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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Mara’s private hangar loft smelled of ozone, melting solder, and rain. Outside, the artificial tempest over Aeralis raged in the pre-dawn darkness, drumming a relentless, heavy rhythm against the reinforced glass skylights. But inside the warm, wood-and-copper workshop, the air was focused and precise. Mara stood over the stripped-down chassis of her artificial glider. The beautiful, aerodynamic cowling had been completely removed, exposing the raw, high-conductivity framing beneath. Her amber eyes…-
24.3 K • Completed
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The Championship Final starting grid hung suspended over a raging violet supercell, a precarious platform of slick metal and trembling tension. Below the grating of Kade Orun’s boots, the artificial tempest churned with terrifying violence, a swirling vortex of deep purple clouds and jagged, localized lightning. Above them, the stadium’s massive hologlyph scoreboard glared down with predatory anticipation, broadcasting the faces of the four finalist teams to a roaring crowd of one hundred thousand…
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24.3 K • Completed
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Whitechapel, 11:58 p.m. ELIAS The dead clerk lies to me with his eyes open. His pupils are fixed, his skin cold, his blood pooled dark along the side nearest the deadhouse wall. Twelve hours dead, according to the police surgeon. Fourteen, according to the flies. Eleven minutes, according to the brass watch ticking backward on his chest. Only one of those answers can help me find his killer. I lock the morgue door and turn down the gas. Outside, rain drives through Whitechapel hard enough to wash…-
24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The smell hits me before the cold does. It is not the sharp, sterile bite of bleach and advanced quaternary disinfectants I am used to at the Massachusetts General morgue. This is a heavy, suffocating rot. It tastes like sulfur, coal smoke, and the metallic tang of old blood baked into porous stone. I open my eyes. The light is entirely wrong. There are no humming LED panels above me, no gleam of stainless steel autopsy tables. A sickly, flickering green luminescence bleeds from a gas lamp bolted…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The shadow in the suspended rain does not hurry. It does not need to. It takes another step toward the morgue, the gleaming blade in its hand catching the sickly green gaslight. The water droplets hovering in the air absorb into the figure’s dark coat as it moves, creating a rippling, liquid distortion around its silhouette. "Elias," I whisper, my voice vibrating in the compressed, dead air of the stolen minute. "He’s coming." "I see him." Elias’s grip on my…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA "Your choice," Elias whispers, the brass watch trembling in his hand as another phantom laceration blooms across his chest. "Do we bleed, or do we fade?" The killer’s boot hovers over the final stone step of the archive stairwell. The gleaming blade catches the dim light, ready to swing the moment he breaches the floor. My name on the guest register is already a translucent smudge, my modern existence evaporating to pay for this stolen time. I look at the bloodless, glowing…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The blue static of the temporal bomb’s exhaust dissipates, leaving only the biting, freezing wind howling off the River Thames. The heavy iron door at the end of the carriage bangs shut, swaying with the violent motion of the train. The older Elias is gone, vanished into the folds of a fractured timeline, leaving his threat hanging in the damp air like a physical blade against my throat. I will kill her right now, exactly as she died twenty years ago. I look at the Elias standing in front of…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The heavy, metallic thud of the older Elias's footsteps echoes up the wooden stairs of the printing house, a slow, deliberate march that cuts through the mechanical roar of the presses below. He is coming for us in real time. And he has my modern autopsy files in his hands. "Out," Elias snarls, grabbing my wrist. He does not reach for the brass watch in his pocket. We cannot afford the toll right now, not when he is already bleeding luminous mist from the phantom lacerations on his neck,…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The spring inside the wooden metronome snaps with a violent, echoing crack. The sound cuts through the boisterous din of the Ten Bells pub, but no one else flinches. The soot-stained laborers, the exhausted sex workers nursing cheap gin, the mudlark Ned who had recognized me just hours ago—they all continue talking, laughing, and drinking. I am standing in the center of the room, wrapped in Elias’s oversized wool coat, and I do not exist. A burly dockworker steps backward, completely oblivious,…
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24.5 K • Completed
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MINA The heavy, metallic thud of a pocket watch ticking backward echoes up the rotting wooden stairs of the Spitalfields tenement. It is a slow, methodical sound. It vibrates through the floorboards, cutting through the howling London storm outside. The older Elias is not running. He is climbing the stairs. He knows exactly where we are. I am backed against the cast-iron stove, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The gaslight flickers, casting long, jagged shadows across the tiny safe…
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24.5 K • Completed
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