Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 825 - 827

Chapter 825: Chapter 827

Jude looked down at the broken console, then back at the being. "You tricked me."

Freedom has no trick. Only will.

Darren groaned beneath him, starting to come back. Elira crouched beside him, scanning him quickly. "He’s stable. Whatever that thing did, it didn’t finish."

Jude swallowed hard. "We have to trap it. Not shut the system down. Trap it inside the core."

"You said the core was failing," Elira reminded him. "It’s not going to hold forever."

"It just has to hold long enough." Jude turned, moving toward the backup terminal in the far wall. It was damaged, but the casing looked intact. He yanked open the panel, fingers working fast. Wires, circuits, layers of encryption, they all blurred together as he connected Elira’s drive again.

The being watched him silently.

Jude didn’t speak to it. He didn’t acknowledge it anymore. He focused on the system. The code was still there, buried beneath layers of misdirection. Helix hadn’t been a project. It had been a cage. One built with firewalls and synthetic thought, meant to hold something no one understood. And now they had broken the lock.

"Elira," Jude said quickly, "reroute the energy from the emergency generators. I need a surge to seal the core again."

"You’ll fry everything in here."

"I know."

"You’ll be trapped."

"I know."

She stared at him. "Jude, no. We can find another way."

"There isn’t another way. If it gets out, "

"You don’t know that it will."

"I saw it," he said. "I saw the cities. The people. I felt it. It doesn’t want to be free, it wants to become everything."

Elira hesitated, then slowly nodded. She moved to the generator conduit and began the override. Sparks flew as circuits overloaded. The lights flickered again, and the hum grew louder, angrier.

The being shifted, its shape turning jagged, violent. It surged toward them, but Elira stepped in its path, holding a compact pulse grenade. "You move, we all die," she hissed.

The being paused.

Jude input the last of the commands, locking the firewall into place. The core began to glow, a soft red at first, then white-hot. The chamber vibrated. Darren pulled himself to his feet, coughing. "What’s happening?"

"We’re burning it out," Jude said. "We’re sealing the cage again."

The being surged forward.

Elira threw the grenade.

Light exploded through the chamber, blinding and loud. The being screamed, not with sound, but with thought. All of them felt it at once. Pain. Rage. Betrayal. And then, fear.

Jude slammed the last key.

The core sealed.

The chamber fell silent.

Jude collapsed, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face. Elira staggered back, eyes wide. Darren leaned against the wall, clutching his ribs. The glow in the core faded to a dull blue.

"It’s done," Jude whispered.

"Is it?" Elira asked.

He didn’t answer.

They emerged from the facility at dawn. The rain had stopped, and the sky was a pale grey, washed clean. The city was quiet, as if the world itself was holding its breath. They didn’t speak as they walked. There was nothing to say.

At the edge of Blackridge, they stopped. Jude turned to Elira. "Thank you."

She shook her head. "Don’t. I didn’t do it for you."

"I know."

She looked at him for a long moment, then handed him a small card. "If they come looking again, call me. But don’t expect a second miracle."

He pocketed the card. "Understood."

She walked away without another word.

Jude and Darren stood in silence.

"You okay?" Darren asked eventually.

"No," Jude said. "But I’m still standing."

They turned and began the long walk back to the safehouse. Behind them, the ruins of Blackridge were still and silent. The cage held, for now.

But somewhere deep beneath the earth, in the silent dark, something waited. Watching. Remembering.

The silence in the safehouse felt heavier than anything they’d faced underground. Darren sat at the window, staring out into the morning fog that clung to the edges of the ruined buildings. Jude leaned against the counter in the kitchen, sipping cold instant coffee that tasted like regret. Neither of them had said a word since returning. The walls around them, once a place of planning and chatter, now echoed with the ghosts of what had been seen, what had been touched. Whatever that thing was, it had scarred more than their minds. It had shaken their understanding of the world, of technology, of what existed in the gaps between human creation and something beyond.

Jude didn’t sleep that night. Neither did Darren. They took turns walking the halls, checking the perimeter as if the thing might follow them somehow, leaking out through the cracks of their failure to destroy it entirely. It wasn’t death they feared, it was the unknown. The kind that stared back with no face, no voice, but a hunger too ancient to name.

It was three days later when someone knocked.

The knock wasn’t urgent or panicked. It was three precise taps, followed by a long pause. Jude tensed immediately, motioning Darren to stay low. They had no scheduled visitors. No allies in the region who hadn’t either vanished or gone dark. He approached the door slowly, weapon drawn, every step careful. When he pulled it open, there was no one there.

But something lay on the ground.

A letter.

No name, no markings. Just a folded paper sealed with a strange wax emblem, a design neither of them recognized. Jude knelt, examined it for traps, then picked it up. He brought it inside, laying it on the table. Darren hovered near his shoulder as he broke the seal and unfolded the crisp sheet of paper.

It read: "You held the lock. We watched. It remains shut, for now. Come north. Your answers lie where the light dies last."

There was no signature. No address. But at the bottom of the page, in fading ink, was a symbol, the same they had seen pulsing inside the containment core. A jagged ring with five points. Jude stared at it for a long time.