Skye and the other Residuals recoiled, pressing themselves against the wall as the double doors exploded inward with a deafening crash. One of the metal slabs flew across the room and hit the floor with a solid, final thud.
"What now?" Skye hissed, her glare slicing toward the intruders.
They looked like security guards—uniformed, armed, precise—but their eyes gave them away. Blank. Cold. Too synchronized. Minds hijacked by the system.
The leader stepped forward. His boots echoed like gunshots in the silence. His eyes locked on Skye, and just like that, her defiance cracked. She shrank back, heart stuttering against her ribs.
"You," he said, voice sharp enough to cut steel. "Come with us."
She froze. A breath caught in her throat.
Then panic surged.
"No! I'm not going anywhere with you!" she shrieked, backing up. "Let me go! RACHEL!"
Her voice echoed down the hallway.
No response.
They didn't even flinch. Cold hands gripped her arms. She kicked, screamed, twisted—nothing.
Rachel didn't come.
Skye's voice broke as they dragged her across the threshold. "Rachel, please—don't let them take me again!"
Still nothing. No footsteps. No rescue. Just the sound of her own sobs choking out of her chest.
She'd been here before.
The white lights. The endless questions. The wires in her head.
Tears welled and spilled. Not again. Not again.
"I don't want to be tortured anymore," she whispered, almost too soft to hear.
But the system had no use for whispers. Only silence.
And it was already closing in.
Back at the bridge, Rachel and Harris sprinted across the rails bridge like the world was collapsing behind them.
The wind tore at their clothes. Metal slabs rang beneath their feet — each step a scream of urgency, each breath a countdown.
The other side was just ahead.
Ten feet. Eight.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: PROTOCOL BREACH DETECTED]
>> Emergency measures initiated
>> Subject: RACHEL AMARI
>> Accomplice: RESISTANT ENTITY — Codename: HARRIS
>> Infraction: Unauthorized traversal of restricted boundary
>> Status: HIGH PRIORITY INTERCEPTION
Rachel's eyes widened as the warning sliced into her vision — not on a screen, but inside her skull. The world fractured for a breath. Pixelated shards danced across the edges of her sight. Then—
Freeze.
Her body obeyed before her mind could fight.
One foot hovered midair. The other barely skimmed the steel rail. Arms outstretched, lungs mid-inhale — frozen. Time didn't stop. Only she did.
[System Override: Neural Motor Lock Engaged]
>> Resistance detected... recalibrating
>> Deliver deterrent signal
>> Administering…
A wave of cold slammed into her spine.
It was not physical. Not entirely.
It was the same icy knife she'd felt before — the one that dug beneath skin, past bone, into memory. A glitch in her bloodstream. Her thoughts stuttered like a corrupted file.
She tried to scream Harris's name.
Nothing came out.
Across from her, Harris jerked to a stop. He wasn't frozen — not yet. But the drones were coming. She could see them now. Dozens of them. Holographic eyes forming midair, blinking red like judgment. A siren that didn't make sound.
And behind her?
The last echoes of Skye's scream.
"Rachel!"
But Rachel couldn't move.
Couldn't look back.
Couldn't help.
There was no fighting the system.
Rachel could feel it — the slow, drowning sensation of her own resistance fading like static on a dead channel. Her muscles gave up first. Then her breath. Then her will.
"I submit," her lips moved, barely more than a whisper, a final surrender waiting to be stamped into code.
But before the words could crawl out, the world exploded in blue.
Light surged across her vision, blinding and fierce. She blinked, squinted—and there it was.
The box.
Harris's hand was outstretched, clutching it like a lifeline. The thing pulsed with a quiet rage, crackling blue energy like it had just mainlined caffeine and vengeance.
It didn't want to submit. Not today.
Rachel blinked again. "You've got to be kidding me…"
The box launched a blue beam straight into the nearest drone — and bang! Metal rained down like robotic confetti.
"Well, that's... something," she muttered, halfway between awe and horror.
It took down a second drone with a sizzling hiss of pure attitude.
But Rachel wasn't relieved. No triumphant music swelled. No inner monologue screamed 'hope!' or 'freedom!'
No.
Instead, she felt the sinking, cold panic of someone watching a butter knife try to fight a tank.
"I mean—it's just a box!" she hissed. "A glorified angry toaster!"
Then the system responded.
Red light surged.
A coil of shimmering crimson burst from the hovering hologram — sleek, sharp, and terrifyingly fast. It wrapped around the blue box like a python on espresso, looping over and over until the poor thing was lost in a hurricane of lasers.
Rachel's jaw dropped. "Wait... since when could the hologram fight back?! I thought it was just the system's floating PowerPoint assistant!"
But no. Apparently, it came with built-in doom.
She expected the box to scream or spark, or maybe explode in a valiant, dramatic sacrifice.
But it didn't.
The system wasn't trying to destroy it.
It was studying it.
Analyzing.
Preserving.
Why?
Rachel frowned, mind racing. Why would the system care? What could this angry Rubik's cube possibly have that the all-powerful Feedback System wanted?
"Of course I'm valuable," a tiny, smug voice piped up from the coil of red light.
Rachel flinched. "You're really alive?!"
"You thought I'd leave first? I'm insulted," the box chirped, sounding like a British librarian with boundary issues.
Relief crashed over her in a wave.
"You stupid little gremlin," Rachel whispered. "I thought I'd be stuck fighting alone again."
"You were fighting alone. That's why we're in this mess," the box replied. "Now hush. I'm trying to scan the system back. If we die, at least let it be with dignity."
Rachel smiled. Just a twitch. But it was something.
It wasn't hope, exactly.
But it was loud. And annoying.
And hers. For now.
The war between colors raged in Harris's hand—blue defiance wrapped in furious red. Sparks danced between his fingers as the small box trembled violently, light flickering like a dying star trying to outshine the sun.
Rachel couldn't move.
The system's lock still gripped her like ice around her joints, but her eyes tracked every pulse, every stutter in the glow. The box wasn't giving up. Not even as the red light coiled tighter, pressing in like a snake made of code.
And then—the system vibrated.
Not just the air. The world.
Rachel felt it in her teeth, her bones, even the hairs on her arms twitching like the very code of reality was glitching.
Harris's hand shook.
He winced, jaw clenched. The heat bleeding from the box had gone from warm to scalding in seconds. His skin sizzled, veins illuminated by something more than blood.
He held on.
For a moment.
Then just as he began to let go—white light exploded from his palm.
Like a supernova. Like a scream. Like judgment.
Rachel's vision went blank. Her ears rang like someone had slammed a cathedral bell inside her skull.
She wanted to raise her hands.
Cover her face.
But the system still had her frozen—arms out, leg bent, like some tragic statue mid-leap. Her eyelids clenched shut, but even behind them the white burned bright.
One minute. That's how long it lasted.
Sixty long, agonizing seconds of nothing but blinding light and silence. And then—
Darkness fell again. Real, soft, normal darkness.
Rachel blinked her way back into the world.
The first thing she saw was Harris.
Still standing.
The box sat in his palm, glowing faintly white like an ember cooling after a storm. The red coils that had once strangled it? Gone. Dissolved. Like they'd never existed at all.
And the drones?
The air where they'd floated was empty.
No eyes. No holograms. No hum.
Gone.
The system had vanished.
Rachel let out a shaky breath, chest tight with disbelief.
Harris turned to her, still stunned, his brow furrowed in a mixture of awe and confusion.
Then the voice came.
"Shouldn't you lower your leg and arms now?"
Rachel blinked.
"You don't look good in a yoga pose."
She groaned aloud. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I was almost absorbed by a sentient surveillance network."
"And you looked very unflattering while doing it," the box added helpfully. "Next time, scream less. It distorts my signal."
Her frozen limbs finally twitched. Movement returned in small cracks and pops, like a thawing statue.
She dropped her leg and flailed her arms down, nearly falling over. Her knees buckled.
But she was free.
They were alive.
The box dimmed slightly in Harris's palm, as if winking.
"You're welcome," it whispered.
Rachel scowled. "Next time, maybe save us from the yoga."
"Next time, bring gloves."
##Lovely readers, please add the novel in your library. And sorry for the delay.