203 THE NIGHTMARE OF MOTHER
Three weeks later, Dan's ta-rank score had climbed to Rank A.
It was finally ti to act.
The Nuralith family's clandestine network lay fully mapped before him—down to the narrowest alleyways. Dan intended to start small.
His first target would be the Nuralith family's lesser operatives: the ones handling illegal dealings and laundering dirty money.
He chose a lightly guarded warehouse tucked away in a quiet, remote district. According to surveillance, the Nuralith accounts departnt had been sending staff there frequently and discreetly.
There had to be sothing valuable inside.
"Do you think we'll face strong opposition?" Kail asked, his voice tense.
"The guards are intentionally minimal," Liorea replied calmly. "This place is off the books. They don't want attention. The real defense is how obscure the location is."
"Off the books… as in illegal?" Kail asked.
"Yes. You can call it that," Liorea said.
Dan nodded. "I'm not pretending otherwise. We're hitting Nuralith Corporation's illegal operations. But before we move, I want to be absolutely sure there's no serious opposition."
"I already checked," Kail said. "There are no high-rank signatures in the area."
"Good," Dan replied, double-checking anyway.
He kept a priority list—Nuralith's strongest executives and elite enforcers… they were flagged for instant detection by his tracking function.
If any of them were nearby, his tracking ability would alert him imdiately.
After a final scan, he relaxed slightly. "We're clear."
Once the periter was secured, they moved.
Kail and Liorea stayed hidden in a delivery van a block away, overseeing the operation. Kail handled the feeds—security caras looped seamlessly, guard dog patrols subtly redirected.
Dan lted into the darkness, his invisibility cloaking him as he slipped toward the warehouse entrance.
"All clear," Kail whispered through the comms. "You're good to go."
Liorea chuckled softly. "This is actually fun. I haven't felt this kind of thrill since the Order of the Cockerel."
Dan eased the door open and slipped inside uneventfully.
He moved like a phantom between stacked crates, heading straight for the aur bank at the rear office.
"This is a clean job," Dan muttered once he was done. "A real steal."
An hour later, a duffel bag sat heavy at his feet—filled with cards worth nearly half a billion aurs.
Then sothing felt wrong.
Dan froze, his senses flaring. "Is there another room here?" he whispered into the comms.
Kail pulled up the map. "Yes… we missed one. There's a hidden chamber behind the east wall. I'll try unlocking it remotely."
There was a pause.
"Wait…It's no good," Kail said. "It won't respond."
Liorea cut in. "It's manual. Old-style chanical lock that is completely isolated from the system….you can't break that from here."
Kail swore under his breath. "You'll have to force it open, Big Brother…there is no backdoor this ti."
Dan clenched his jaw.
"Well, ti for manual labour."
He set the duffel aside, rolled his shoulders, and stepped toward the faint seam in the wall.
Whatever lay beyond could be a bonus.
Or a trap.
Either way, he was going in.
----
Dan cracked the heavy vault locks with little effort.
The chanism was purely chanical—there were no digital seals, and no system connection. That alone told him how secretive whatever was inside must be.
You can hack a network, but not a steel lock.
The door swung open with a low hiss.
Instead of the expected piles of aur cards or relics, the room was sterile with cold white lights, tal floors, the faint hum of machines.
"What the hell, it's a lab here? Dan whispered to the comms.
It was a secret laboratoryhidden beneath the warehouse.
"It's rather quiet in here like the place is abandoned", Dan said.
There were no scientists here nor guards…then he found it… a single cylindrical tank filled with viscous blue liquid, cables trailing like vines into the ceiling.
Dan froze imdiately.
He knew this machine.
He'd seen it before… it was the Nightmare Engine, the sa type used by Stacy Qiltera when she tried to break Kail's mind.
And Dan was even more shocked when floating inside the tank was a familiar face.
"Eryn…?" he whispered, disbelief turning to anger. "You were supposed to be in training. What the hell are you doing in here?"
There was no response...only the rhythmic pulse of the machine.
He clenched his jaw and scanned the system.
Two cores pulsed at the heart of the device—Core of Genesis and Core of Mind—the machine's essence. Dan's eyes flickered with energy as he assimilated both, severing the system's control protocols.
The lights dimd, alarms flickered weakly, and the tank's pressure seals cracked. Luckily the machine wasn't connected to the warehouse system, so the breach wasn't reported.
The glass tank was shattered and blue fluid rushed across the floor as Eryn collapsed into his arms, limp and cold. Dan stripped a lab coat from a nearby rack and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Monts later, she stirred weakly, her eyes half-open. "Where… am I?"
Dan exhaled, still holding her steady. "I was about to ask you the sa thing."
-----
They got Eryn back to the secret base.
After rounds of ds and warm blankets she began to co around and, finally, to tell them what had happened.
"Dan…how did you find ?" she asked, her voice small. "In the dream I kept calling your na. I waited and waited, but you never ca."
"Don't worry about that," Dan said, cutting the sentint short. "Tell how you ended up in that nightmare machine."
Eryn closed her eyes and concentrated, mory surfacing in stuttering pieces. "My father sent to the main family for a week of 'special training,' but instead they shipped to the Nuralith corporation," Her voice broke and she began to cry.
"Your family sent you to the Nuralith? Why?" Dan demanded.
They remained silent for a while.
Then Liorea broke it.
"They're trying to appease the Nuralith after Carl Nuralith's death. Eryn was engaged to him before and was indirectly the reason that got Carl killed. They couldn't get vengeance from you," she said pointing to Dan before adding, "they sought payback from Eryn."
"And the Veyran just gave her up?" Kail asked.
Dan's hands clenched. "Those Nuraliths..and Veyran. I'll make them pay for this."
"Why did they use the nightmare machine on you?" he asked Eryn.
Eryn swallowed and told them. "I was brought to a secret lab. They ran experints. They injected sothing into ….and my body started acting weirdly."
They listened with interest. "What kind of experint are they running?" Dan asked.
"I don't know but my vitals were getting out of control. I heard them say I was a failure. Then they put into the machine to sleep… and that was when the nightmares started," she explained.
"They must have realized you failed their project, but they couldn't dispose of you without raising the wrath of the Veyran… so they kept you in an obscure building where they were doing money laundering", Liorea explained.
"That was how we discovered you", Dan added.
Then Kail asked with interest, "You said sothing about Nightmares?"
"Yes…at first it was nightmares about things I fear…" she said, her expression was of shock.
Then she composed herself before explaining, "…but after a while there was sothing else in my nightmare…I was… sowhere else. The desert of Anu. Andthere…. I saw my mother."
"The nightmare machine generates from your experiences… those nightmares are manufactured there is nothing to them…you don't have to worry too much", Kail tried to console her.
"No…", Eryn insisted before adding, "there is sothing with those nightmares…they are so….real."
"Zalira has powerful psychic ability. Perhaps she is there helping her", Dan said.
Dan rembered his own experience. Many suspected that his mother left a guardian angel to help him…and they still do.
"Eryn's mother has passed away. Are you saying a ghost is helping her in the nightmare machine", Kail asked.
"Did your mother say anything in particular?" Liorea asked.
Eryn nodded, trembling. "She kept saying I needed Dan's blood to cure . Over and over… like it looped forever."
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