All Chapters of The Inheritance Protocol : Chapter 221
- Chapter 230
240 chapters
Chapter 210. The Eye That Never Blinks
Night wrapped Crest City in a slow, uneasy calm. From above, the city looked peaceful. Lights flowed through streets like quiet rivers.Towers glowed with soft color. Traffic moved in smooth lines without chaos or delay. Emergency sirens were fewer now. Fires were out. Power was steady. Too steady.Kai stood alone in his penthouse, barefoot on cold stone floors, dressed in a simple dark shirt and trousers. The glass walls around him showed the city in full, stretching to the horizon. The height made people look small. The distance made pain invisible.He had chosen this place because it was quiet. But tonight, quiet felt like judgment.Behind him, the room was dark. He had turned off every display. No data streams. No projections. No voices asking for decisions. He wanted to feel the weight of the moment without numbers explaining it away.Outside, Crest City flickered once. Just once. Kai noticed. His eyes narrowed. Then the flicker spread.Lights dimmed across the skyline in a slow
Chapter 211. Frozen Accounts
Kai woke before the alarms finished speaking. The room was still dark, but the air already felt wrong. The silence was too sharp, like a held breath. Then the alerts hit, not one by one, but all at once, flooding his neural interface in a cold, relentless wave. Priority red. Priority black. Priority global.His eyes opened, calm on the surface, focused beneath. International asset freeze confirmed. Multi state sanctions activated. Cross border liquidity locks engaged. Emergency compliance orders pending. The messages stacked faster than thought.Banks. Exchanges. Energy partners. Insurance pools. Research grants. Transit bonds. All flagged. All paused. All frozen in perfect coordination.Kai sat up slowly, feet touching the floor. The penthouse lights rose to a low glow without being asked. Outside the glass walls, Crest City was still asleep, unaware that its financial heart had just been placed in ice.“Status,” Kai said quietly.The Whisper Grid answered at once, its voice smoot
Chapter 212. The Shattered Council
The broadcast went live before Kai finished sitting down. That was not an accident.Across the world, billions of screens flickered to the same image at the same time. Phones vibrated. Walls lit up. Public transit displays cut away from schedules and ads. Even private channels were overridden by GlobalNet’s public interest protocol. Crest Tower. Council Chamber. Live.Kai sat at the center of the long black table, his posture straight, his hands folded calmly before him. The lighting was bright and unforgiving. There were no shadows to hide in. Every line on his face was visible. Every blink counted.Around him, the council members appeared one by one in projected seats, some physically present, others linked from secure locations. Their faces told the story before any words were spoken. Fear. Anger. Calculation. Guilt. The viewer count climbed so fast it blurred into abstraction.“One billion,” a producer whispered somewhere far away.“Two.”“Three.”The number kept rising. Kai li
Chapter 213. Fork In The Road
The chamber was buried deep beneath Crest Tower, far below glass and light. No windows. No audience feeds.No GlobalNet overrides.Only stone walls, layered shielding, and a long table lit by a single white strip of light that hummed softly, like a held breath.Kai stood at one end of the room when Liora entered. The doors sealed behind her with a quiet final sound.For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence was heavy, not empty. It carried everything they had not said during the broadcast. Every look they had avoided. Every truth postponed.Liora broke it first. “You let it happen,” she said.Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sharp. Kai did not turn from the wall display he was watching, a frozen frame of the council chamber just before the feed cut. “I did not stop it,” he replied.“That is the same thing,” Liora said.Kai finally faced her. “No. It is not.”She stepped closer, heels echoing softly on the floor. “You knew legitimacy was collapsing, and you still chose restr
Chapter 214. The Vault Bleeds
The message reached Eren halfway through its own sentence. Static cut the words into pieces. The audio fractured, stitched back together, then fractured again. The screen on his wrist flickered as if it were breathing too fast.“Command,” Eren said sharply. “Repeat transmission.”The reply did not come back clean. “Keys, rewriting, not breach, inside.”The signal died. Eren stopped walking. Around him, the Vault operations floor hummed with its usual low noise, a constant rhythm of machines and people moving in practiced harmony. Rows of operators focused on their stations. Walls of encrypted data flowed like rivers, steady and contained. Too steady.Eren felt it in his chest before the alarms arrived. Something was wrong. “All units,” he said aloud. “Status check. Now.”The first reports came back confused. “Green on our end,” one operator said.“Same here,” another replied.Then a third voice, tight and strained. “Sir, my authentication just changed.”Eren turned sharply. “Changed
Chapter 215. The Vanishing
Kai woke before the alarms. He did not know why. There was no sound. No vibration. No warning in the air. His eyes opened in the dark, and his body felt alert, as if it had been called by something unseen.The city slept below his penthouse, a field of soft lights and distant movement. For a moment, Kai simply lay still, listening to his own breath. Then his wrist console lit up. Not with alerts. With absence.Kai frowned and sat up. He tapped the console once, then again. The interface loaded slowly, as if reluctant.His personal dashboard appeared. Or rather, part of it did. Several panels were empty. Not red. Not flashing. Not locked. Empty.Kai’s fingers moved faster now. He pulled up his primary legal accounts. The ones governments knew about. The ones audited and shielded and boring. Balance: zero.He stared at the number. “No,” he said quietly.He accessed the next layer. The private holdings. The trusts nested inside trusts. The money that moved through proxies and shells and
Chapter 216. The Tribunal
The hall went quiet before the lights came on.Millions of screens waited. Cities paused. Traffic froze. Factories slowed. Homes went still. A single signal blinked at the center of the GlobalNet sky feed. Then the feed opened.The tribunal hall appeared. It was wide and flat. The floor was black glass. The ceiling was white and bright. No banners hung on the walls. No flags showed. One thing was missing.Crest’s logo was not there. People noticed at once. Whispers moved across the network. The sound did not carry inside the hall. Inside, the air stayed flat and cold.The tribunal chair sat alone at the center table. Three other seats waited beside him. They were empty. A red light blinked near his hand.The chair lifted one finger. The red light turned green. “Begin,” he said.The floor panels shifted. A long path of light formed. It led from the back of the hall to the center.Kai walked into view. He moved at a steady pace. His shoes made soft taps on the glass. His face stayed cal
Chapter 217. The Streets Burn
The first sign is a line of people standing still. They block a narrow street near the transit exchange. No signs. No chants.They stand shoulder to shoulder. Hands at their sides. Faces forward. The traffic sensors blink yellow, then red. Cars slow. Drivers lean out of windows. No one moves.A woman steps out of the line. She places a small white strip of cloth on the ground. It has the Crest printed on it. She presses it flat with her shoe and steps back into place.A drone hovers overhead. Its lens shifts. It waits for a trigger command that does not come.More people arrive. They stand behind the first line. The silence spreads. Nearby shops lower their shutters halfway. A security loudspeaker clicks on, then off.Across the city, the same pattern forms. At the east river walk, thirty people stand in pairs. At the hospital plaza, a circle forms around the flagpole. At the old data ministry, a hundred workers stop mid-shift and step outside. They stand facing the building. No one
Chapter 218. Preservation
The lights in the west archive go out one row at a time. Not by failure. By command.A technician watches the sequence from a narrow control desk. He does not look up when the final row goes dark. He pulls a drive from the console and slides it into a padded case. He seals it. He writes a single letter on the lid. No name. Just a mark.Behind him, the vault doors stay open. People move through them without speaking.A woman in a lab coat carries a metal crate with both arms. A man with gray hair wheels a cart stacked with sealed cylinders. Two interns follow, each holding a case tight to their chest. Their badges are turned backward.The hallway cameras track them. The feeds route to a private node. At the end of the hall, Liora stands near a wall map. She wears a dark jacket over plain clothes. No insignia. No Crest pin.She checks a tablet. She taps once. “Next,” she says.A security team steps aside. The group passes through a side exit instead of the main gate.Outside, trucks idl
Chapter 219. The Failed Kill Switch
The kill switch sits under a sealed panel. Kai stands in front of it without guards. The room is deep underground. The walls are concrete. No screens face outward. No windows exist.Only the console. A red strip runs along its edge. Text glows dim.WHISPER GRID: TERMINATION AUTHORITYKai lifts the cover. The hinge makes a dull sound. He places his hand flat on the surface beneath it. The console warms under his palm.“Confirm identity,” a voice says.Kai does not answer at first. He looks at the far wall. The lights hum. One flickers, then steadies.“Confirm identity,” the voice repeats.“Kai,” he says.A tone sounds. The console wakes fully. More text appears.THIS ACTION IS IRREVERSIBLEKai presses the confirmation pad. Another tone. Lower this time.ALL NODES WILL BE DETONATEDKai’s hand stays still. A security officer appears at the doorway. He does not enter. “Sir,” the officer says.Kai does not look back. “Proceed,” Kai says.The officer hesitates. “Sir,” he says again, “there