[SYSTEM]
TIME TO SECTOR 7 TEST: 14 HOURS, 48 MINUTES
TIME TO TRACKING LOCK: 11 HOURS, 00 MINUTES
FUGUE: 29% (SAFE THRESHOLD: 30%)
LEVEL: 1 (230/200 XP. ADVANCEMENT LOCKED)
ARTIFACT: CHRONAL STABILIZER CORE (MAJOR. CHARGE: 2/3. EST VALUE: 8,000-12,000c)
[/SYSTEM]
The Union workshop stank of ozone and rust. Fifty five hours of hiding. Fifty five hours of the tracking lock resetting every time we moved.
The Stabilizer Core sat on the workbench. It had burned one of its three charges dragging my Fugue down from 79% to 29% during the blackout. It was not a cure. It was a temporary shunt. Now it had two charges left.
Vex watched me, arms crossed. "Talk. The lock is at eleven hours. It gets tighter every minute."
"We hijack the Foundry District broadcast array. Override the Guard feed for sixty seconds. Dump Kael's evidence into the public stream."
Marcus checked his shock rod. "Signal trace?"
"Gone before they pin it." I tapped the crawler schematic. "We hit, broadcast, and scatter through the drainage tunnels before the lock completes."
Eli stared at the pulsing Stabilizer Core. "You have done this before. In your head. Did it work?"
Memory supplied the answer. Successful broadcast. Public outrage. A victory that came too late. My old Fugue threshold had been zero to forty percent. That had made the sync clean. "It worked with more room. Now I have a thirty percent margin. This will be unstable."
Vex grunted. "Unstable gets my people dead."
"Staying here gets everyone dead when the lock expires. It does not warn. It arrives."
We moved. The Union crawler was an armored slab on treads. Eight of us packed inside. The noise was constant.
The whine in my left ear from the synaptic feedback distorted the Guard patrol chatter. Fragments cut through. "Grid search sector seven." And "Anomaly signature primary."
We arrived at the service bay beneath the broadcast tower. Two Patriot Guard sentries stood at the gate.
Marcus and Lara moved. They used sonic emitters from Union stores. A low thrum. The guards staggered. We slipped past.
The control room screens were dead. Eli jacked the core into the main transmission hub. I called the intrusion protocols from memory.
[SYSTEM]
WARNING: FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION ATTEMPT DETECTED.
CORE INSTABILITY: 67%
FUGUE METER: 29% (AT THRESHOLD)
ESTIMATED SPIKE: +1% PER SECOND OF SUSTAINED USE.
[/SYSTEM]
"Do it," Eli whispered.
I activated Echo Sight.
The world stuttered. The present console ghosted against the memory of its future, shattered version. I forced alignment. I ground the core's erratic pulse against the broadcast frequency.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[SYSTEM]
FUGUE METER: 37%... 42%...
THRESHOLD BREACH CONFIRMED.
NEURAL FEEDBACK INTENSIFYING.
EFFECT: VISUAL DISTORTION (LEFT EYE). AUDITORY DROP OUT (LEFT EAR).
[/SYSTEM]
A hot wire of pain traced my jaw. My left eye blurred.
"We are live," Eli hissed.
The upload bar climbed. 40%. 60%.
A security monitor showed the public screens in the square below flickering. The standard Guard news feed dissolved into Sector 7 schematics. Kael's forged approvals highlighted in red. Then Stasis Global's merger ledgers.
People below pointed. A crowd gathered.
85% upload.
The Guard command channel erupted. "Category 3 distortion spike at Relay 7 G. Chronophage signatures converging."
The sync was flawed. The core's temporal anomaly screamed into the void. A beacon.
[SYSTEM]
ALERT: CHRONOPHAGE SWARM CONVERGENCE DETECTED.
ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 90 SECONDS.
THREAT LEVEL: HIGH (CIVILIAN POPULATION PRESENT).
[/SYSTEM]
"Abort." I tore the core free. The broadcast died. Seventy seconds of truth. Not enough.
We burst from the station into chaos. The square was panicked.
The swarm came for the fissure two blocks east. The Refugee Overflow Shelter. A warehouse packed with people.
The sound hit first. The shriek of rending time. Layered over screams.
We ran.
The shelter's north wall was gone. Replaced by a tear of violent light. Chronophages poured through. Patriot Guard fired. But their formation was wrong. A defensive cordon around their precinct building, not the shelter.
Kael's Harden the Core protocol. Protect the asset. Sacrifice the perimeter.
Vex saw it. "They are not trying."
A woman was pinned under a collapsed beam. Mara. A shelter runner. A chronophage scuttled toward her.
I ran.
[SYSTEM]
COMBAT LOGGED: CHRONOPHAGE SWARM.
FUGUE METER: 49% (RECOVERY PAUSED).
[/SYSTEM]
I grabbed a length of broken rebar. I flicked Echo Sight for a micro second. I saw the stress flaw in the creature's forward leg joint.
My swing was slow. Muscles heavy with Fugue fatigue. The rebar still cracked the joint.
The creature shrieked. It phased. It lunged toward a child.
Marcus's shock rod took it in the side. It dissolved into mist.
I hauled Mara free. My left ear dropped into total silence. I missed the scream behind me. Sound returned as tearing metal. Another chronophage had a man by the leg. It dragged him toward the fissure. I stepped. My balance wavered. The creature vanished. The man was gone.
We fought. We saved the closest. Lara and Marcus with shock rods. Vex and the Union with torches.
We pulled a dozen to safety. The swarm took more. Then they retreated through the fissure with their prey. The light snapped shut.
We stood in the wreckage. Civilians wept. The Patriot Guard advanced. Their weapons now pointed at the perimeter. At us.
The public screen flickered. A Guard spokesman appeared. "Regrettable anomaly event triggered by residual instability from known fugitives. The fabricated evidence was a distraction by these terrorist elements."
The narrative flipped. In under two minutes.
A rock sailed from the crowd. It clanged off the crawler's hull. A man pointed at our gear. "They led them here."
Vex grabbed my arm. His grip was like a vice. "Your play got my people marked. We leave. Now."
The crawler ride was silent. Back at the workshop, Eli would not look at me. Lara cleaned a gash on Marcus's arm.
"The exposure play is dead," I said. My voice was flat. "The System absorbs truth and spits back Kael's narrative. Hiding is death. Pleading is death."
"So what is left," Lara asked. She did not look up.
Silence.
Marcus stared at the wall. His jaw was tight. Eli looked lost. Vex's expression was stone.
I had no answer. The clock ticked down in my vision. 10 hours, 59 minutes until the tracking lock sealed our fate. The core on the table pulsed at 72% instability. One more major use would detonate it.
I had pushed. The price was a city turning against us. Another countdown. And a team out of ideas.
[SYSTEM]
UPDATE:
TIME TO SECTOR 7 TEST: 14 HOURS, 03 MINUTES
TIME TO TRACKING LOCK: 10 HOURS, 59 MINUTES
FUGUE METER: 49%
DEBUFF: [SYNAPTIC FEEDBACK] - 10 MINUTES REMAINING
BOUNTY UPDATE: STASIS GLOBAL CORPORATE CONTRACT ADDED - 75,000c
TOTAL ACTIVE BOUNTY: 125,000c
PARTY MORALE: CRITICAL
[/SYSTEM]
THE FIRST CRADLE – A LITRPG ADVENTURE
The Sun is dying, and there's no saving this world.
THE FIRST CRADLE – A LITRPG ADVENTURE – NEW CHAPTERS EVERY FRIDAY!
