All Chapters of Legacy Protocol: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
22 chapters
MIDNIGHT CONSERVATORY
The day moved like velvet. The house readied itself for the gala the way a predator pads toward a chosen moment. Staff smoothed linens, candles were counted like small promises, and the rooms filled with a careful, false ease. Arin found his mornings quieter than the afternoons. He used them to practice the things Corvin had taught him: how to hold a glass without seeming nervous, how to answer questions so people felt they had given him something when all he had actually taken was a detail.Evelyn found him in the library with a book he did not mean to read. She had the same small, controlled smile as ever, but there was something softer around her eyes. It was a private thing, like a secret light left on in a back room.“You’re going to the gala tonight,” she said.He closed the book and put it aside. “Yes.”“You’ll need a plan,” she added. “Not just to survive, but to move. Find Varek without making him notice you as someone who is looking.”He put his fingers on the spine of the b
SOFT ALLIANCES
This time the kiss was not a simple test. It was slow and deliberate, as if she wanted to show him where she began and where she might leave a trace. Her mouth was warm and soft, and the sound she made against his lips was a small, private thing. He found himself answering with an eagerness he had not realized he carried. The conservatory closed around them like a private room in a crowded house.Her hands moved with the same confidence she used at the docks. She did not stumble. She traced the line of his jaw and then the back of his neck. He felt the tender edge of something that might be trust. It terrified him and warmed him in equal measure.They broke apart because she laughed softly, not at him but at the way both of them were trying to do something risky and intimate in a place that required rehearsed manners. “We should be strategic,” she said, breathless. “But strategy can include pleasure.”He let his forehead rest against hers. “I am not good at balancing both.”“You are l
PAPER TOKENS
The morning after the gala the house moved slowly, as if it needed time to tuck its secrets away. Staff carried out boxes with care. Servants spoke in muted tones. Arin kept to the edges of the day and read the notes he’d collected in a chair by the window. The lattice symbol on Maris’s card looked less like a cipher and more like a question the more he stared at it.Corvin came by with coffee and a face that tried for normal and missed. He handed Arin a cup without comment and stood with his back to the light, as if the sun might show things he wanted hidden.“You found something?” Corvin asked after a while. His voice had an ordinary quality that made his nervousness sound like a brittle coin.Arin folded the card and slid it into his pocket. “Meran confirmed Varek moves through brokers. The man at the gala pointed to a dockmaster. Varek is a map, not a person. We follow the map.”Corvin glanced away. “Maps can be dangerous.”“Agreed.” Arin kept his tone light. He did not want to fo
SHE BECAME A PLACE... HIS PLACE
Arin felt the weight of the request. It was smaller than he expected and more intimate. A token was a fragment of life, an object with meaning. It demanded proximity. It required him to return to the docks and to the place where a man had fallen into the water. The cost was risk, the kind that lived in the bones of men who traded in whispers.“I will find it,” Arin said.Soren handed Arin a small scrap of paper with a time and the initials V.S. scrawled on it. “Ship out on Tuesday. Dockmaster Meran’s ledger will have a gap at intake. Look for it. If you come alone, I will believe you are brave. If you come with muscle, I will think you buy your truths and not earn them. Varek respects earned currency.”Maris watched the exchange and then slipped her hand into Arin’s for a second. The touch was quick and necessary. She mouthed, Find it. She did not need to say more.The docks at night are always a study in waiting. They hold an openness for the sea and a narrowness for the city. Arin m
The Pin and the Lie
Maris was gone when Arin woke.The sheets still carried her scent—smoke, citrus, and a trace of something sweet he couldn’t name. The space beside him was warm, which meant she hadn’t been gone long. He sat up, ran a hand through his hair, and looked at the pin on the nightstand. It caught the pale morning light like a small piece of unfinished business.The Protocol murmured in his mind: EVIDENCE RETAINED. SOURCE VERIFIED. NEW TASK INCOMING.He ignored it. Machines didn’t understand how it felt to wake from a night like that—with satisfaction tangled with worry.A knock sounded on his door.“Arin?” Evelyn’s voice was quieter than usual.He rose, grabbed his shirt from the floor, and opened the door halfway. She stood in a cream blouse, hair loose, expression careful. Her eyes flicked past him before she looked back, and he wondered if she sensed that the air still held traces of another woman.“Lucan wants to see you,” she said. “Something’s happened.”He followed her through the c
Soren’s Terms
The rain hadn’t stopped since morning. It fell in long sheets that blurred the manor’s windows and wrapped the outside world in a muffled gray. Arin leaned against the windowpane, shirt half-buttoned, eyes fixed on the line of puddles that stretched beyond the courtyard.Maris hadn’t returned.He hadn’t expected her to—but the quiet after she left felt louder than the rain. The Protocol had spent the last hour feeding him reminders: Meeting: Soren, 21:00. Risk level: Moderate. Task: Deliver token. Retrieve directive. He closed his eyes and let the voice fade.When Evelyn walked in, her steps were sharp enough to cut through the hum of the storm. “Lucan wants a report,” she said. “He thinks you’re hiding something again.”“I’m always hiding something,” he said without looking up.“Then make it look like strategy,” she said, crossing her arms. Her eyes dropped to the cuff of his shirt—Maris’s perfume still faint there. She didn’t comment, but the line of her mouth tightened. “Whate
Warehouse Seventy-Three
The storm hadn’t stopped chasing them. By nightfall, the air was heavy with mist and salt, the kind that clung to skin and whispered of bad luck. Arin moved through the narrow lanes behind the wharf with Maris at his side, her steps quick but quiet, her hand occasionally brushing his as if to remind him she was still real.Warehouse Seventy-Three sat alone, a hulking shadow at the edge of the loading bay. No guards visible, no sounds inside, only the soft hum of an unseen generator. The place looked asleep, but Arin had lived long enough under other people’s eyes to know when something was pretending to rest.“You sure this is it?” he asked.Maris nodded, pulling her hood lower. “Soren’s directions were exact. This is where Varek’s people move shipments they don’t log.”“And the shard?”“If it’s here, it’ll be in the lower vault. That’s where they store items that can’t be scanned.”He didn’t ask how she knew. The way she looked at the door told him she’d been inside before.Th
The Man Who Remembered Too Much
He woke to silence, thick and heavy. The vault was gone. The walls, the metal hum, the light—all of it replaced by a dull ache that filled his skull. For a few seconds, Arin didn’t move. He wasn’t sure if his body still belonged to him.Then a voice—soft, hesitant—broke the dark.“Arin?”Maris.He turned toward her. She was sitting beside him on a cot in a dim warehouse office, her hair messy and damp, her face pale with worry. A thin trail of dried blood ran down from her temple. She’d been crying.“You’re awake,” she breathed, half relief, half disbelief.Arin pushed himself up slowly. The air felt wrong. He could hear everything—the low hum of a generator outside, the distant rhythm of rain, the faint heartbeat in Maris’s chest. It all moved inside his head like an orchestra out of tune.“What happened?” he asked. His voice came out deeper, rougher.“You passed out after the explosion,” she said, watching him closely. “Soren’s gone. I dragged you out before the roof gave in.”
The Safehouse
Maris led him through the back lanes where the concrete still held the memory of rain. The lamps here were weak and far apart, painting everything in bruised amber. Arin moved a step behind her, coat collar up, the hum of the Protocol steady in his skull. Each pulse from it matched the rhythm of his heart.“The safehouse isn’t guarded the way you think,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Varek trusts silence more than guns. His people only show up when something goes wrong.”“Then we’ll make sure they never know we were here,” Arin said.The old tram line loomed above them, a forgotten skeleton of rust and shadow. Beneath it sat a squat warehouse with faded lettering that once promised freight schedules and reliability. Now, its windows were papered over and its door bolted with heavy steel.Maris knelt by the lock. “Give me a second.”Arin crouched beside her, watching her hands work. The rain had lifted her hair in damp curls, the kind that caught the light every time she
The Family Lie
The morning after the explosion, the Voss estate smelled of burnt paper and tension. Servants moved in silence, their faces pale with questions they would never ask. Lucan had sealed his study since dawn, locking himself away with two phones and a decanter that was half-empty before noon.Evelyn stood outside that door, still in her nightgown, a stack of reports clutched against her chest. She’d been awake since the first alarm call. The docks were in chaos, the press circling like sharks, and Arin—Arin was gone.She knocked once. “Father.”Lucan’s voice came from within, steady but colder than usual. “Enter.”She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The curtains were drawn, the light harsh against the mess of papers strewn across his desk. Maps, shipping ledgers, sealed envelopes stamped with corporate crests. Every piece of it smelled of secrecy.“What happened at West Ninth?” she asked, trying to sound composed.Lucan poured himself another glass of whiskey. “An unfortuna