CORTEX NINEUpdated at Jul 12, 2025, 01:01
Riven Ashbourne never fit in — not with her ivory-white hair, mismatched violet and storm-grey eyes, or the unnerving calm that lived beneath her skin. A final-year Neurocognitive Engineering student, her world is equations, silence, and pain disguised as brilliance. But when government agents arrive at her home for a “routine health screening,” everything fractures.They’re not just interested in her. They’re terrified of her.She’s taken to The Hive, a covert research lab that harvests rare cognitive mutations born from a nuclear accident that scarred her childhood. For months, Riven endures needles, isolation, and brain-altering frequencies — until one final test pushes her too far. She snaps, unleashing a wave of neural destruction no one predicted.Deemed unstable, she’s exiled to Zone Alpha, an island prison for the dangerously gifted — and it's there she meets Axel Rennar, a boy with perfect memory, impossible calm, and secrets that dig deeper than scars.Together, they unravel the twisted truth behind the experiments, their own mutations… and the betrayal that ties them both to Section Nine, the first failed generation of test subjects.Now hunted by the system that made them, Riven and Axel must choose:Escape or vengeance.Control or chaos.Love... or total collapse.