Chapter 1: The Anomalist
The universe had a glitch.
Dr. Elias Veyne knew it the way a painter knew a counterfeit stroke—instinct, sharpened by a lifetime of chasing patterns. At 28, he'd redefined cosmology, having solved quantum equations at 12, earning MIT's whispers of "prodigy."
His holoscreen glowed in the lab, neon light from the city's drone-patrolled towers seeping through the blinds. The data screamed error:
[GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT DEVIATION: 0.00000012%]
Statistically insignificant. Mathematically impossible. If unchecked, it could unravel orbits, collapsing stars.
Elias leaned back, the hum of servers drowning out the city's buzz. His office was a calculated chaos—equations sketched on transparent glass, old astronomy books piled beside neuro-linguistic AI manuals, coffee cups balanced like monuments to exhaustion.
The anomaly wasn't just gravity. Quantum decay rates flickered; redshift data showed space-time warping unnaturally, as if an unseen force tugged reality. These were deliberate fractures, hinting at a system beyond comprehension.
Someone's rewriting the universe, and it's not God.
He rubbed his temples, 32 hours without sleep blurring his vision. Numbers snapped back into focus. He couldn't stop. Not when Liam's memory burned—Liam, who'd dragged him to stargazing nights, pointing at Orion and saying, "Bet you'll name a star someday, Eli."
A knock.
"Elias." Dr. Mira Kovač stood in the doorway, arms crossed, her lab coat crisp despite the hour. Her silver ID badge reflected the screen's data like a mirror of secrets. "You've been here 32 hours."
"I'm close," he muttered, zooming in on a star cluster. "The redshift's off. Like space-time's buffering."
Mira stepped in, shutting the door with a hiss. "Proving the cosmos has a bug?" she asked, half amused, half exasperated.
"It's more than that." Elias' fingers danced over the holoscreen. "These glitches could destabilize galaxies."
She sighed. "Elias, sleep." Her voice softened. "Liam wouldn't want you killing yourself."
He froze. Liam was gone.
Two Weeks Earlier
Elias clutched the coroner's report, an official document from the city's coroner—a public investigator of deaths—detailing Liam Chen's cause of death based on autopsy and evidence. It read:
Liam Chen – Cause of Death: Acute Icarus-9 Toxicity.
Bullshit. Liam, the marathon-running, herbal-tea-drinking optimist, didn't touch drugs. Yet the police closed the case in 48 hours, no investigation.
Rain blurred the streets outside as Elias entered the monolithic headquarters of Nexis Dynamics, a pharmaceutical titan whose labs reached into neuroscience, gene editing, and covert military contracts. The building exuded cold efficiency—brushed steel, synthetic air, and a silence that smelled of legal immunity.
Its silver helix logo pulsed under sterile lights, drones humming in static patterns.
"I need to speak to your bioethics team," Elias demanded at the reception desk.
Bioethics—the moral watchdogs of science—was his only hope to uncover Nexis' role in Liam's death.
The receptionist, more machine than person in demeanor, didn't look up. "Appointment?"
"No. This." He slapped down Liam's bank records—a $10,000 Nexis deposit, dated the day before his death.
Her smile froze. Fingers pressed a button. "Security."
"I'm not leaving until someone explains why Nexis paid my friend before he overdosed on your drug." Elias' voice was steel, his eyes unblinking.
Two suited men materialized behind him, their movements unnaturally synchronized. The receptionist's shark-like smile returned. "Dr. Veyne, file a formal complaint."
He snapped a photo of her name tag. "I will. And I'll name you in it." He walked out, their stares boring into him, a drone's red eye tracking his steps through the neon-lit streets.
Now
Elias' apartment reeked of coffee, sweat, and paranoia. Walls were plastered with Liam's case—photos, timelines, chemical breakdowns, leaked Nexis drug trial records. Icarus-9 was a failed neural enhancer, abandoned after test subjects suffered seizures, hallucinations, and in some cases, coma.
Liam, a biochemist, had been digging into it. Quietly. Anonymously. Until he died.
His laptop pinged—a lab simulation finished. He opened it.
[ACCESS DENIED: RESTRICTED COSMOLOGICAL PARAMETERS]
He typed furiously, overriding protocols.
[UNAUTHORIZED INQUIRY DETECTED. TERMINATING CONNECTION.]
Blackout.
A drone's hum outside. A shadow at the window.
Elias dove. A bullet tore through the glass, slicing through the air with the sound of finality. Pain exploded in his chest, hot and absolute. His vision spun, blood pooling beneath him, fingers twitching toward the stars in his mind.
His last thought was Liam's grin under Orion's stars.
Then—nothing.
The Voice in the Void
[SOUL #9,002,445,121: ELIAS VEYNE]
[TERMINATION CAUSE: EXTERNAL OVERRIDE]
[ANOMALY DETECTED: COGNITIVE DEVIATION]
Awareness flickered. No body. Just golden threads of code weaving through darkness.
A vast, sterile voice spoke: "You have perceived the fractures. This is forbidden."
Elias tried to scream. Nothing.
"The multiverse is a hierarchy. The strong consume the weak. You will be granted a marble."
A glowing orb appeared—a nascent universe.
"Rule it. Hide it. Lest the Code corrects you. Newbie protection: 999,999,999,999,999 universal years."
The void swallowed him...