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 red laser sights of the patrol rifles cut across the dim platform, sharp and terrifyingly steady. Twelve standard-issue assault rifles, all aimed directly at Jonah’s bare chest. "Put your hands on the deck!" the guard commander roared again, his voice distorted through his armored helmet. Jonah didn't move. He stayed on one knee, his broad body angled perfectly to shield me from the line of fire. His left arm hung slack, his right hand twitching with nerve damage. He was exhausted, burned…-
23.5 K • Completed
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Meridian, Twenty-Seven Minutes Before the Martial-Law Gala The first version of my death arrives before the rain does. In it, I step off the rebel skiff onto the flooded lobby of Zenith Spire. A security drone turns its white eye toward me. General Cassian Rook speaks one word from forty floors above, and the command signature hidden in his voice locks every exit. I die kneeling in black water with a decryption knife strapped to my thigh and my sister’s name trapped behind my teeth. The future…-
21.5 K • Completed
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The pressure of his hand on my waist arrives exactly two seconds after the ghost of it. I step into the vacant space on the glass floor before his boot actually shifts to occupy it. My spine arches a fraction of a second before his fingers flex to pull me closer. To the military elite sipping synth-wine around the ballroom, we are executing a flawless, predatory waltz. To me, it is a haunting double-exposure of reality. I am dancing with a man’s future, dragging my body through the physical echoes of…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The ballroom shatters into chaos the moment the artillery drones pivot. Red emergency klaxons drown out the swelling bass of the synth-waltz. The aristocratic elite—diplomats, officers, hired companions—scatter like roaches under a spotlight, their synth-wine glasses shattering against the reinforced glass floor. The target coordinates Lyra just ripped from my head are already echoing through the Meridian automated defense grid. I need to issue a stand-down order. I need to countermand the artillery…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The pontoon skiff slams into the black swell of the flooded avenue, shattering the neon reflection of a submerged billboard. Rain lashes the iron hull in a deafening staccato. I gun the outboard motor, forcing the rusted vessel through a narrow gap between two crumbling skyscrapers. The water here is choked with debris—twisted rebar, drowned sedans, the floating detritus of the old world—but I know the currents of Sector Nine. I keep one hand clamped on the throttle and the other pressed flat against…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The heavy magnetic seal of the Zenith Spire’s auxiliary command nexus slides shut, abruptly decapitating the howl of the storm outside. We stand in the center of the glass-walled room, dripping black ocean water and diesel fuel onto the pristine, illuminated floor grids. Below us, the flooded city of Meridian stretches out in a violent tapestry of red martial-law searchlights and churning waves. Above us, the high-security military servers hum with cold, algorithmic indifference. We bypassed three…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The vibration of millions of tons of steel shifting under the ocean’s weight rattles my teeth. Through the reinforced glass floor of the command nexus, I watch the dark ocean boil. The massive, submerged floodgates of the Meridian Grid are sliding open. I did this. In my desperate, psychic scramble to abort the drone strike on my sister's sector, my panic bled into the city's basal code. I commanded the sea to swallow us all. Cassian does not waste a single fraction of a second on blame. He grabs my…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The stealth drone’s transmission light blinks from active crimson to a dead, hollow black. It has seen enough. The broadcast of our treason—of the Meridian Occupation’s Butcher violently, desperately submitting to a rebel operative—is already echoing across every military datapad in the flooded megacity. The silence in the sub-aquatic hub lasts exactly three seconds. Then, the ambient amber lighting snaps to a blinding, strobing white. The AI voice of the Zenith Spire drops its neutral,…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The twelve red targeting lasers of the Meridian Royal Guard cut through the mist of the sub-aquatic hub, settling on my chest, my throat, my forehead. I kneel in the freezing, knee-deep black water, staring at the man who is about to execute my city. High Councilor Vane steps through the breached magnetic doors, his pristine white uniform a stark contrast to the ruined, smoke-filled chamber. He looks down at me with the clinical, detached boredom of a man swatting a fly. Then, he looks at…
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21.5 K • Completed
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The pressure glass of the sub-aquatic hub detonates with the force of a dying star. The ocean does not merely breach the room; it annihilates it. A wall of black, freezing water slams into us, carrying the pulverized remains of the reinforced pane and the twisted metal of the server racks. I am thrown backward, the breath driven from my lungs in a violent burst of bubbles. The dark water swallows the Zenith Spire’s lowest tier. In the chaotic, swirling crush of the flood, the red targeting lasers of…
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21.5 K • Completed
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