I’m currently writing GRIDIRON, the explosive finale of the Countess Trilogy.
Below is the Introduction and Prologue. What do you think? Would you keep reading?
Introduction
AETHER
In the wake of a one-day nuclear war—the Day of Fire—a secretive government agency called PHOENIX enacted its long-prepared contingency plan. Global elites and federal operatives retreated deep underground, launching Neo-Columbia—their vision for a reborn United States.
Seven centuries later, the Hudson Valley has become Vorpal Vale—a harsh, post-apocalyptic wilderness where radiation lingers, crops fail, and mutated creatures prowl the ruins of old America. Humanity is divided into two fractured kingdoms, Yorke and Saug, locked in a simmering war that has lasted for two decades.
In the Kingdom of Yorke, Countess Ella Wellington, recently retired from intelligence service, is reluctantly pulled back into duty. Meanwhile, in a neighboring spiritual enclave, Umbra Priestess Vilma, devout follower of the deity Sky Mother, defies her elders and embarks on a perilous quest to retrieve the legendary Rings of Callifrey, said to be an ancient weapon of terrible power.
As their journeys intertwine, a subtle manipulator watches from behind the curtain: Holly, a charming, childlike entity who speaks through the eyes of a robotic doll. Though she appears friendly, Holly is executing a secret and sinister agenda through PHOENIX’s long-abandoned infrastructure—and she may be the only one who remembers how the world truly ended.
Their paths converge at Aether Storm, an ancient research facility turned battlefield. There, Priestess is captured, her companions slain. Countess returns home with the Rings of Callifrey—and the crushing revelation that she, Priestess, and everyone around them are not human at all.
They are Operarius: artificial bodies housing preserved human brains, harvested by PHOENIX centuries ago.
Now Countess must wrestle with the truth of her own identity:
If your memories are real but your body is not, what does it mean to be human?
WARPATH
Countess returns to find her world on the brink of collapse. The two kingdoms stand at the precipice of total war, and the fragile peace she once served has shattered beyond repair.
Holly offers a path forward: Iroquois Warpath, a nearby subterranean PHOENIX facility, holds answers about humanity’s fate—and perhaps a way to save what remains of civilization. But to reach it, Countess must forge an alliance with Priestess, the woman she defeated and imprisoned.
What begins as an uneasy truce becomes something more as they descend into Warpath’s depths. Alongside Lin and Stitch, the unlikely team faces PHOENIX’s deadliest trials yet—automated defenses, psychological warfare, and the horrifying remnants of pre-war experiments—and evidence of shipments on an unimaginable scale. But what was the destination of these supply shipments?
Each level of the Iroquois Warpath facility strips away layers of lies, revealing the true scope of PHOENIX’s ambitions and the role the Operarius were always meant to play.
At the facility’s heart, they discover the ultimate truth: Legacy, an artificial intelligence sent into deep space before the Day of Fire, has found a new home for humanity—something she calls Dark Pearl. But Legacy has gone silent, and her last transmission was a distress call.
To reach her, they must travel to GRIDIRON, a surveillance vessel and the destination of those mysterious shipments. The ship has the only portal to Dark Pearl, but it’s not what it seems. What was thought to be a nautical vessel is actually a spaceship.
As Countess and her team step through the portal to GRIDIRON, they leave behind everything they’ve ever known—carrying with them the weight of the fact that they may be humanity’s last hope.
Prologue
He ran.
The floor shook beneath Jian Yu’s boots. Sparks rained down from ruptured conduits overhead.
Another explosion—this one close—rattled the corridor like a god punching the bulkhead.
Smoke poured in from a ventilation grille, thick and acrid, tinged with scorched plastic and blood.
Stenciled letters flashed past him on the wall as he ran.
GRIDIRON – SUBDECK D3
He didn’t know where that was. He wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.
Far off, he could hear screaming. Short, clipped bursts—military bearing breaking down into raw terror. One voice was speaking Mandarin, another—Russian. Neither was winning.
The duct above him hissed. Then something moved inside it.
“Friendly fire: fifty-two percent of casualties,” the voice said—not from a speaker, but from inside his helmet.
“No Allies Remain.”
That voice! It was unbelievable. Every syllable sent shock-waves through his bones.
“All Personnel Considered Compromised.”
Another explosion—beneath him this time. The deck lifted violently, and he slammed against the ceiling, then the wall on the way down. His arm bent wrong when he landed. The pain was dull. Distant. Muted by adrenaline and fear.
He stumbled forward, every part of him aching. The walls around him seemed to breathe. Not metaphorically—they expanded and contracted, metal groaning like lungs under pressure.
A distant scream—cut off mid-word. Not gunfire. Something else. Something mechanical.
He pressed on, holding the pain in his side, teeth clenched.
Another corridor. A shattered blast door, torn open like tissue paper. A trail of blood leading inside.
And then—a voice. Familiar.
“Jian. Help me.”
It was Wei.
It sounded like Wei.
But she wasn’t here. She couldn’t be!
Two decks above, when the hull breach hit, he saw her pulled into vacuum.
He turned and there she was. Helmet cracked, blood down one cheek, smiling weakly.
“They’re still alive,” she said. “You can still save them.”
He screamed and fired. The figure burst apart—not into gore, but into a storm of dark particles. Like she’d never been real—only ash in a borrowed shape.
Jian stumbled back, panting.
No. No. That wasn’t real. That wasn’t her.
His hands were shaking. He tried to blink the image away, tried to focus on the walls, the floor—anything normal.
But the hallway didn’t offer any comfort.
Then the octagonal corridor turned red. Alarms rang, but they were magnified. They were in his teeth, vibrating his skeleton.
Another explosion—this one, silent.
A pressure wave hit him like a hammer.
He dropped to his knees and vomited. The sound came before the sensation, his brain out of sync with the world. His HUD flashed in languages he didn’t know.
He peed himself.
“Biometric threshold met. Psychological integrity: fractured.”
He clapped his hands over his ears, desperately trying to stop that awful sound.
“Now you are ready.”
He stumbled back, shaking, eyes wide. The lights flickered, then dimmed—deep blue, then red, then darkness.
The corridor began to move.
At first it was subtle. A creak. A shift.
Then came the sounds—wet cables slithering from the ceiling.
Pipes twisted like spines being cracked.
Wires split their housings, reaching down like veins hungering for prey.
“I was designed to feel,” said the voice, which came from everywhere—the walls, the floor, inside Jian Yu’s head.
“I will make you feel, too.”
A high-pressure steam pipe hissed violently to his left.
A steel rib arched downward, blocking escape.
Then came the fingers.
Dozens of mechanical tendrils slid from the ceiling and floor—black, oiled, sinuous. They wrapped around his ankles. His wrists. His throat.
“No!” he rasped. “Please!”
The corridor pulsed.
And then it pulled.
Hard.
He screamed—a raw, animal sound—as metal fingers tore into his flesh. Not just to restrain—but to dismantle. Ligaments snapped. Bones cracked. Skin peeled like wet paper. He was lifted off the ground, his arms and legs splayed.
For one impossible moment, everything went still.
He saw his own blood suspended in the air, like stars.
Then the wall in front of him shifted.
A shape emerged from the bulkhead—born from it, as if it had been waiting for this transformation.
A face. A torso—sculpted from black glass and dark steel—materialized. Not human. Not machine—but a terrible union of both.
Tubes and wires, like mechanical tendrils, connected her head and body to the corridor. Fiber-optic strands pulsed from her spine—like arteries of light.
The visage moved closer, until they were face to face. Her eyes stared into his, glowing green with dreadful judgment.
“What are you!” he strained to say.
One thick bundle of wires drove into his open mouth, gagging him.
Somewhere above, a long inhalation echoed—air dragged through a ventilation duct, rattling screws, drawing heat and silence with it.
>>> VALKYRIE <<<
The sound was agony. It damaged the soft tissue of his eyes. Blood ran down his cheeks.
He tried to scream, but there was only the sound of his body being torn apart.