Chapter 99: Link FailureThe night before the public announcement, the link went haywire.It started with a sharp, stabbing pain in Brooks’ chest — not his own, but Callan’s old injury flaring through the connection with brutal intensity. Brooks gasped awake, clutching his ribs, the phantom agony so real it brought tears to his eyes.Callan woke at the same moment, his body jerking beside him. “Brooks—”The link destabilized completely.Wave after wave of shared sensation and emotion crashed over them. Pain from old bruises. Arousal from phantom memories. Grief from Callan’s buried trauma. Anxiety from Brooks’ perfectionist spiral. The experimental drugs, pushed to their limit by the cumulative doses and the constant stress, began to fail in spectacular, terrifying fashion.They both sat up in the bed, breathing hard, bodies trembling.“It’s too much,” Brooks gasped, clutching Callan’s arm. “I feel everything at once. Yo
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