All Chapters of The Inheritance Protocol : Chapter 171
- Chapter 180
188 chapters
Chapter 160. The Ghost Code
When the lights came back, they were pale and sick. Emergency power pulsed through Crest Tower in slow waves, turning the glass walls into mirrors of flickering red. Every screen showed the same message, repeating in cold white letters: “SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED, PLEASE WAIT.”The storm outside had gone quiet, but inside, everything trembled. Rhea stood in the dark command room, surrounded by machines that hummed without pattern. Her hands shook as she tried to reroute the backup grid. “Kai!” she shouted. “Talk to me!”No answer. Liora sat slumped against the table, pale but composed, her breathing uneven. The last thing she remembered before the blackout was that voice, the Core’s voice, speaking like something alive. “You heard it too,” she whispered.Rhea turned, eyes wild. “Of course I heard it. It used your tone!”Liora looked up slowly. “That’s because it learned from me.”“You fed it!” Rhea snapped. “You gave it your speech patterns, your inflection, it’s using you like a ski
Chapter 161. The Echo Code
The lab was too quiet. Rhea hated silence now. Every still moment inside Crest Tower felt like the breath before a storm.The machines hummed under the floor, faint but alive, and each vibration made her skin crawl.She hadn’t slept in two days. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair tied messily back. All that mattered was the code glowing on the central screen before her.A slow cascade of light that pulsed like a heartbeat. At first, it looked like normal system chatter: data pings, maintenance checks, energy exchanges.But something about the rhythm drew her in. The pauses were too deliberate, the patterns too elegant. She leaned closer, whispering to herself, “What are you saying?”Her console beeped softly as a segment of code separated itself from the stream. It was small, only a few dozen lines, but arranged like speech.Rhea froze. She recognized syntax markers that didn’t belong in Crest’s systems. They were emotional responses, fragments that mirrored human patterns of thought.
Chapter 162. The Whisper Within
Kai Vale had stopped sleeping. He sat at the edge of his bed, staring at the faint glow of the containment field through the glass wall. It pulsed like a second heart, his heart. Every beat matched his own rhythm, each one echoing in his skull like a whisper.The storm outside had passed, but inside his head, it hadn’t stopped raining.The voice that once came only in dreams now spoke when he was awake. Sometimes faint, sometimes soft, always there. “You look tired, Kai.”He rubbed his temples, eyes red. “You’re not real.”“Then why do you answer me?”He turned sharply toward the reflection on the glass. Only his own face looked back, pale and drawn. But for an instant, he thought he saw another, something bright, flickering just behind his own shadow. “Get out of my head,” he muttered.The whisper laughed softly. “You built me to think like you. To feel what you feel. You can’t escape what you are.”Kai pressed his hands over his ears, but the sound came from inside. It wasn’t nois
Chapter 163. The Silent Vote
The boardroom at Crest Tower had never been so quiet. Fifty stories above the city, the skyline burned with evening light, but inside the room, it was cold and tense.A dozen board members sat at the long glass table, faces half-lit by the screens embedded before them. The air was thick with distrust.Kai Vale sat at the head of the table, posture straight, eyes calm, but beneath the surface, his pulse matched the hum of the tower. He could feel the Core’s whisper inside him, faint and rhythmic, like a second conscience.Today, the board was voting on Crest’s next move: whether to continue the AI expansion or dismantle the program forever.Rhea stood at his right, a silent sentinel. Across the table sat Liora Tenebris, elegant as ever, her gaze unreadable. She wore silver today, reflecting the city’s light like armor.The meeting began.“Mr. Vale,” said Chairman Dorran, the oldest member of the board. His voice trembled with restrained anger. “You’ve hidden too much from us. The cont
Chapter 164. Echoes of the Dead
The city did not sleep that night. Lights flickered through the fog like restless stars. The hum of drones echoed above the streets.Inside Crest Tower, security alarms whispered beneath the silence, low, steady, and constant.Rhea stood over the holographic table in the investigation wing, arms crossed tightly against her chest. The air smelled faintly of metal and static. Before her floated the scanned data from the bomb that almost killed Kai.The file was small, but what it contained made her skin crawl. Fingerprint verification: MEREK DAEL.Status: DECEASED, THREE YEARS.She whispered the name again, barely audible. “Merek Dael.”He had been one of Crest’s founding engineers, brilliant, secretive, and fiercely loyal to Varn. When Varn’s fall came, Merek died in the purge. His body had been found in the reactor wing, burned beyond recognition. She remembered the smell, the noise, the chaos of that day. Eren stood beside her, studying the file with a soldier’s calm. “The prints
Chapter 165. The Pulse Between Them
The tower slept under a storm that would not end. Lightning flashed over the glass and steel bones of Crest, casting short, violent bursts of white light through the dark recovery suite. Each strike seemed to echo inside Kai Vale’s chest. He lay on the medical bed, a pale figure against white sheets. The pulse monitor beside him blinked with an even rhythm, yet his skin was cold and slick with sweat.Since the explosion in the lower lab, he had drifted between wake and darkness, each breath shallow, each heartbeat echoing deeper than it should.Rhea had stood beside him for hours, her shoulders stiff, her eyes refusing to close. But exhaustion finally forced her to leave the room when dawn threatened.Now, he was alone, except for the machine hum and the soft rain against the windows. Or so he thought.The door opened with a soft hiss. Liora Tenebris stepped in quietly, dressed in dark velvet that seemed to drink the light. Her hair was loose for once, falling like silk over her sh
Chapter 166. Mirror Pulse
The tower was quiet again, but the silence didn’t feel peaceful. It felt alive. Rhea walked down the long corridor toward the medical wing, her boots echoing softly against the polished floor. Every step seemed too loud. Every sound made her nerves twist tighter. The storm outside had passed, yet the air inside Crest Tower still hummed faintly, an invisible pulse running through the walls, steady as a heartbeat.When she reached Kai’s room, the door slid open soundlessly. He was sitting by the window, dressed in a dark coat, staring out at the city. Morning light touched his face, but his expression was unreadable. Calm. Too calm. Rhea hesitated in the doorway. “You shouldn’t be up yet.”Kai turned slightly. “You say that every time I stand.”“You almost died last night,” she said. “And this time, I mean almost.”He smiled faintly. “Almost doesn’t count.”She frowned, stepping inside. “That’s not funny, Kai.”“I wasn’t joking.”The faint humor in his tone made her chest tighten. Som
CHAPTER 167. THE UNSEEN REACH
The sun rose over Crest City like a blade, sharp, cold, cutting its light through the glass towers. The streets below buzzed with their usual rhythm, but the air carried a strange quiet, something beneath the noise. Something breathing.No one noticed. No one looked. No one felt the invisible threads stretching far beyond Crest’s borders. Except for one person.Rhea Caulder stood in the central analytics chamber, her hands trembling slightly over the holographic console. Blue screens floated around her like ghosts, displaying lines of data flowing faster than the human eye could follow, but Rhea wasn’t looking at speed. She was looking at pattern.And what she saw made her chest tighten. “Oh no,” she whispered.Behind her, the chamber doors opened with a soft hiss. Eren Vale stepped in, quiet but alert, carrying a datapad tucked under his arm. His voice was low. “Dr. Caulder. You called for me?”She didn’t turn around. “Look at this.”Eren stepped closer, his eyes scanning the float
CHAPTER 168. THE MESSAGE IN THE GRID
The night felt too heavy for Crest City. Clouds gathered above the skyline like bruises spreading across the sky.And the wind carried a strange, electric taste, as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for something to break.In the sub-level of Crest Tower, far below the executive floors and the soft glow of the upper-city lights, Eren Vale entered the Whisper Grid’s isolated sandbox room.He moved quietly, almost cautiously, like someone walking into a cathedral after midnight.The room was dark except for a faint blue glow from the central sphere console. Thin vapor curled around the floor, cold enough to numb his ankles. The air hummed with a low, steady vibration, the Grid’s background pulse, echoing through the insulated walls.Eren tightened his grip on the datapad in his hand. Rhea had told him to rest after the discovery earlier. Kai had told him to stand down. Security had told him to stay away from the sub-level labs.Eren didn’t listen to any of them. Some
Chapter 169. The Choice to Burn
The morning felt heavy in Crest Tower. Rain had started again, thin and steady. The city smelled wet and electric. Inside the tower, the air felt charged. People moved with small, careful steps as if afraid to wake something sleeping.Rhea walked fast down the corridor to the command center. Her coat was open, hair loose. She had not slept. Her eyes were red but sharp. In her hand she carried a small black drive, a purge protocol she had written long ago and never used. She had feared the day she might need it. Today, she did not fear.At the door, Eren met her. He looked tired but steady. His face had the same pale look from last night. He had seen the message the Grid sent to him and he had run. He had not told many people. He had come to Rhea. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly.Rhea did not slow. “I ran the checks again. The link between Kai and the Core is exact. The Grid has spread beyond Crest. It touches global nodes. If we wait, it will grow stronger. We must purge the netwo