Zair stood frozen, eyes locked on Aya’s pale face.
Her breathing was shallow.
The wires wrapped around her head pulsed slowly blue, then red.
The machine had accepted her.
But would it give her back?
The boy clenched his fists.
“I'll go in after her.”
One of the masked men grabbed his shoulder.
“You’re too young. The device won’t bind with your system. It needs full neural maturity.”
“I don’t care,” the boy snapped.
“She saved my life!”
Zair pulled him aside.
“This isn’t a place for bravery. It’s a place for loss.”
His voice was low. Strained.
“There are ways to wake her… but every path here costs something.”
The taller masked man stepped forward.
“There is another way. But it’s not for children.”
“What way?” Zair asked.
They turned down a hallway darker than the rest.
The walls dripped condensation.
Symbols were etched into the stone.
Symbols from before the First Grid War.
They stopped before a heavy, rusted vault door.
The masked man tapped it twice, then once.
It creaked open, groaning like something alive.
Inside was a metal chair bolted to the floor.
Cables dangled from above.
Screens flickered, showing broken code.
“This is the Trade Seat,” the masked man whispered.
“Here… one life can be exchanged for another.”
Zair narrowed his eyes.
“You mean a sacrifice?”
“No,” the man answered.
“Something worse. You give up your truth your memory, your identity and she may wake.
But if you’re rejected… both of you disappear.”
The boy stepped toward it.
But Zair held him back again.
“No. If anyone does this… it’s me.”
Before he could sit, the lights shut off.
The walls buzzed.
A humming tone echoed through the underground.
The Spiral Door.
It was unlocking.
The masked men drew their weapons.
“We’ve been tracked,” one whispered.
A voice boomed from the hall:
“Hand over the girl and the boy. The map is no longer yours.”
Then a black cylinder flew through the doorway stuck to the ceiling.
Boom.
The explosion sent them flying.
Smoke poured in like floodwater.
In the chaos, Zair grabbed Aya.
The boy followed.
They escaped down the back tunnels.
From the smoke emerged polished black boots.
Seven men.
No names.
No faces.
Each holding a glowing red card.
Their leader, tall and cloaked in metal armor, spoke:
“The Final Weapon is awake. Dead Zone East is ours.”
He stepped toward the broken Trade Seat, then crushed it under his boot.
The past had ended.
Now began the war of memory, betrayal, and blood.
To be continued...
About the Creator
Hazrat Usman Usman
Hazrat Usman
A lover of technology and Books
Keep reading
More stories from Hazrat Usman Usman and writers in Fiction and other communities.
Lightning Never Strikes Twice
The distant rumble, the sudden deluge, the crescendo of sound, the flash of light, the explosive energy — it never gets old. I became an amateur storm chaser about two years ago. My wife, Cindy suggested it. Sort of. She said, "Alex, you know this cancer is killing me. I've come to terms with that, but you're smothering me. Go join a band, write a book, or become a storm chaser, for all I care. I love you, but you need a hobby."
By Julie Lacksonen5 days ago in Fiction
Shadows of Greed
The city never truly slept. Even late at night, faint lights glowed in office towers, and the distant hum of traffic echoed through empty streets. Inside one of those glass buildings, Adrian Keller sat alone at his desk. The rest of the finance department had gone home hours ago. Their computers were dark, chairs pushed neatly under desks. Only Adrian’s monitor still glowed in the quiet office. Numbers filled the screen. Rows. Columns. Transactions. At first glance, everything looked normal. Just another routine financial report. Adrian had reviewed hundreds like it before. But tonight something felt wrong. A small discrepancy had caught his attention earlier in the evening. It was nothing dramatic—just a tiny mismatch between two transactions. The kind of mistake that usually meant someone typed the wrong number. Yet the longer Adrian stared at the screen, the stranger the numbers became. One transaction led to another. Then another. Soon Adrian realized the error wasn’t a mistake at all. Money was moving through the company’s accounts in strange, hidden paths. Large amounts were being transferred through multiple shell companies before quietly returning to accounts that looked perfectly legitimate. Millions of dollars were circulating through the system like water moving through underground tunnels. Carefully hidden. Carefully designed. Someone had built this structure deliberately. Adrian leaned back in his chair, his heartbeat slowly rising. This wasn’t sloppy accounting. It was a financial maze. And someone inside the company had created it. A Name That Shouldn’t Be There Curiosity can be dangerous. Most people would have closed the file and walked away. Adrian couldn’t. The deeper he searched through the financial records, the more complicated the pattern became. Fake consulting payments. Temporary companies that existed for only a few weeks. Accounts that opened and disappeared without explanation. Whoever designed the system was intelligent. Patient. Careful. Then Adrian saw something that made his stomach tighten. A name appeared beside one of the transactions. He froze. Because it wasn’t the name of a stranger. It was someone he worked with every day. Marcus Hall. Adrian whispered the name quietly to himself. Marcus was his closest colleague in the department. They had worked side by side for years, sharing deadlines, coffee breaks, and long discussions about promotions and future plans. Marcus was friendly. Relaxed. The kind of person everyone trusted. Yet the financial trail pointed directly toward him. Adrian stared at the screen, unsure what to believe. Was Marcus involved in something illegal? Or was someone using his identity to hide their tracks? The question hung in the room like a dark shadow. The Message Just as Adrian considered leaving the office for the night, his phone buzzed. A message appeared on the screen. It was from Marcus. The text was short. “We need to talk. Not here.” Adrian frowned. Marcus rarely sent messages like this. He typed a reply. “What’s going on?” The message failed to deliver. Marcus’s phone was already switched off. A few seconds later, another notification appeared. This time it wasn’t a message. It was a location pin. Adrian opened the map. The location was far from the city center, near the old harbor docks where abandoned warehouses stood along the water. A strange place for a meeting. Adrian hesitated. Something about the situation felt wrong. But curiosity has a powerful pull. And some questions refuse to remain unanswered. The Harbor The docks were almost silent when Adrian arrived. Fog drifted slowly over the dark water. Rusted shipping containers stood stacked beside empty warehouses. A single streetlight flickered near the edge of the pier. Under that light, Adrian saw a car. Its engine was running. The headlights cut through the fog like glowing eyes. Adrian approached slowly. The driver’s door creaked open. For a moment, no one stepped out. Then a man emerged from the shadows. Adrian stopped walking. The man standing beside the car was not Marcus. He was a stranger. Tall. Calm. Watching Adrian carefully. In his hand was a small recording device. A red light blinked softly. Recording. Adrian’s voice came out lower than he expected. “Where’s Marcus?” The stranger glanced toward the dark water of the harbor. “Marcus made a mistake,” he said quietly. “A very expensive mistake.” A chill ran through Adrian’s body. The hidden accounts. The missing money. The secret transfers. This situation was much larger than he had imagined. A Dangerous Truth The stranger took a slow step closer. “Marcus tried to expose us,” he continued. Adrian’s heart pounded harder. “Expose who?” The man didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he held up the recorder. The red light continued blinking. “Let’s find out something first,” the stranger said calmly. “Are you planning to do the same thing Marcus did?” Adrian looked toward the dark harbor water. Suddenly the entire situation made sense. Marcus hadn’t been the mastermind behind the hidden money. He had discovered it. Just like Adrian had. And now Marcus was gone. Which meant Adrian had stepped directly into the same danger. The stranger smiled faintly. Wind swept across the docks, carrying the distant sound of sirens somewhere in the city. “Greed is a powerful force,” the stranger said. “People will do anything to protect it.” Adrian stood frozen, realizing the truth too late. Marcus hadn’t invited him here. Someone else had. And now Adrian was standing in the middle of a secret far darker than simple corruption. The recorder’s red light kept blinking. The fog grew thicker around the harbor. And Adrian Keller understood one terrifying fact. The shadows of greed were far deeper than he had ever imagined. And he had just become part of them.
By The Insight Ledger about 7 hours ago in Fiction
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.