Legacy Protocol

Arin opened his eyes to a ceiling that smelled of cedar and antiseptic, the pattern on it a carved geometry he’d seen only in wealthy men’s nightmares. He had the sudden, absurd sense of standing at the edge of the world and finding a stranger’s shoes on his feet.

For a long, hungry second, he did not know his name. Panic arrived like a cold animal, claws under his ribs, until something metallic and patient spoke inside him.

PROTOCOL INITIALIZED. IDENTIFICATION: ARIN VOSS.

STATUS: LIVING. MISSION QUEUE: 1.

Arin jerked, heart thudding. The voice was neither male nor female — it had the brittle calm of a machine that had learned sarcasm for efficiency. He pushed himself upright and tasted copper.

Pictures lined the table by the bed: an older man with silver hair and eyes like a hawk, a woman whose smile did not reach the corners of her mouth, and a young woman posed like a statue — Evelyn Daro Voss. The surname buzzed in him like an old key.

“Mr. Voss,” said a nurse, soft as a practiced regret. “You’re awake. You had us very worried.”

Where had he been? He tried to remember the last clean thing: a rain-slick road, a headache that wouldn’t stop. The rest collapsed into a raw muffled ache. There was a shape of memory — fists, betrayal — and then nothing. He felt hollow and full at once, like something had been taken and something had been planted.

The Protocol supplied facts without kindness. PRIMARY CONTEXT: ARIN VOSS — ASSIGNED STATUS: FOUND. ESTATE: VOSS MANOR. FAMILY CONTACT: LUCAN VOSS, PATRON. MISSION: SURVIVAL. Survival felt small and blunt in his chest. He rubbed his temple; there was a hard line under his scalp that wasn’t there before, as if the world had fixed a thing to his skull.

The nurse’s face altered into careful politeness. “The patriarch will see you after you rest. There are… arrangements being made. You might have questions.” She gave him a paper-thin smile and left. The door shut with the small dignity of painted wood.

Arin swung his legs over the bed and the world tipped. His right hand brushed the ring on the bedside table — heavy, stamped with an emblem he could not yet parse: half a bull, half a circuit board. He felt the weight of other people’s expectations pressing down; it hurt.

PROTOCOL: MISSION 1 — ACQUIRE MEMORY SHARD FROM VOSS ASSET: Code-TESSERA, LEVEL: LOW.

REWARD: BLUEPRINT TOKEN × 1.**

PENALTY: MINOR MEMORY DELETION / TEMPORAL DISORIENTATION.**

“What the—” Arin whispered. His voice sounded like someone else’s when he hadn’t seen it in a while. Memory shard. Blueprint token. The words were an odd jargon for a man who remembered the last thing as a dark smear.

He scanned the room for cameras, microphones, anything that justified the tinny voice in his head. Nothing obvious. The Voss estate took privacy seriously — around here, privacy cost money and made enemies. The Protocol didn’t offer an origin story. Machines never did.

By the time Lucan Voss arrived, Arin had forced himself into composure: clean shirt, hands that did not tremble. The patriarch looked like a man who had been carved out of a cliff: angles, depth, and the kind of patience that had broken a thousand people into useful shapes.

“You’re awake.” Lucan’s voice was gravel and silk. “Good.” He sat down like he was lowering a verdict. “You remember anything?”

The Protocol answered for him first, as if it knew how quickly Lucan would decide the empty spaces. MEMORY Log: PARTIAL. PRIOR LIFE: [UNKNOWN]. TRAUMA: HIGH. RECOMMEND: DELAY FULL DISCLOSURE.

Arin swallowed. “Bits,” he said. “Some of it. I—” He paused because whatever had happened before was a wound he could not yet touch. Lucan watched him with a scholar’s interest.

“You were found unconscious at the edge of the city, near the Daro docks,” Lucan said. “Evelyn recognized you from a family portrait. She insisted the family take you in. That was a merciful, if strange, choice.” His mouth twitched. “Evelyn will be pleased you’re awake.”

Evelyn. The name was a thin rod of focus. When she entered the room, she carried herself like a person being measured. Her hair was dark and dangerously neat. Her smile was practiced; Arin felt, with a shock, that it had been aimed and calibrated.