triumphant laugh escaping her lips.