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Stories
60
Chapters
552
Words
904.2 K
Comments
0
Reading
3 d, 3 h
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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…-
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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Irena The harsh, blue light of my encrypted tablet reflects off the polished glass of my office desk. The notification is small, just a single line of text forwarded from an anonymous burner account, but it hits the room with the kinetic force of a freight train. File fragment 04-A: Corticosteroid requisition, Marković, I. It is only a fragment, a digital ghost, but I know exactly how this ecosystem operates. The media feeds on perfection, and the federation feeds on the athletes who fail to maintain…-
11.0 K • Completed
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Irena The main rink at the Zenith Arena at five in the morning is a sensory deprivation chamber. The overhead halogen lights are set to a low, humming dimness, casting long, bruised shadows across the freshly resurfaced ice. There are no cameras blinking red, no federation officials with their clipboards, no desperate journalists. It is just the blinding expanse of frozen water, the biting ambient cold, and the woman who is currently trying to dismantle my life. "Your center of gravity is completely…
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11.0 K • Completed
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Maeve The media lounge of the Zenith Arena has been transformed into a suffocatingly bright interrogation cell. Three massive LED ring lights form a blinding halo around the cramped, plush velvet sofa where Irena and I are forced to sit, our thighs separated by barely an inch of negative space. The air in the room is thick with the scent of hot electronics, hairspray, and the expensive, icy floral perfume Irena uses to aggressively mask the medicinal reek of her wintergreen muscle rub. "And we are…
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11.0 K • Completed
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Maeve The roar of the Zenith Arena crowd is a physical weight, a crushing wall of sound pressing against my ribcage. My skates carve into the pristine, scarred ice as we take our starting positions for the semifinal, but my mind is still trapped in the suffocating silence of the dressing room. The video of my sister signing away her integrity for a federation payout plays on a relentless, agonizing loop behind my eyelids. I spent three years sharpening myself into a weapon, aiming all my grief and fury…
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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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