thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
0
Reading
11 d, 4 h
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RHEA The air in the master vault doesn’t smell of luxury anymore. It smells of scorched copper, stale ozone, and the cold, metallic tang of spilled blood. Above us, the ceiling is a cracked web of weeping concrete, bleeding dust into the violet beams of the premature eclipse that filter down from the shattered atrium miles above. The light is wrong—too pale, too cold, thick with the unnatural magic of the ritual. It pools across the obsidian gaming table in the center of the vault like spilled…-
27.3 K • Completed
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RHEA The sound of the opalescent crystal shard shattering against the blood-stained marble is not a delicate chime. It is the deep, structural crack of an ancient vault door tearing open from the inside, a violent resonance that vibrates through the soles of my boots and rattles the bones of my jaw. The fragments scatter across the floor like frozen tears, and then the air ignites. A blinding, iridescent shockwave erupts outward from the shards, rushing across the ruined high-roller pit with the speed…
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27.3 K • Completed
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Outpost Erebus — Final Sunset The corpse in Cold Room Three is still trying to find warmth. Its fingers scrape the inside of the specimen drawer with a slow metallic rhythm: four scratches, silence, four scratches. The shifter died eleven hours ago. I signed the certificate myself after the White Hunger stopped his heart and turned his blood the color of skimmed ice. Dead things should not shiver. I stand behind the safety glass with one hand on the freezer controls and watch frost pulse beneath the…-
27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane The needle slides into the crook of Varek’s arm with a quiet, frictionless glide. It is the only sound in the subterranean isolation cell, save for the low, mechanized hum of the air scrubbers fighting a losing battle against the scent of ice and apex predator. Outpost Erebus is buried three hundred feet beneath the Arctic permafrost, and as of twenty minutes ago, the sun dipped below the horizon for the last time this season. Sixty days of polar night have officially begun. I can feel the…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane "Negotiate." The word hangs in the freezing air of the med-bay, fragile against the oppressive silence left behind by the dead comms. The only sounds are the erratic, shallow rasp of my own breathing and the low, constant hum of the auxiliary generator keeping the survival wing alive. Varek stares at me. The ambient orange glow of the emergency lights casts deep, jagged shadows across the sharp planes of his face. His chest, still slick with the black, infected blood of the feral he…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane The searing blue-white beam of the plasma cutter slices through the center of the heavy blast doors, a blinding star of concentrated heat in the dim med-bay. Molten steel bubbles and drips onto the floor tiles, hissing violently as the strike team systematically dismantles our only barrier. "We have less than three minutes before they breach," I say, my voice tight. I tear my eyes away from the melting steel and look at Varek. He is already moving. He crosses the shattered remnants of…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Varek The impact is a collision of freight trains. The mutated feral does not just strike; it detonates against me, driving its massive, biomechanically reinforced bulk into my chest. The sheer kinetic force throws us both backward, shattering the heavy iron grating of the pump station floor. We plummet into the shallow sub-trench below, a tangle of rotting fur, snapping jaws, and shattered metal. I catch the beast by the throat, my fingers digging into the corrupted, necrotizing flesh. But the creature…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane The absolute absence of light hits me like a physical blow. One second, I am staring at the horrifying, glowing green genome match on the spectrometer—the undeniable proof that Apex Biologics engineered a genocide—and the next, the universe simply ceases to exist. The diagnostic servers die with a mechanical whine. The air scrubbers fall silent. Without the steady, ambient hum of Outpost Erebus’s power grid, the silence in the atmospheric module is sudden, suffocating, and terrifyingly…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane The door blows inward with the concussive force of a detonated bomb. The heavy steel hinges shear off entirely, screaming in protest as the massive barricade crashes onto the grated floor of the generator room. The darkness of the corridor is instantly eradicated. Four military-grade ultraviolet floodlights, rigged to heavy tripods in the center of the room, flare with blinding, concentrated intensity. The light is not just bright; it is a weaponized, violet-white spectrum designed specifically…
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27.4 K • Completed
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Sloane The subterranean floor beneath us tilts at a terrifying, sickening angle. A sound like thunder reverberates through the permafrost—the groan of ten thousand tons of ice and reinforced concrete giving way. Structural steel beams buckle in the distance, screaming as the sheer pressure of the Arctic crust flattens Sector 6. "The vertical maintenance trunk," I shout, my voice raspy against the airborne dust and ice grit floating in the newly lit room. I point toward the far northern wall…
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27.4 K • Completed
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