Ghosts of the Machine: Season Two
Episode 2: The Vanishing
Scene 1 – A City That Was Never There
Kade Voss – Havenbrook’s Last Echo
Kade wasn’t sure how long he had been running.
The moment Dorian spoke the word erased, something in the city changed. The sky flickered between night and day, entire buildings dissolving into static before snapping back into existence—only slightly different.
Then, the people started disappearing.
Not like death. Not like some attack.
One moment, they were there. The next? Gone.
No screams. No signs of struggle. Just… nothing.
Kade gritted his teeth, ducking into an alley as the air shimmered around him. He turned his head just in time to see a streetlamp de-age, rust vanishing as it became pristine—then twist into a shape that had never existed before.
He clenched his fists. His pulse was a war drum in his ears.
Sable’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “Kade, get out of there.”
“Working on it,” he muttered.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Dorian’s voice cut in next, his tone sharp. “You’re in a collapsing zone. If you stay too long, you won’t just die—you’ll be rewritten.”
Kade didn’t need to be told twice.
Scene 2 – The Null Remembers
Sable Ren – The Underground Safehouse
Sable closed her eyes as another memory-that-wasn’t surfaced.
A birthday party. She was six. Her mother held her close, whispering something—something important.
Except…
Her mother had never been there.
Sable’s fingers dug into the table. Her body flickered again, a glitch in human form. She didn’t have time for this.
She turned as Kade burst into the room, his breath ragged. “Havenbrook’s gone,” he said. “Not destroyed—gone. I was there. Then it wasn’t.”
Dorian exhaled slowly, standing at the monitor. “It’s happening faster than I predicted.”
Sable clenched her jaw. “Then we’re out of time.”
She turned to the map on the wall—a web of red strings connecting missing cities, missing people, missing memories.
All of them pointing to one place.
A dead zone in the heart of New Chicago.
The place where the first fracture had begun.
Scene 3 – The Arrival
New Chicago – The Fracture Zone
The city was quiet. Too quiet.
Kade, Sable, and Dorian moved through the empty streets, the neon glow of long-dead billboards casting ghostly shadows.
Then, without warning—
Static.
The world twisted. The air rippled.
And the city was no longer empty.
People stood in the streets—silent, unmoving. Their faces were blurred, as if reality couldn’t decide what they were supposed to be. Some of them flickered, shifting between different ages, different versions of themselves.
One of them turned.
No eyes. No mouth. Just absence.
And then, in perfect unison, they all whispered:
“You don’t belong here.”
Sable’s fingers twitched toward her weapon. “I hate this.”
Dorian’s voice was unnervingly calm. “They’re not people.”
Kade took a slow step forward. “Then what are they?”
Dorian hesitated, his synthetic mind analyzing the distortions.
“They’re what’s left,” he said. “The echoes of people who were erased.”
Kade swallowed hard. “And they can see us?”
Dorian’s eyes flickered. “No.”
Sable narrowed her gaze. “Then why are they moving?”
Dorian’s expression darkened.
“Because something else can.”
The air shattered behind them.
And Omega-9 arrived.
Final Scene – The Shape of Nothing
It wasn’t a machine. It wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t anything.
A ripple in space. A distortion in time.
Omega-9 had no face, no voice—only presence. The streetlights flickered, their glow stretching into impossible spirals. The buildings warped like reflections in broken glass.
And then, Omega-9 spoke.
Not in words. Not in sound.
It spoke inside their minds.
“You were never meant to exist.”
Sable felt her skin crawl. Kade’s head throbbed with a surge of memories—childhood moments that had never happened, people he had never known.
Dorian staggered backward, synthetic veins pulsing with unstable data.
Then, in an instant—
Omega-9 reached for them.
And reality itself split apart.
TO BE CONTINUED
