2025-06-26 18:31:58The sirens shrieked louder.
They weren’t police sirens. These were deeper, with a strange mechanical reverb, like they were being played through rusted speakers wired straight into a nightmare.
“MOVE!” Skye shouted.
Kieran didn’t hesitate. He dropped through the floor grate she’d kicked open, landing hard on a cold steel ladder. She followed, slamming the hatch shut behind them. Darkness swallowed them both—thick, damp, alive.
His system panel glitched back into view:
EMERGENCY FLAG: Extraction Protocol Initiated
Threat Source: Unknown Faction (Redacted)Survival Priority Override: FLEE. DO NOT ENGAGE.Above them, boots crashed through the trapdoor.
“We need to lose them now!” Skye hissed.
The tunnel curved downward. Water dripped from somewhere above, and the walls trembled under the weight of pounding feet. Kieran ran harder than he’d ever run in his life.
The tunnel emptied into a larger space—a forgotten sector of Glen’s old subway system. Vines curled around iron pillars. The air was rank with mold and fuel. Broken rails lined the path ahead, and skeletal train frames rested in shadows like metal corpses.
“This way,” Skye whispered, guiding him through a hidden gap behind a collapsed pillar.
“What are they?” Kieran panted.
“The Cleaners,” she said. “System drones. Not bots—worse. Half-flesh, half-code. They come when someone the system can’t control breaks free.”
“You said they’d found me. Why?”
She stopped, staring at him.
“You’re not just an heir, Kieran. You’re the inheritor—the last scion of a sealed protocol. A legacy the system wants to overwrite, not empower.”
He stared at her, stunned. “Why would the system kill me?”
Skye crouched by a control box and pried it open with her blade. Sparks flew.
“Because yours might not be its system. There are layers to this thing—fragments of old protocols, rival versions. Yours activated an older code—one the current hierarchy wants deleted.”
A strange cold ran through Kieran’s spine. For the first time since the system appeared, he felt a seed of fear—not of his enemies, but of the thing whispering in his skull.
Above them, muffled metallic voices filtered down:
“Target signature active.”
“Scion trace confirmed.” “Extraction authorized. Clean sweep.”His panel pulsed again.
!!! SYSTEM WARNING – BLOODLINE LOCK TRIPPED !!!
Extraction Flag: ACTIVATED[ROOT FILE DETECTED: THE BLACKWELL PROTOCOL]WARNING: Your system is incompatible with the controlling layer. Rogue legacy protocols may initiate hostile recovery.
“Skye,” Kieran gasped, “I think it just marked me… as a threat to itself.”
She didn’t look surprised.
“Every system node thinks it’s the original. Yours might actually be the original. That means every clone, every override protocol—wants you dead.”
They kept moving. Skye guided them down an access chute into a vertical shaft. The air grew colder. A soft hum vibrated the walls.
Lights flickered on overhead.
“THERE!”
A tall figure dropped into the tunnel behind them. Not human. Not entirely. Its skin gleamed like polished bone. Where eyes should be, light pulsed through slits in a smooth helmet. In one hand, it held a whip-like weapon crackling with blue arcs.
Kieran froze.
Threat Level: High
Entity: Cleaner Class-3Engagement discouragedSystem Override Unavailable – Legacy Access Blocked
Skye yanked him down a side corridor, breath ragged.
“Those things rewrite you if they catch you.”
“Rewrite?!”
“Like code. They overwrite your memory, erase your personality—leave a shell they can control. And it’s legal. The system masks it as a ‘reset.’”
Kieran’s blood turned to ice.
They reached an elevator shaft, the doors rusted open. Skye motioned to a cable system.
“We climb.”
“You’re joking—”
“I’ll boost you. You’ve got one shot.”
Before he could protest, she cupped her hands, and with strength that surprised him, hoisted him up. He grabbed the cable and pulled.
A thump echoed behind them.
The Cleaner had entered the shaft.
A new alert buzzed in Kieran’s HUD:
Legacy Point Burn Available – Emergency Action?
Spend 1 LP for: ‘Muscle Surge – 15s’ boost? (Y/N)He tapped Y.
A white-hot rush surged through his arms. His body felt ten kilos lighter. Every motion became clean, precise, and powerful. He scrambled up the cable like a trained climber.
Behind him, Skye began climbing too—faster than she should’ve been able to.
“You spent your first point?” she shouted upward.
“Felt like a good time!”
Below, the Cleaner leapt onto the walls, claws digging into the steel as it began scaling after them.
Kieran pulled himself through the top ledge of the elevator shaft.
The boost wore off. His arms shook with exhaustion.
He turned back—Skye was nearly there.
The Cleaner was five feet below her.
Legacy Surge Recharge – 4m:51s Remaining
Too late.
“SKYE!”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes locked on the rising enemy.
Then, at the last second—Skye let go.
She dropped—
—and slammed her blade into the Cleaner’s shoulder.
The thing screamed, not in pain, but in binary static.
Skye pushed off its chest and kicked upward, grabbing the final ledge. Kieran pulled her in.
They slammed the hatch shut just as the Cleaner rammed it from below.
They lay in silence.
They had emerged into a strange place.
Circular chamber. Half-ruined consoles. Glowing arcs etched into the walls. The air buzzed faintly with residual data.
Skye sat up slowly.
“I wasn’t sure I’d make that jump,” she admitted.
Kieran stared at the symbols. “What is this place?”
She wiped grime from a stone panel. “A system nest. One of the old hubs—built when the protocols first seeded this city.”
He turned to her.
“You said my system might be the original… why?”
She hesitated.
“Because only one legacy path mentions the ‘Blackwell Protocol.’ And yours just triggered it.”
Kieran stepped forward. His HUD blinked with a soft new update:
New Task Tree Available: The Inheritance Path
Mission 002 – Unseal the Root Memory
Objective: Connect to original system node (Location: ???)Reward: Legacy Access Level 1 UnlockedWARNING: Completing this task will mark you as HOSTILE to all Override Systems.
He exhaled slowly. “If I keep going…”
“You can’t go back,” Skye finished for him.
A silence fell between them.
Then, the console in the corner of the chamber lit up.
A pixelated face appeared—flickering, distorted. It looked… vaguely like an older man.
Kieran stepped forward.
“You’ve activated more than you know, Scion. I am the Custodian. You must choose—inherit the truth, or be hunted forever.”
Skye pulled him back. “That’s not part of my system.”
The Custodian’s face flickered again. “One path restores the bloodline. The other… burns it down.”
Then:
Confirm Inheritance Path?
Y / NThe prompt glowed in Kieran’s HUD, burning.
His finger hovered.
“Choose, Kieran,” the voice whispered, distorting. “Before they break through.”
A banging echoed from the shaft below.
They had minutes. Maybe seconds.
He looked at Skye. She didn’t say a word.
Kieran tapped—
Y
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Chapter 10: The Fablekill Directive
Ash drifted through Emberpoint like a second silence.Even after the light from Bryn’s last scream had faded and the static echoes of corrupted data ceased, the team remained haunted—each bearing the weight of what they had seen in the depths. A Null not consumed, but erased on her own terms.Lyra sat in the command node, silent, sorting fragments of what little data Kieran recovered from Bryn’s collapse. Skye tinkered with one of the turrets, but her movements were mechanical. Mira—normally distant and eerie—now clutched her knees and muttered words in loops too fractured to follow.And Kieran… stared at the wall where her image still flickered.Subject B – Status: REMOVED.Echo Flame: Archived.Fablekill Protocol: Pending.At 03:12 local node time, the Vault shuddered. Not from external impact.From code.Kieran’s HUD glitched, every display flickering before the Override insignia appeared, burned into the interface like a scar.Core Signal Override Detected.FABLEKILL PROTOCOL ONLI
Chapter 9: The Echo Depths
The first step beneath Emberpoint was like crossing into another world.Steel gave way to obsidian. Clean circuits morphed into jagged, fractured lines of corrupted data. Lights flickered unpredictably, casting distorted shadows along walls that hummed with old, unspoken grief.Kieran led the way, his blade drawn but low. Beside him, Skye moved like a ghost, every step measured. Behind them, Lyra checked every motion tracker while Mira—barefoot and humming again—walked as if she’d been here before.System Warning: Sub-layer anomaly detected.Signal: Fragmented Null Pulse — Proximity 2.2kmEnvironment: Suppressed Override Zone / Echo Contamination Level: Critical“This place isn’t just abandoned,” Lyra muttered. “It was sealed. Maybe even condemned.”Kieran’s panel buzzed faintly, skipping every few meters.“The system can’t read this level properly,” he said. “It doesn’t know if it exists—or ever did.”Skye whistled low. “Glitched reality. Beautiful.”“No,” Mira whispered. “It’s remem
Chapter 8: Children of the Broken Code
Silence had never sounded so loud.The aftermath of battle always came with noise—moans of the wounded, whirring repairs, systems rebooting. But this… this was different.Kieran sat on the edge of the Emberpoint command deck, a cracked energy blade across his knees, watching the child they’d found sleep under heavy sedation. A medical node pulsed quietly nearby, running vitals, though even it struggled to interpret the readings.Skye stood at his side, arms crossed.“She’s… not normal.”“That Wraith didn’t even touch her,” Kieran murmured. “It hesitated. Then crumbled.”Skye nodded slowly. “I’ve seen Override protocols adapt mid-fight. I’ve seen them devour minds and recompile memories. But fear?” She gestured toward the child. “This is the first time I’ve seen the system scared.”Lyra moved through the ruins of the war chamber, assisting tech-recovery drones and checking on structural integrity.Most of the heavy damage was confined to the lower corridors. They’d already salvaged thr
Chapter 7: Ashfall Stand
Override Beacon: ActivatedWarhead Squad ETA: 01:59:56Objective: Defend Ash Vault until override signal expires.If successful: Territory claimed – Resistance Base: EmberpointIf failed: Total annihilationKieran stared at the countdown.Just under two hours.That was all the time they had to turn a scorched military dump into a defensible fortress against a system strike team designed to annihilate legacy traces.The echoes of WRAITH’s retreat still burned in his mind—her final words twisted with warning.“This isn’t an execution. It’s a warhead drop.”01:55:09 – Preparing for WarThe Ash Vault, once a Blackwell testing bunker, still had a skeleton of functionality: pressure doors, reinforced platforms, a few half-operational defense turrets that buzzed erratically when touched.Skye moved like a ghost, checking every blind spot.Lyra barked orders with an old soldier’s confidence, waking up dormant terminals and rerouting power to external gates.Kieran stood at the center, map pul
Chapter 6: The Forgotten Flame
The moment Kieran activated the beacon, the countdown began.Override Broadcast DetectedNode 03 Termination Scheduled: 12:00:00Current Target: Node 03 – “The Forgotten Flame”Location: Ash Vault Subgrid | Clearance: RestrictedThe air felt heavier. The war had truly begun.Kieran stood atop a derelict comm tower overlooking Glen Sector 12—a husk of a district scorched by the last system war. Every building bore fire damage or was riddled with bullet holes, and the underground entrances were sealed or buried.“An ex-military Echo Node,” Skye said, scanning the map, “hiding beneath an incinerated city block. How poetic.”“How do we get in?” Kieran asked.She tapped the interface. “There’s a single access tunnel through an old heat disposal conduit. Problem is… it’s Override-patrolled.”“Then we go through them.”He didn’t say it like a threat.He said it like a promise.Meanwhile…Far below Glen’s outer shell, in the metallic bowels of the Ash Vault, a figure moved with precision thro
Chapter 5: Echo War
The system’s interface hovered before Kieran, glowing with quiet menace.Choose Next Protocol:– Echo War: Raise a resistance, find other legacy wielders.– Bloodline Cleanse: Destroy every node tied to Blackwell tech.His chest ached. His ribs felt cracked, and his left hand trembled from the last strike, but the real weight lay in those two blinking options.One path was vengeance—simple, burning, final.The other… was rebellion.Skye knelt beside him. “If you pick Echo War, you’ll have to build something. You’ll make enemies… and allies. You’ll risk becoming a symbol.”Kieran stared at the flickering prompt.He could almost hear his father’s voice again:“We built the system to rule. If it falls into wrong hands, it becomes a cage.”The cage was already here. And someone had to break the lock from the inside.He tapped Echo War.The screen rippled.Path Selected: Echo War – Resistance Formation Protocol OnlineNew Objective: Locate and Activate ‘Echo Nodes’ (Hidden system users bo
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