Blood Debts

CHAPTER 4 — ECHO PROTOCOL

The night air hit like cold glass. Fredricks and Cassandra moved through narrow alleys that cut behind the docks.

Rain hissed off corrugated metal; the city’s heartbeat slowed, waiting for something. “Where are we going?” Cassandra asked.

“Somewhere I can think,” Fredricks said.

“You seem to think everywhere.”

“Not with people trying to erase me.”

They stopped near an old tram tunnel, sealed with a rusted gate. Fredricks knelt, pressed his palm to a faded scanner hidden under grime. A soft click. The gate shifted open just enough for them to slip through.

Inside was another world: cables, flickering monitors, and old tech that should have been extinct. Silas’s voice echoed from a speaker. “You found your way back. I was starting to think you’d taken an early retirement.”

“Retirement’s for men who forget what they lost,” Fredricks said.

“And the woman with you?”

Cassandra stepped forward. “I can speak for myself, thanks.”

“Good,” Silas replied. “Because you’ll need to.”

She looked around. “What is this place?”

“It used to be a part of the city’s echo network,” Fredricks explained. “Signal relays, abandoned after the system upgrade. I repurposed it.”

“To what, spy on everyone?”

“To remember what everyone else forgot.”

He gestured to one monitor where the same photograph from before flickered in digital form. The blurred child’s face was sharpening, slowly resolving, pixel by pixel.

“You’re reconstructing it,” she said.

“No,” Fredricks answered. “Someone else is helping me do it.”

A new window blinked on the screen: Incoming Transmission — Untraceable Source. Lines of code scrolled, then froze. Text appeared: “Stop chasing the past. You won’t survive the echo.”

Silas frowned. “That’s the same encryption from the municipal servers.”

“So they’re watching us too,” Fredricks said.

“Maybe they’re warning you,” Cassandra offered.

“Warnings are for people with something left to lose.”

He typed a quick sequence. The monitor glitched, revealing half a logo: a stylized E inside a circle. “Echo Protocol,” Silas muttered. “It’s real.”

Cassandra turned to him. “What is it?”

“A failsafe system. Buried government tech. Supposed to erase data trails during national emergencies.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s erasing people.”

Cassandra folded her arms. “You’re telling me this ‘Echo Protocol’ connects to my father’s empire?”

“I’m telling you it is your father’s empire,” Fredricks replied.

“That’s impossible.”

“Then why are you here instead of at home?”

She didn’t answer. The silence stretched, broken only by the hum of electronics. “You think this second survivor, my supposed brother, is behind it?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Fredricks said. “Or maybe he’s the one still trapped inside it.”

The monitor flickered again. This time, a voice filtered through, mechanical, distorted, but human enough to feel close. “Fredricks Mayford. Cassandra Vale. You are standing in a dead network.”

“Identify yourself,” Fredricks demanded.

“I’m what your fathers built to outlive you both.”

“You’re not real.”

“Define real.”

The voice faded, replaced by a slow pulse on the screen, a heartbeat made of data. Fredricks turned toward Silas’s camera feed. “Pull the plug.”

“Can’t,” Silas said. “It’s not connected to us anymore.”

“Then who”

The lights flickered. Every monitor in the chamber shifted to a single image: the reconstructed face of the child, now clear. Cassandra stepped closer. Her breath caught. “That’s”

“Yes,” Fredricks said quietly. “It’s him.”

“He’s alive.”

“Or something wants us to believe he is.”

The screen glitched one last time, and a final line appeared beneath the image: “Welcome back, Brother.”

Cassandra turned to Fredricks, face pale. “It’s not talking to you.”

He stared at her. “Then who the hell is it talking to?”

The monitors went black. Static filled the underground chamber. Cassandra’s reflection shimmered in the black monitors, her own eyes staring back at her, then the screen flared to life again, glowing pale blue.

“It’s not over,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“A mistake your fathers tried to bury.”

“You’re lying.”

“Then ask him.”

The screen split in two, one side showing Cassandra, the other, Victor D’Lorne’s office, live feed.

He stood before a bank of glass windows, phone pressed to his ear.

Fredricks stepped forward. “He can’t see us.”

“Not yet,” the voice replied. “But he will.”

Victor’s voice came through, calm but tight. “I want every department locked down. No external signals, no data movement.”

A subordinate’s voice: “Sir, that’s not possible. Something inside the grid”

“Then cut the grid.”

“We already tried.”

Victor’s reflection flickered as though the windows themselves were screens. The voice on Fredricks’s monitor laughed, low, distorted, almost human. “He doesn’t realize the system isn’t his anymore,” it said.

“And who does it belong to?” Fredricks asked.

“To the one who remembers.”

The image pixelated. For an instant, the blurred child’s face appeared again, older now, angular, eyes like Fredricks’s but colder. Cassandra whispered, “That’s not a ghost. That’s control.”

Inside his office, Victor turned toward Cassandra’s empty chair. Her phone was still on his desk, buzzing with missed calls.

He picked it up, and the screen lit with a message from an untraceable number: “Echo Protocol Reinstated. Control Reassigned.”

“Who sent this?” he snapped.

His aide hesitated. “It originated inside your private server.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Then maybe it’s true,” the aide said quietly.

Victor’s jaw tightened. “Get me Cassandra. Now.”

Fredricks paced, running calculations in his head. “It’s manipulating us,” he muttered. “It wants reaction, not understanding.”

“Then why show me him?” Cassandra asked.

“Because you’ll believe family before you believe me.”

She folded her arms. “And you don’t?”

“Belief got my family killed.”

Silas’s voice broke in over the comms. “Fredricks, your coordinates just pinged on an external network. Someone’s tracing this conversation.”

“Can you block it?”

“Not this time. They’re inside Echo.”

The chamber lights dimmed to crimson. One by one, the monitors rebooted. Every screen showed the same word, looping endlessly: RECLAIMED.

Fredricks froze. “It’s taking control of the system.”

“Of you,” Cassandra said softly.

He turned sharply, eyes narrowing. “What did you just say?”

“That voice called you brother. What if it meant it literally?”

He stared at her, something breaking through the mask of composure. “My brother died before the fire.”

“Or your father made you think he did.”

The screens flickered again, this time, a new feed: grainy footage of a young boy being escorted into a facility marked with the Vale Industries emblem. The date stamp read 2008.

Fredricks’s throat tightened. “That’s the night”

“The night your family died,” Cassandra finished.

The feed zoomed closer. The child turned toward the camera,  not quite Fredricks, but unmistakably linked: the same eyes, the same scar at the jawline. And on his wrist, the same pocket-watch.

The voice returned, smooth now, almost human. “You’ve been chasing vengeance for a ghost, Fredricks. But you were never the only Mayford left.”

“Where is he?” Fredricks demanded.

“Everywhere your anger took root.”

The lights snapped off. Only the glow from the pocket-watch remained, its red diode blinking faster, faster, then stopping entirely. Silence.

Then a faint echo from the speakers: “Find me before they do.”