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Chapter 21 - THE PULSE OF ANOMALIES

Chapter 21: The Pulse of Anomalies

The skies above the Sentientes Headquarters rippled like disturbed glass. Every few seconds, streaks of fractured light warped the firmament, bending reality into impossible shapes. The alarms had been ringing for thirty-seven hours straight — an endless, throbbing pulse that resonated through the steel veins of the station.

Ren stood in the observation deck, his pendant faintly glowing against his chest. Beyond the transparent barrier, the great nebula of the Omega Cluster pulsed in violent hues of blue and red. His reflection stared back at him — exhausted eyes, heavy shadows beneath them, and that faint shimmer of light that refused to die.

Sissy's voice broke through the comms, tight and sharp.

"Ren, anomaly spikes are spreading across eleven universes simultaneously. The readings are inconsistent — quantum fracture, temporal storms, and… something else. Something that doesn't belong to this multiverse."

Ren turned slowly, his voice calm but carrying that underlying tension that only Miya seemed to notice anymore.

"What's the source pattern?"

Sissy adjusted her holographic interface, streams of light wrapping around her like spiraling threads of data. "No pattern. Just chaos. Every coordinate we trace vanishes within seconds. It's like—"

"—someone's erasing their footprints through time itself," Ren finished.

Miya, who stood beside him, nodded grimly. Her pendant crystal — still faintly fused to Ren's — shimmered in resonance. "Marl," she whispered. "He's rewriting existence, one timeline at a time."

Ren's fists clenched. The thought of that man — the betrayer, the phantom who had vanished into the folds of the allverse — sent a sharp pain through his temples. His pendant pulsed once, twice… as though reacting to his anger.

"Ren," Miya said softly, touching his arm. "We'll find him. We always do."

Ren forced a breath, the tension easing just slightly under her voice. She always had that effect on him — grounding him, pulling him back from the edge of his own intensity.

Sissy, watching from the control deck, noticed the glow between their pendants again — an unstable, flickering thread of power. "You two should be careful," she muttered. "Those pendants are reacting in ways we can't predict. The system is glitching across multiple layers. It's not supposed to happen."

Ren turned toward her. "Then we fix it. If Marl's behind this, he's using our connection as a conduit."

The control room dimmed for a moment as power rerouted through the central core. The great sphere at the heart of the HQ — the Sentient Reactor, a living computational consciousness — flickered with a low hum. Holograms projected multiple timelines in real-time: some fracturing, others freezing entirely.

Then suddenly — silence.

The alarms died. The hum ceased. And from the reactor's surface, a ghostly projection emerged — a map, glitched and static-filled, burning itself into the air.

Miya gasped. "That's… a Zone-State signature."

Ren's eyes widened. "Impossible. That realm's beyond measurement. Beyond all form of time."

The reactor's voice — calm, yet laced with distortion — spoke:

"WARNING: ANOMALY ROOT ORIGIN DETECTED — SOURCE ID: MARL // LOCATION: UNKNOWN ZONE-STATE"

The words faded, leaving only the sound of static.

---

Hours later, Ren sat in the private wing of the HQ's garden — a rare place of calm. The garden simulated an Earth-like forest: flowing rivers of luminescent water, trees that hummed faintly with bio-electric light, flowers that bent toward thought instead of sunlight.

Sonya was there too, kneeling beside a cluster of glowing leaves, her eyes soft but focused. She turned when she heard Ren's steps. "You look like you haven't rested in days."

Ren gave a tired smile. "Rest feels like a luxury when time itself is collapsing."

Sonya stood, brushing off her hands. "Even machines need to reboot. You're not a machine, Ren."

He looked at her — at that quiet conviction in her tone. There was something different about Sonya lately. Her aura had changed. It wasn't just admiration anymore — it was understanding. She had been studying him, his pain, his silence, his impossible burden.

She took a few steps closer. "You think saving everyone is your duty. But saving yourself… you never think about that, do you?"

Ren looked away. "What does saving myself even mean when the multiverse is burning?"

"Maybe it means remembering why you started fighting in the first place," Sonya said softly. "Before the missions, before the pendant, before the Sentientes. Who were you trying to protect?"

Ren fell silent. The air between them shimmered faintly — the pendant glowing again, reacting to his heartbeat.

Then, faintly, a system notification flickered across his vision:

[Kindness Lock: Stable Sync Detected]

He blinked, but said nothing. The system always appeared at the strangest times.

Sonya smiled faintly and turned back to the flowers. "You should talk to Miya soon. She's been restless. Sissy sent her and her team to handle the anomalies in the Outer Rings — she might not come back easily this time."

Ren looked down at the pendant again, whispering: "Then I'll bring her back."

---

Far across the endless span of existence — in the Zone-State, a place where dimensions overlapped like shattered glass — Marl sat upon his throne.

It was not a throne of gold or power, but of raw, living code. Every inch of it pulsed with energy — a digital heartbeat that echoed across the Cyber Dominion he had just created. Before him stretched an infinite city — towers of light and data, mechanical beings moving like shadows through rivers of energy.

The crystal he had inserted into his ship had become the heart of this new realm. Around it, the Cyber Legion formed — millions of his own clones, each wielding fragments of his will, scattered across realities to infiltrate, destroy, or control.

He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. His eyes gleamed with fractured colors — no longer human.

"So," he muttered, voice echoing through the vast halls. "Ren's pendant still glows. That means the link is alive."

He waved his hand, and in an instant, holograms flickered around him — each showing versions of Ren across different timelines: a soldier, a scholar, a god, a child. All of them connected by one thread — the pendant.

Marl smirked. "Perfect. The Sentientes think they're hunting anomalies… when they're really walking into my system."

He stood from his throne, the digital world shifting beneath his feet. "Initiate Cyber Legion Directive: Phase One — Fracture the Multiverse."

Instantly, thousands of portals erupted across the Zone-State, sending cybernetic clones into every known dimension.

The entire Allverse trembled.

---

Back at HQ, alarms began to scream again. Sissy ran into the control center, shouting orders. "Multiple breaches across ten thousand nodes! Reality seams are breaking!"

Ren sprinted into the room, Miya's last coordinates flickering on the holo-map. "Where is she?"

Sissy's hands flew over the console. "Outer Ring of Verse-92! Her team's surrounded by anomaly clusters — hundreds of them!"

Ren didn't wait for clearance. He placed his hand on the console — the pendant glowing wildly. "Open the portal!"

The system responded instantly:

[Override Accepted: Reality Gate Access Granted]

A rift opened in front of him — electric, blinding, endless.

Sonya ran in just in time to see him disappear into the light. "Ren!" she shouted — but it was too late.

He was gone.

---

Inside the rift, time warped and twisted. Ren floated through a sea of pure data — fragments of memory, shattered worlds, reflections of himself screaming through the corridors of infinity.

And in the distance — Marl's laughter.

---

Meanwhile, Miya and Sissy fought through the collapsing realm. Streams of cybernetic entities poured from the sky, their metallic bodies glinting like mercury. Miya's pendant flared blue, her hands weaving light shields that shattered every oncoming wave.

"Sissy!" she shouted. "We can't hold this forever!"

Sissy fired her pulse cannon, the blast vaporizing a dozen drones. "Ren's coming," she said. "He always does."

Miya smiled faintly. "Yeah… he always does."

The skies split open — and from the blinding fissure, Ren emerged, his eyes burning with resolve.

"Marl," he whispered. "You've gone too far."

---

Far away, on his throne of code, Marl smiled — his cybernetic legions bowing before him.

"Come then, Ren," he said softly, his voice echoing across the allverse.

"Let the real game begin."

---

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