Rebirth of the Forsaken Heir

Chapter Six: The Blood Oath

The silence in the office was deafening.

Ethan stared at the decrypted file, his mind reeling. The words burned into his memory:

Patient: Ethan Blake. Diagnosis: Genetic Degeneration – Neural Variant. Prognosis: Fatal within 10 years.

A lie. His entire childhood, a carefully crafted prison built on deceit.

Zara’s voice was barely above a whisper. “This isn’t just about power, Ethan. It’s about control. They didn’t try to kill you to silence you. They tried to own you. Break you. Rebuild you.”

Ethan clenched his fists. “And when I wouldn’t become their puppet, they wrote me off.”

Jayden entered, holding a stack of hard drives. “Bad news. We’ve got a mole.”

Zara and Ethan turned.

Jayden dropped the drives onto the desk. “One of our backup servers was accessed remotely. Data copied and scrubbed clean. Whoever did it had admin-level clearance.”

“Who?” Ethan asked.

Jayden hesitated. “We’re still narrowing it down. But... whoever it is, they’re close.”

Zara looked at Ethan. “We need to lock everything down. Until we find the traitor.”

Ethan nodded grimly. “Do it. No one leaves. No one enters.”

The Oath Room

Three floors beneath the main lab, in a hidden chamber lined with reinforced steel and biometric scanners, Ethan convened his inner circle.

Zara. Jayden. Cole. Mira—the cryptography specialist. Devin—the security chief. And Aria—the ex-BlakeCorp forensic analyst.

They stood in a circle, the tension thick.

Ethan took a breath. “From this moment forward, we don’t just work for Atlas Venture. We become something bigger. A syndicate of truth. A force that operates outside their rules. Because what we’re fighting isn’t just corruption—it’s rot in the foundation of our world.”

He pulled a blade from his coat. An old ceremonial dagger—passed down by his grandfather, before Marcus turned the family name into poison.

Ethan sliced his palm. Blood dripped onto the floor.

“A vow,” he said. “To uncover every secret they buried. To bring down the empire that betrayed us.”

Zara stepped forward, repeating the gesture.

“For justice.”

Jayden followed. “For truth.”

Each one bled, speaking their vow.

And in that cold, hidden room, a new brotherhood was born.

A Ghost Resurfaces

Two days later, Mira burst into Ethan’s office.

“I found him!”

“Who?”

“Arden Vale. He’s alive. Operating under the alias ‘Kane Velasquez.’ Hiding in Oslo.”

Zara’s brow furrowed. “Why Oslo?”

“Interpol flagged a money trail connected to a shell company owned by Victor Rane. Arden's using it to funnel information. He’s been monitoring both BlakeCorp and us.”

Jayden pulled up a surveillance map. “He’s using data caches to track AI development around the world. Including ours.”

Ethan’s jaw tensed. “He’s watching me.”

Zara stepped forward. “Then let’s give him a reason to come out of hiding.”

Operation Black Echo

The plan was risky.

They staged a leak—an anonymous report claiming Ethan had developed a self-replicating AI protocol capable of breaking global firewalls.

Within hours, whispers spread on the dark web.

And by nightfall, Arden took the bait.

A direct ping to their decoy server. An IP trace.

Location: Oslo. Coordinates triangulated to an abandoned observatory on a remote ridge.

Ethan stood with Cole at the private airstrip, preparing to leave.

“You sure you don’t want backup?” Cole asked.

Ethan loaded his weapon. “No. This is personal.”

Oslo – The Dead Man’s Doorstep

The snow crunched beneath Ethan’s boots as he approached the observatory, breath misting in the cold.

Inside, the building was hollow, gutted by time. But a single light glowed behind reinforced glass on the second floor.

Ethan stepped inside.

A shadow moved.

Then a man appeared, tall and grizzled, eyes sharp despite the years.

“Ethan Blake,” he said. “I never thought I’d see you alive.”

“Likewise, Arden.”

There was silence.

Then Arden nodded toward a terminal. “You’ve stirred up a lot of noise. Victor’s getting nervous.”

“Good. I want him to feel hunted.”

Arden looked at him. “You’re becoming your father’s shadow.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“That’s the problem,” Arden said. “You don’t understand the war you’re in. Marcus... he wasn’t just a businessman. He was a gatekeeper. He and Victor weren’t working alone.”

Ethan’s stomach tightened. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a council,” Arden said quietly. “Hidden financiers. Old money. Global elites. They’ve been backing BlakeCorp’s experiments for years. Genetic modification. AI suppression. Information control.”

Ethan stepped back. “That’s insane.”

Arden met his eyes. “You think Victor came back because of you? No. He came back because you’re disrupting a system centuries in the making.”

He handed Ethan a drive.

“That’s everything I’ve gathered. Names. Accounts. Projects. Including one called Helix Protocol.”

“What is it?”

“Classified. But from what I found... it’s designed to rewrite human behavior at the neurological level.”

Ethan stared

“They were going to use it on you.”

The Hidden Trigger

Back at Atlas HQ, Zara ran diagnostics on Ethan’s neural scans from childhood.

Something was wrong.

“Jayden, look at this,” she said, pulling up the data. “There’s a dormant neural implant buried behind his hippocampus.”

“What does it do?”

Zara zoomed in. “It’s a behavioral override. Connected to his limbic system.”

“A kill switch?”

“No. Worse. It can influence decisions. Trigger emotional responses. Even shut down memory.”

Jayden’s voice dropped. “You mean... if someone activates it—”

“He won’t know what’s real.”

The Betrayal

That night, while Ethan reviewed Arden’s data, the mole made their move.

Cole was working late when the lab alarms blared.

Intrusion alert.

Ethan raced downstairs.

The AI core chamber was open. Security logs wiped. One of the sub-drives—gone.

Devin stood frozen. “Someone used my credentials.”

Ethan stared at him. “Are you saying...?”

“No!” Devin protested. “I swear—I was in the upper wing. I didn’t authorize anything!”

Jayden checked the logs. “Access was masked. But they left something behind.”

He handed Ethan a small, silver pin.

Etched with a symbol.

A snake devouring its own tail.

Zara paled. “That’s not just a symbol.”

Ethan whispered, “It’s the mark of the Helix Council.”

The Warning

Hours later, Ethan stood alone on the rooftop, wind whipping his coat.

His phone buzzed.

Another anonymous message:

“You found Arden. Good. But you’re too late. The Helix Protocol has already begun. You were the prototype. And now... the real war begins.”