EDEN
Elianila, an AI Architect, is part of an elite team tasked with designing a global system meant to prevent threats, manage disasters, and distribute resources to vulnerable regions. After five years of tireless work with her colleagues, she uncovers disturbing anomalies, code-named, X-variables, that flag individuals according to criteria she never programmed.
As Elianila digs deeper to understand what the X-variables measure and where their origin, she finds herself in direct conflict with the authorities. Soon, the System marks her and her daughter as threats - targets to be eliminated.
With a small band of colleagues and dissidents, Elianila goes on the run, hiding in places beyond the Systems reach. As they evade surveillance, they race against time to warn others, expose the truth, and fight back against the omnipresent authority of the System.
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Chapter 6
Elianila's Workstation
Same Day, 11:30 a.m.
Two hours had passed since the meeting ended, but Elianila couldn't shake off the disquiet thoughts swirling in her head. Nothing substantive came from the meeting in solving the mystery of the three variables. Instead, her concerns were waved off as if she was paranoid.
She stared at the neural network architecture spread across her three monitors. Lines of code scrolled down one screen, data visualizations flashed on another, and the third displayed the system's decision tree – branches spreading like veins, like roots, like something organic that had learned to think.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, then pulled up the file she'd been avoiding for weeks.
She opened it.
Graphs appeared showing the mysterious variables that had haunted her for six months. X_VAR_001 through X_VAR_089. Eighty-nine variables she'd never programmed, measuring something she couldn't identify, overriding conventional analysis with inexplicable confidence.
And suddenly, she was back there. Back to the moment she'd first seen them.
*****
October 2084
It was 11:30 a.m. She was at her workstation, running diagnostics on the pattern recognition algorithms - routine maintenance, checking accuracy rates, looking for drift in the training data. Everything looked normal. Then she pulled up the decision matrices for the latest test batch.
Subject 4,721 was flagged as moderate risk with a confidence of 67% based on social media activity patterns, financial stress indicators, and location history anomalies. The math checked out.
The next subject, 4,722, was flagged as low risk with a confidence of 43%. Conventional metrics were all green. It made sense.
Subject 4,723 was flagged as ‘PRIORITY ALPHA’ with a confidence of 97%. Elianila frowned. She pulled up the conventional analysis. Social media: Normal. Financial: Stable. Biometric stress: Baseline. Communication patterns: Unremarkable. Location history: Routine. Criminal record: None. Behavioural indicators: All within standard parameters. So, why had the System flagged them with ninety-seven percent confidence rate?
She drilled deeper into the decision tree following the logic path backward through the neural network layers. From Layer 1 to 50, processing conventional data all showed green. From Layer 51-100, the secondary analysis showed nothing unusual. From layers 101-150, the pattern convergence analysis showed some minor correlations but nothing significant. At Layer 178, she noticed something had changed. A new input stream she didn't recognize had variables labelled simply X_VAR_037, X_VAR_041, and X_VAR_052. All three showed values above threshold. All three overrode the conventional analysis. All three were weighted at 'PRIORITY OVERRIDE.’
Confused and feeling uneasy, she checked the code repository. No recent commits adding new variables. She reviewed the training data. It had nothing that would generate the categories. She traced the variable origins. She got the response, ‘ERROR: SOURCE_NOT_FOUND.’ She was baffled. Where did the variables originate from? Could it be within the System? Why did they not have the source code?
She spent the rest of the night investigating. She found fourteen more subjects with similar patterns. By dawn, she'd compiled a preliminary report. By afternoon, she'd scheduled a meeting with Ashford. His response had been the same as in the meeting. "This is what I call machine learning evolution, picking on emergent patterns. The system is working better than we designed."
But it hadn't felt like evolution. Something didn't sit right with the system.
*****
Elianila blinked, pulling herself back to the present.
"Still staring at those files?"
She jumped slightly. Marcus had appeared beside her workstation, holding two coffee cups. He set one in front of her.
"Can't help it," she said.
"Can't help it or can't let it go?"
"Both," she said in a helpless voice.
Marcus pulled up a chair and glanced around. The lab was half-empty. Most people had gone to lunch.
"We need to talk," he said quietly.
"I know."
"Really talk. Not just acknowledge concerns and move on."
Elianila took a sip.
"What if Ashford's right?" she said. "What if this is just emergent behaviour? What if I'm seeing problems that aren't there because I'm exhausted and paranoid?"
"What if you're seeing problems that are there because you're paying attention?" Marcus countered. "What if the exhaustion and pressure are exactly what they're counting on to keep us from asking hard questions?"
"They? You sound like a conspiracy theorist."
"Do I?" Marcus pulled up something on his tablet and angled it so she could see. "I've been doing my own investigation quietly. Look at this."
It was a timeline of EDEN's development marked with key events.
"When you look closely, you'll see the X-variables were introduced on the fifty-eighth month,” Marcus said. “It appears Ashford authorised an upgrade or modification in October 2084.”
He continued. "I think the upgrade that was introduced into EDEN has armed it with the capability of looking through our surveillance network and, consequently, identifying people based on criteria we never programmed it for."
Elianila wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to tell him he was exhausted, paranoid, and seeing patterns that weren't there. But she couldn't. She knew deep down she'd been thinking the same thing for months.
"What are we supposed to do?" she whispered. "Walk away? Blow the whistle? We signed a Classification Agreement (CA) that would put us in prison. And even if we could talk, who would believe us? We would sound crazy."
"I don't know," Marcus admitted.
"Maybe we're wrong. Maybe there's a rational explanation."
"You don't believe that." Marcus's voice was gentle but firm. "I can see it in your face. You've known something was wrong for six months. You've just been afraid to admit it."
He was right.
"I need to think," Elianila said. "I need to... I don't know. Research. Investigate. Figure out what actually happened that month."
"Be careful. If Ashford finds out you're digging into this..."
"He won't." She closed the X-variable file and pulled up routine system diagnostics. "I'll be discreet."
Marcus stood, picked up his coffee, and walked away.
What was introduced to the system? Might it be looking back at her through the very cameras she'd helped integrate? She glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the lab. Its lens gleamed in the fluorescent light, dark and inscrutable.
*****
The apartment was dark when Elianila finally came through the door. She'd meant to leave by six, then by seven, then by eight. But the X-variable analysis had consumed her. It was almost eleven when she arrived.
She set down her bag quietly, kicked off her shoes, and walked straight to the kitchen. She saw a note on the kitchen counter in her mother's handwriting. “Zara asked about you.”
She closed her eyes, opened them, and re-read it. She folded the letter, put it in her trousers' pocket, and climbed the stairs. Regina’s door was closed. She walked to Zara's room. The door was slightly ajar, a nightlight casting soft shadows across the pink walls. Elianila pushed it open gently.
Her daughter lay in her bed, curled around her stuffed elephant, her face peaceful in sleep. Her hair was styled in small Bantu knots, each one a perfect coil against her scalp, the work of her grandmother. Her small hand was tucked under her cheek. She looked so young, so innocent, so completely unaware that her mother was choosing work over her.
She knelt beside the bed, careful not to wake her. She reached out and gently smoothed Zara's hair, feeling its softness and the warmth of her skin.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, baby."
Zara stirred slightly, murmured something unintelligible, and then settled back into deeper sleep.
She leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering, full-of-all-love kiss she didn't know how to show when she was awake.
"I love you," she whispered. "More than all the stars in the sky."
She stood slowly, her knees protesting. She took one last look at her sleeping daughter, then stepped back into the hallway, closing the door with a soft click.
Her own bedroom felt cold and empty. She didn't bother turning on the light. She stripped off her work clothes and pulled on a t-shirt, too exhausted to do more.
But lying in the dark, she let herself admit what she'd been avoiding for six months. Something was wrong with EDEN, but she had no idea what it was or how to stop it.
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
7.5
For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer.
He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else.
When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg.
Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death.
As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career.
I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived.
I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance.
Then, I opened my eyes.
I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self.
Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power.
I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage.
"I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig."
I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.
7.3
Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift-a way to protect me from a worse fate.
Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."
My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.
They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.
They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.
It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.
That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."
7.1
I worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street just to keep my sick brother alive, enduring endless humiliation from the wealthy family that adopted us.
But when I went to surprise my boyfriend of three years, I found him kissing my spoiled adoptive sister, Tatum.
They were celebrating their engagement to merge their powerful families.
To keep me quiet, my adoptive mother, Eleanor, threatened to freeze my brother's medical trust fund unless I attended the party to play the supportive sister.
Instead, I discovered Eleanor had been embezzling from my brother's life-saving fund to cover her own bad investments.
The nightmare worsened when a drunken Ryder cornered me in my apartment stairwell.
"Once I marry Tatum, Eleanor is giving me control of Liam's trust fund to buy out my father's board members."
He planned to drain my brother's medical money, dump Tatum, and keep me as his mistress.
For a decade, I suffered their abuse hoping for a shred of decency, only to realize they were plotting to leave my brother to die on the streets for corporate greed.
Calling the police wouldn't stop these billionaires. I needed absolute power.
Remembering the dark, predatory gaze of Jaren Jarvis—the ruthless billionaire who had watched me fight back at the party—I canceled my call to 911.
If they wanted to destroy my only family, I was going to use the devil himself to crush theirs.
7.8
"I won't accept your rejection, Lorraine. You are the one I want."
"Then you are as mistaken as the Moon Goddess. I am not fit to be anybody's mate. I... I am a killer. It is what I do."
"I understand. You are a soldier. Which soldier has not killed to protect? I will never hold that against you."
"Wrong. I am a cold-blooded murderer. Being a soldier is just the perfect excuse."
***
Lorraine Spears has spent most of her life as a rogue, surviving by her wits and strength. When devastating war gave her a chance to join the coalition army, her fate became entwined with the alpha queen, Athena. Rising from a mere rogue to right-hand general and beta of the queen's pack, Lorraine lives for duty alone. Yet beneath her stoic exterior, the past haunts her.
Then the Moon Goddess plays her hand, mating Lorraine with the most infuriatingly arrogant alpha she has ever met. Determined to resist him, Lorraine refuses to let a fated mate distract her, while Logan refuses to let her go.
Just when she thinks she might have paid enough for her past sins, bloodcurdling vengeance returns, and everything she thought she knew about her family is revealed as a lie. Reeling from betrayals, unexpected new family, and an obsessed enemy on her heels, Lorraine must decide whether to trust a bond that threatens her clarity or embrace her predicted happily never-after.
7.7
Dasia's twin brother, Gerald, was an e-sports prodigy, the rising star of the Glory team.
But during a crucial moment, he was framed by his own teammates. They orchestrated a trap that completely destroyed his reputation and left his right hand brutally crushed.
Instead of getting him medical help, the club threw him out into the freezing rain, bleeding and disgraced. The manager labeled him useless trash and slapped him with a five-million-dollar termination fee to bleed him dry. Stripped of his pro status, the wealthy bullies at his prep school relentlessly targeted him, mocking his crippled hand and beating him down.
Dasia watched her twin brother cry in his room, his life and dreams shattered by the people he trusted. A violent, suffocating rage boiled in her chest. How could they smile while crushing his hand? Why should the victim be treated like a rotting piece of garbage while the perpetrators get rich and celebrated?
She didn't shed a single tear. She stood in front of the mirror, took a pair of scissors, and ruthlessly hacked off her waist-length hair. She wrapped her chest in coarse medical bandages until her ribs screamed, and pulled on his oversized black hoodie.
"Everything you took from him, I am going to take back with interest."
The girl in the mirror was gone. She was Gerald now. She secretly passed the brutal online tryouts for Glory's biggest rival, the elite Blackflame team, and signed their official contract. The revenge had officially begun.