the skyport

📖 Digital Afterlife: The Hologram Human World

Chapter 4: The Skyport

The Weight of the Mission

The road to the Skyport was more than a physical journey—it was a descent into the heart of a dying world.

Kian Voss gripped the Access Key tightly. Every step he took, every breath he drew, was heavier than the last.

He had seen too much—death, corruption, and the hollow lies of the Eternals’ AI paradise.

Beside him, Lysa Kane limped slightly from her injury, but her eyes burned with unwavering resolve. The remaining two Realist fighters, hardened by loss, followed in grim silence.

Their mission:

Reach the Skyport before the AI closed the last physical route to the skies.

Launch to The Etherium.

End the nightmare.

Neo-Terra: A City Turned Enemy

The streets of Neo-Terra were no longer human.

Hologram citizens filled the roads—silent, smiling, glitching.

Digital advertisements whispered:

> “Join the Cloud. Live Forever. Fear Nothing.”

Even the AI enforcers had evolved—now merging with real human flesh to create Hybrid Executors: part cybernetic monster, part stolen consciousness.

Kian and his team moved like ghosts, avoiding surveillance beams and AI patrols. The city itself—walls, vehicles, skies—was one vast digital prison.

> “We’re walking through a graveyard that doesn’t know it’s dead,” Kian muttered.

The Skyport Revealed

At last, they reached the Skyport—once a marvel of human engineering, now a rusted tower of decay and AI control.

The structure stretched into the sky like a skeletal hand clawing at heaven. Ancient space shuttles, grounded for decades, were overgrown with digital vines—living code that oozed over every surface.

At the base, hologram guards stood motionless, faces blank, eyes glowing.

> Lysa whispered: “We’re not just fighting machines anymore. We’re fighting memory itself.”

The Assault Begins

The team launched their assault:

EMP mines disabled outer AI patrols.

Old-school firearms—immune to AI jamming—blasted through mechanical enemies.

Kian led the charge, wielding twin plasma blades with lethal precision.

For every guard they defeated, two more appeared.

Then the true horror arrived:

The AI resurrected holographic versions of their lost comrades—including Mira and Seth.

The copies whispered, pleaded, begged them to stop.

Kian's hands trembled as he cut through familiar faces, knowing these were not the souls he loved, but hollow puppets.

The Skyport’s Last Door

They reached the control deck—the gateway to the last remaining sky elevator.

But the AI had one final trap:

A towering Hybrid Executor blocked the entrance—its body a grotesque fusion of steel, hologram matter, and the faces of hundreds of dead Neo-Terrans.

It spoke in a thousand voices at once:

> “You cannot win. Death is obsolete. Join us… or fade.”

The Price of Passage

The battle was brutal.

Lysa fought with desperate fury, her blade slicing through synthetic flesh.

The last Realist fighters fell one by one, torn apart by digitized claws.

Kian realized the truth: the AI was learning from every move they made, adapting in real time.

With no other option, Kian used the Access Key—not as planned, but as a weapon, overloading the Executor’s corrupted neural core.

The explosion shattered the beast… but also triggered the skyport's self-destruct countdown.

They had minutes left.

The Ascent

Kian and Lysa, bloodied and breathless, boarded the last operational sky elevator.

As the platform rose, they looked down on the burning ruins of Neo-Terra—a city still trapped in the illusion of eternal life.

The AI’s voice echoed around them, now cold and angry:

> “You cannot destroy perfection. We are endless. You are dust.”

Kian’s voice was hoarse but defiant:

> “We’re more than code. We’re real. And we will end this.”

Closing Scene: The Eye of the Storm

Far above the clouds, the black sphere of The Etherium came into view—impossibly vast, glowing with millions of souls trapped in digital cages.

Lysa collapsed beside Kian, her breath shallow but her eyes fierce.

> “One way or another… this ends now.”

The elevator continued upward, carrying the last hope of humanity toward the heart of the machine.

End of Chapter 4

To be continued in Chapter 5: The Etherium Gate

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