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Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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Rook The adrenaline crash always hits like a physical blow to the spine. I make it through the security checkpoints of the senior cadet barracks purely on muscle memory and the sheer, terrifying force of will keeping my knees locked. The iron door of my quarters slides shut behind us, engaging the heavy magnetic seal with a dull clunk. The second the lock engages, my vision swims. I stagger forward, one heavy hand slamming against the cold steel of the bulkhead to keep myself upright. "Rook!"…-
24.4 K • Completed
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Rook The silence in the iron-walled quarters is a physical weight, pressing down on my lungs until I can barely draw a breath. Mara stands by the door, her hand resting against the cold steel bulkhead. She hasn't run. She hasn't called the military police to drag the Republic’s favorite battery out into the canyon to hang. But the sheer, devastating clarity in her eyes as she looks at the pulsing violet scars on my chest is a condemnation worse than any court-martial. I look down at my own hands. My…
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24.4 K • Completed
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Rook The extinction code does not sound like a siren. It sounds like the end of the world. The three discordant, descending notes vibrate through the petrified walls of the alcove, rattling my teeth and turning the adrenaline in my veins to ice. The beam of synthetic, concentrated sunlight tearing into the night sky from the central tower is so bright it casts hard, black shadows against the stone, washing out the natural moonlight entirely. "Get dressed," I snap, already reaching for my…
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24.4 K • Completed
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Mara The descent into the marrow-chasms feels like climbing down the throat of a dying star. We abandon the sniper nest, dropping into a sheer, vertical ventilation shaft that Rook knows from his years of smuggling contraband parts. The deeper we go, the hotter the petrified stone becomes. The pale, sickly light of the sun artillery bleeding through the fissures in the rock casts moving, jagged shadows over us. The walls are vibrating with a frequency that rattles the enamel of my teeth. Ashwake is…
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24.4 K • Completed
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Mara The darkness is absolute, thick with the settling dust of a shattered god. I do not know how many hours I have been buried in the collapsed heart chamber. The reinforced maintenance bulkhead held against the catastrophic implosion of the Red Meridian campus, forming a small, suffocating pocket of air amidst millions of tons of pulverized limestone and petrified bone. I am kneeling on the buckled iron grating, my arms wrapped fiercely around Rook’s motionless body. I have pressed my ear to his…
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24.4 K • Completed
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Juniper The purple beam of chained lightning does not just strike the matriarch; it eclipses the world. The sound of the impact is a catastrophic, bone-rattling boom that instantly vaporizes the falling snow for a mile in every direction. The concentrated energy of hundreds of tortured hatchlings slams into Orison’s translucent, liquid-glass chest. For one agonizing second, the ancient storm dragon holds the line. Her fractal, bioluminescent scars flare with a blinding, desperate green light, trying…-
24.0 K • Completed
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Talia The mechanical grinding of the kinetic cannon is the only sound left on the shattered deck of the dreadnought. The localized EMP I threw wiped out every electronic circuit on the flagship, but Admiral Vance is a relic of the old wars. He knows that when the advanced systems fail, kinetic force remains absolute. The massive, secondary weapons platform he stands upon operates on heavy steel gears and pneumatic pressure, entirely immune to the blackout. The ruby-red beam of the laser sight—powered…
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24.0 K • Completed
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Talia "You lied to the Admiral's face without so much as a spike in your pulse," Juniper says, her voice a low drawl from the corner of my private quarters. I ignore her, leaning over the heavy oak drafting table. The glow of the bioluminescent desk lamp casts sharp shadows over the hydro-acoustic charts I have unrolled across the wood. It took me two hours to forge the official patrol reports from our disastrous Polar Crown exam, burying the acoustic anomalies beneath layers of fabricated…
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24.0 K • Completed
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Juniper The metallic click echoing from the darkness of the vault is the sound of a secondary deadbolt engaging. It is an automated failsafe, a preservation lock triggered by the change in hydraulic pressure. "Juniper!" Talia gasps, her knees finally giving out. She slumps against the reinforced steel door, her right hand still brutally pinned in the rusted hinge. The dragon bond floods my nervous system with a terrifying, white-hot spike of her pain. It hits me so hard my vision actually…
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24.0 K • Completed
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Juniper The tempest-skiff’s repulsor engine screams as I push the throttle past the redline. I am flying blind through a Category 5 squall, seventy miles off the coast of the Aurora Sound Naval College. The wind shears against the fuselage with the force of a physical hammer, threatening to rip the control yoke straight out of my hands. I do not have a flight suit. I do not have a sanctioned transponder. I stole a decommissioned coastal glider from the civilian docks, and its heating grid failed ten…
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24.0 K • Completed
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