thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The psychic tether snaps with the sound of a breaking spine. I am violently ripped from the Dream Arena, sucked backward through the collapsing void of the Dominion network. The blinding red static of the system purge scorches my digital retinas, and then— Cold plasteel against my spine. The smell of antiseptic and stale sweat. I gasp, my human lungs violently seizing as they try to process the sterile air of the quarantine cell. My eyes snap open. The halogen strips overhead strobe in erratic,…-
22.3 K • Completed
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The silence in the interrogation room is heavier than the orbital gravity. I hang from the magnetic cuffs, my wrists numb, my shoulders pulled taut. The holographic screen in front of me has gone dark, leaving only my faint reflection in the reinforced glass. I look at the ghost in the mirror. A memory-smuggler. A rebel. A man who thought he had sold his own childhood to buy plasma charges for refugees. But there was no childhood. There was no father in a cramped workshop carving wooden birds. Every…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The crimson fire of the hard system purge crashes over us, but it does not consume. I am Commander Ares-17, and for the first time in my existence, I am not merely a fraction of a man. As Silas deliberately releases the fail-safe, surrendering his deepest fears to the inferno, our digital avatars collide and fuse within the blazing core of the Dominion mainframe. The network expects to incinerate two corrupted, unauthorized data-streams. It expects resistance. It does not expect a paradox. The…
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22.3 K • Completed
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Blue Glacier Gorge, Six Minutes Before Impact The woman I am here to kill saves a soldier directly beneath my rifle. Through the thermal scope, Captain Adrienne Sol is a white-gold figure kneeling on the roof of the Boreal armored train. The leviathan tears across Blue Glacier Gorge at two hundred kilometers per hour, black carriages hammering over a bridge no sane engineer would have built. Wind claws streams of snow from the roof. The abyss on either side glows radioactive blue. Adrienne ignores all…-
20.7 K • Completed
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The scent of sterile iodine shatters against the phantom taste of copper in my mouth. I am on my knees on the polished silver grating of the medical carriage, my right hand still pressed desperately over the hole in my chest. The heavy steel doors to the gangway slide open with a pressurized hiss, letting in a brief, howling gust of the Arctic blizzard before snapping shut. Two Loyalist soldiers drag the rebel sniper into my sanctuary. They throw her roughly onto the deck. The impact of her knees…
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20.7 K • Completed
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I drag my dead left side through the freezing dark. The maintenance crawlspace beneath the floorboards of Carriage Five is a claustrophobic tunnel of grease, exposed wiring, and sub-zero drafts. Below me, just inches past a thin layer of slatted iron, the abyssal drop of the Blue Glacier Gorge rushes past at eighty miles an hour. The roar of the wheels on the frozen tracks is a physical assault, vibrating through my ribs and rattling my teeth. I pull myself forward with my right arm, my gloved fingers…
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20.7 K • Completed
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The agonizing shriek of tearing metal decides for us. I am standing in the pressurized airlock of Carriage Four when the heavy pneumatic coupling mechanisms beneath the floorboards detonate. The Boreal Empire’s automated security protocols have triggered a localized detachment. The armored carriage ahead of us—the ghost car, 0-0-Alpha—is violently severing itself from the rest of the train, accelerating away into the howling Arctic whiteout. And Noa Serrin is trapped on the wrong side of the…
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20.7 K • Completed
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The world outside Carriage 0-0-Alpha has ceased to be a blizzard. It is a solid wall of obliterating white. I pull myself up from the freezing steel floor of the ghost car’s airlock, my muscles screaming in protest. Every nerve ending is fried, still sparking with the phantom aftershocks of the climax Adrienne forced into my bloodstream. My clothes cling to me, damp with sweat that is rapidly turning to ice in the sub-zero draft. Through the small, reinforced porthole of the exterior door, I can barely…
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20.7 K • Completed
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I am no longer one body. I am four hundred and twelve. The moment the Winter Crown recognizes my biometric signature, the boundaries of my skull simply cease to exist. The monolithic black cylinder in the center of the carriage emits a blinding, high-frequency pulse of emerald light. It strikes the glowing map of nanite pathways exposed on my chest, and the master bio-transmitter bypasses my conscious will entirely, plugging my nervous system into the Empire's vast, sleeping network. I feel the blood…
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20.7 K • Completed
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The carriage smells like copper and burnt ozone. I pull myself up from the bloody grating, the pain in my chest radiating outward in jagged, agonizing waves. My rebel coat is soaked through. My left shoulder throbs where the phantom shrapnel wound tore open, mirroring the violent damage I just pulled out of Adrienne’s nervous system. "Serrin." The Rebel General’s voice crackles again from the carriage speakers, harsh and demanding over the roar of the blizzard outside. “Confirm status of…
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20.7 K • Completed
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