thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The boardroom on the top floor of the Voss Institute smells of lemon polish and sterilized wealth. It is a stark contrast to the decaying scent of the subterranean archives, and the aggressive fluorescent lighting leaves absolutely nowhere to hide. I sit at the opposite end of a sprawling mahogany table, keeping my hands perfectly still on the polished wood. Director Sterling, a man whose tailored suits always seem too tight across his shoulders, stares intently at my left wrist. My cuff has ridden up a…-
9.5 K • Completed
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The private library of the Voss family feels less like a sanctuary for books and more like a mausoleum. The air here is aggressively climate-controlled, stripping away all moisture until my throat aches with every breath. Floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves swallow the ambient light, and the only sound is the rhythmic, maddening tick of a grandfather clock in the far corner. For the past four hours, I have been trapped at a sprawling Georgian desk, hunched over the damaged pages of Folio 44. And for the…
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9.5 K • Completed
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I spend the afternoon building a ghost. The decoy is a seventeenth-century blank ledger from the uncatalogued stacks, its vellum cover remarkably similar in weight and texture to the damaged Folio 44. I lay it flat on the stainless steel conservation table. Using a fine-tipped camel hair brush, I trace the outer edges of the binding and the specific margin where the name Thomas Ashbury would have been. The compound I am applying is a synthetic security fluorophore. Under the harsh white glare of the…
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9.5 K • Completed
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Callum does not say a word. He turns away from the blinding ultraviolet glare, the cyan dye on his leather gloves leaving phantom streaks of light in the frozen air. I follow him. We walk past the restricted stacks, leaving the known perimeter of the archive behind. At the end of a corridor that doesn't exist on any of the institute's official blueprints, we reach a heavy, steel-reinforced blast door. It lacks a handle, possessing only a sleek biometric interface. Callum strips off his glowing right…
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9.5 K • Completed
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The fluorescent lights of the conservation lab buzz with a clinical, unforgiving glare. It is seven in the morning. My skin still hums with the phantom pressure of Callum’s hands, a dangerous, intoxicating heat that feels entirely at odds with the sterile steel of my workstation. I have not slept. The titanium briefcase containing Folio 44 sits locked in my desk, but right now, my focus is on the single black leather glove resting on the green cutting mat—the one Callum discarded in the bunker. I pick…
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9.5 K • Completed
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My apartment is suffocatingly quiet, filled only with the low, digitized drone of the morning news broadcast. I sit at my kitchen island, staring blindly at the television screen. The ticker at the bottom of the screen flashes in a relentless, crimson loop: VOSS INSTITUTE HEIR DISSOLVES PRIVATE TRUST, DONATES ENTIRE COLLECTION TO STATE ARCHIVES. It is an absolute surrender. Callum is gutting his own empire, stripping his family of the very leverage they have hoarded for centuries. He is emptying the…
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9.5 K • Completed
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The main doors of the Voss Institute are flanked by state police cruisers. Yellow barricade tape cuts a stark line across the polished marble columns, fluttering in the cold morning wind. I walk past the flashing lights, carrying a single, heavy wooden crate packed with my personal conservation tools. I do not look back at the grand glass facade. The empire of ashes is finally closed for business. The drive to the sprawling Voss family estate takes exactly forty-five minutes. The towering wrought-iron…
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9.5 K • Completed
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Six Hours Before the Break-In | Zenith Arena Maeve The first camera dies at 11:47 p.m. Not dramatically. No shower of sparks, no alarm, no guard looking up from the hockey game on his phone. The red light above the service corridor simply blinks once and goes black, replaced on the security monitor by seven minutes of yesterday's empty hallway. Seven minutes is long enough to steal a secret. It is also long enough to get buried with one. I crouch behind a pallet of sponsor champagne in the arena…-
11.0 K • Completed
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Maeve The harsh blue glare of my laptop screen is the only light in the suffocating darkness of my hotel room. The biometric drive, a sleek silver rectangle still warm from the heat of Irena’s pocket, is plugged into the side port. My lips are still bruised. My pulse is still hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs, an intoxicating echo of the tunnel, the shadows, the desperate way she pulled me against the concrete. The vulnerability she handed me was absolute. And that is exactly why I…
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11.0 K • Completed
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Maeve The Zenith Arena's master control room smells of ozone, stale coffee, and the frantic sweat of the production crew I just locked in the hallway. My fingers fly across the massive mixing console, bypassing the broadcast delays and hardwiring the main jumbotron feed directly to my encrypted laptop. Down below, the ice is covered by a sprawling red carpet. The Federation President stands at a lucite podium, flanked by the ethics committee, bathed in the blinding glare of a hundred press cameras. They…
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11.0 K • Completed
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