Novel & Cerita No Straight Roads: Eve

The plan was absolute madness, even by the desperate, blood-soaked standards of a Sovereign. Leo and Liam proposed using the Prime Node—the very heart of the city’s stolen energy—to “shunt” our physical forms through the Ley Lines of the planet itself. It was a journey through the "Veins of the World," essentially traveling as pure, encoded energy from one ancestral Node to the next in a matter of seconds. It was a leap across thousands of miles through a medium that was never intended for human breath or wolf’s bone.

Isla walked ahead, wrapped in her insulated gear, hood pulled low, but even now, the light from her hand flickered faintly beneath the glove. Like a heartbeat refusing to slow. The journey to ECHO-3 was brutal. Ice plains gave way to jagged mountain spines. There were no roads. No settlements. Just sky and snow and silence. Ethan navigated using the drive’s coordinates. It pointed to a location that wasn’t on any public map—a place scrubbed from known cartography. A facility hidden between things. When they reached the ridge just before sunset, Isla saw it.

"Oh, same here. I guess we will board a cab home then, but I am not seeing any moving vehicles. Maybe if we move forward, we will see one." As they strolled along the desolate road, the only sound being the soft crunch of gravel beneath their feet, Eden's gaze swept the horizon. His supernatural eyesight, acute and piercing, scanned the darkness for any sign of approaching vehicles. His ears, attuned to the faintest whispers, strained to detect the distant hum of engines. But there was nothing – only an oppressive silence that seemed to weigh upon his shoulders.

"I will take the utility access roads. It will be rough, Miss Hales, but we can lose anyone who is not expecting it." "Do it," I commanded. The simple black car swerved violently off the smooth asphalt and onto a rough, unpaved track. The car jolted and bounced hard. I shielded Angel's head with my hand, holding my breath, fighting the nausea. Angel stayed asleep, thank God. "Elias, where are we?" "Private utility land, Miss Hales. There are no cameras, no lights. Only dirt and trees. If Mason is following, he will need to be very close behind us to see the dust."

The heavy blast doors of the garage ground open, letting in a swirl of blinding white snow. Ashren punched the accelerator, and we shot out into the dark. … The Ghost Road wasn't on any official map. It was an old smuggler's route that bypassed the main highways, cutting through the jagged, frozen ravines of the deep tundra. For the first six hours, the silence in the rover's cabin was absolute, save for the hum of the engine and the howling wind outside. I sat in the passenger seat, my arms wrapped tightly around myself. The rover’s heater was blasting at maximum capacity, making Valen sweat in the backseat. But my breath was still pluming in the air like white smoke.

“Eve, take the back roads toward the conservation center. Lose them in the trees.” Eve didn’t argue. She’d grown up in the same shadows I had; she knew how to run. The Toyota bounced violently over potholes as we cut onto an unlit dirt track lined with thick bushes. Branches whipped the windows. One of the SUVs clipped our rear bumper, jolting us forward. Alina turned to Eve, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Eve. I’m so fucking sorry. We dragged you into this. You could’ve stayed safe at the orphanage. You shouldn’t be here…”

Alessio’s or Eve’s he’d decide when he got there. The coordinates Eve sent led to the ruins of an old military testing facility, buried deep in the cliffs off the southern coast. It looked like forgotten rusted gates hanging open, ivy eating through concrete walls, fences curled like peeled skin. But Noa could feel it. The pulse of something monstrous hiding just beneath. She built her kingdom here. He parked at the outer perimeter, grabbed his knives, checked the clips in his pistols. Ivy parked beside him, stepped out like she wasn’t limping, like the gunshot to her thigh last night was just a bad dream.

“It’s totally deserted, and I can’t find a street sign to save my life.” “What’s around you?” “Nothing.” I squinted trying to make out the light in front of me. The area was heavily commercial, so I wasn’t sure what business would be open past eight on a Wednesday night. “I think I see something. Crap. My contacts are killing me.” “Pull over and take them out, silly. You have your glasses with you, right?” “Yeah, but I don’t want to stop, Kimmie… what if I can’t get started again?”

Evan leaves from there. *******************

Nova whispered, “They didn’t lose her.” Eden murmured, “She unplugged herself.” The encrypted message returned again two hours later. This time with a location. No voice. Just a tag. Vault Seven. Outlands. No surveillance. No code. Cassian exhaled. “That’s not an invitation.” Eden nodded. “It’s a test.” Nova said it first: “She wants to know if you’ll come without protocol.” The Outlands didn’t have roads. They had remnants old rails, broken drone pads, and supply lines eaten by moss and memory. Eden walked in silence. Cassian at her side, comms off. Nova stayed back to monitor activity from the spire node. Even she couldn’t map this far out.