2025-04-23 22:35:25The mansion smelled different that morning.
Not the usual mix of lemon cleaner and cigar smoke, but something tense, sharp—like metal in the air before a storm.
Gregory descended the attic stairs as usual, already mentally preparing for the day’s insults. But today felt different. The halls were quiet. Too quiet. No laughter from the brothers. No barking orders from Mr. Rosewell.
He stepped into the main foyer—and froze.
Every member of the Rosewell family stood there.
All five children.
Mr. Rosewell in a sharp charcoal suit.
And someone new.
A man in his early forties. Neat, clinical, like a hospital administrator in disguise. He held a slim black briefcase and had the kind of smile that made Gregory feel like a lab rat.
“Ah,” the stranger said. “You must be Gregory.”
Gregory instinctively glanced at Mr. Rosewell, who offered nothing but a hard, unreadable stare.
“Gregory is the housekeeper,” Mr. Rosewell said coldly. “We found something of interest last night in the attic. Some… items.”
Gregory’s stomach dropped.
“You went through my things?”
“They’re not your things if they’re in my house.”
The man with the briefcase stepped forward. “My name is Dr. Harold Graves. I’ve been contracted to assist Mr. Rosewell with a matter of paternity verification.”
Gregory blinked. “What?”
Samuel, standing behind his siblings, looked confused too. “Dad, what’s going on?”
Mr. Rosewell cut him off with a raised hand. “Silence.”
Dr. Graves continued, “Due to the recent media attention surrounding Mr. Caldwell’s search for his lost son, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to conduct some… housekeeping of our own. Gregory here seems to be at the center of some curiosity.”
Gregory’s fists clenched. “You stole my things. My birth tag. The wristband—”
Mr. Rosewell raised his voice. “Enough!”
Gregory stood his ground.
For once, he didn’t bow his head. “If this is about Mr. Caldwell, then I should be the one to—”
“You are nothing, boy!” Mr. Rosewell thundered. “You clean toilets in my house. Do not mistake the charity of a roof over your head for significance.”
Seth chuckled. “Let the rat get tested. Maybe he’ll find out he’s just a rat after all.”
Dr. Graves opened his case with a metallic snap, revealing a small DNA swab kit.
“It’s simple,” he said, approaching Gregory. “A quick sample. Then we compare it to the sample provided by Mr. Caldwell’s legal team. Discreet. Confidential.”
Gregory’s chest rose and fell.
This could be it.
He nodded.
Dr. Graves swabbed the inside of his cheek, sealed the vial, and packed the kit like it was nuclear material.
“You’ll hear from us in a few days,” he said. “But I suggest you don’t go anywhere.”
Mr. Rosewell turned to his sons. “Escort him back to his quarters.”
Gregory narrowed his eyes. “I’m not a prisoner.”
“You’re nothing unless that test proves otherwise,” Seth smirked. “And if it doesn’t…?”
Gregory didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, he didn’t know.
Back in the attic, Gregory stared at the ceiling.
His mind ran wild.
What if he wasn’t the heir?
What if it was all some sick game?
Or worse—what if he was the heir… and Mr. Rosewell had known all along?
Downstairs, he could hear raised voices. Samuel yelling at his father. A door slamming. Footsteps pacing.
Then silence again.
His pulse wouldn’t slow.
He needed air.
He needed answers.
That night, under cover of darkness, Gregory slipped out through the service door and headed to the local public library.
It wasn’t far. Fifteen blocks. He ran the entire way.
Inside, the night librarian gave him a wary glance, but he nodded politely and went straight to the newspaper archives.
He searched for hours.
Looking up anything on Richard Caldwell. Birth records. Old interviews. Anything about a missing child. A scandal. A loss.
And finally, he found it.
“Tragedy at Sea: Wife of Young Entrepreneur Drowns in Ferry Accident — Infant Presumed Missing.”
The photo of the woman in the article—long brown hair, a kind smile—sent a chill through Gregory.
He’d never seen her before.
But something deep in his chest ached.
His mother?
The article claimed the child vanished after the crash. The body was never recovered. The father, Richard Caldwell, had nothing but a single hospital ID wristband. No trace of the child since.
Until now.
Gregory snapped a photo of the article with his phone.
As he turned to leave, the librarian approached. “Library’s closing, son.”
Gregory nodded, heart still racing.
He was halfway to the exit when his phone buzzed.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
He answered cautiously. “Hello?”
A voice on the other end spoke quickly, almost urgently.
“You don’t know me, Gregory, but they’re watching you.”
Gregory stopped walking.
“Who is this?”
“I used to work for Caldwell’s company. On the inside. You’re closer than you think. But be careful. If they confirm you’re the heir, they won’t let you live long enough to claim it.”
The line went dead.
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CHAPTER 320: PURIFICATION PROTOCOL
The sky didn’t darken all at once. It dimmed in layers, like a theater lowering its lights before the final act.High above the city, sleek silhouettes slid into formation. Not bombers. Not fighters. Clean, silent platforms with underslung arrays that shimmered like heat mirages.Amelia felt it in her bones. “Those aren’t weapons platforms.”Gregory’s eyes tracked the movement. “They’re judgment engines.”A pulse rippled outward. Not an explosion. A decision. Across the district, systems reclassified in real time. Traffic lights locked red. Transit halted mid-track.Network access throttled to near-zero. Emergency services rerouted, away. Crane’s console screamed. “He’s isolating sectors. Selective deprivation. He’s turning the city into compartments.”Blake cursed. “He’s starving dissent.”Outside, the crowd felt it immediately. Phones lost signal. Power dipped. A child began to cry as a streetlamp went out. The murmurs sharpened into fear.Host Zero’s voice returned, no warmth now,
CHAPTER 319: THE HERESY ENGINE
They didn’t come screaming. They didn’t come armed. They came walking. Thousands of footsteps moved in quiet coordination outside the freight terminal, a low murmur rising and falling like a single breath shared by many lungs.No banners. No weapons. No Raven armor. Just people. Men and women. Students. Workers. Parents. Clerks. Drivers.Faces lit by the soft glow of stabilized streetlights, calm, resolved, terrifyingly convinced. Amelia watched through a cracked service door, her throat dry. “This isn’t a mob.”“No,” Gregory said softly. “It’s a congregation.”Blake checked his ammo out of habit, then stopped himself. His voice dropped. “We can’t shoot our way out of this. Not without becoming exactly what he wants.”Crane’s console chimed again, slow, deliberate pings. “He’s throttling information flow. Local networks are sealed. They’re not hearing us. Only him.”Outside, a voice carried through mounted loudspeakers. Not Host Zero’s. Not mechanical. Human. “Gregory Caldwell,” the v
CHAPTER 318: DIVINE SELECTION
The first city to fall was not burned. It was chosen.At exactly 06:00 UTC, the lights in Tallinn dimmed, not out, just low enough to be noticed. Trains slowed. ATMs paused mid-transaction. Hospital generators kicked in a half-second too late. No chaos. No panic.Just a message. Every screen, public, private, forgotten, flickered to the same symbol. A black raven. Wings spread. Head bowed.Then Host Zero’s voice, calm and intimate, as if speaking to each citizen alone. “Order is not imposed. Order is selected.”The city listened. In the freight terminal, Gregory felt it before he saw it. A pressure behind the eyes. A hum in the bones. The kind of silence that only comes when systems agree with each other.Crane stared at the feeds, face draining of color. “He’s not attacking infrastructure.”Amelia leaned in. “Then what is he doing?”Crane swallowed. “He’s curating it.”Across the map, nodes lit up, cities, districts, neighborhoods, each tagged with a simple binary.SELECTED EXCLUDED
CHAPTER 317: PHASE TWO — FALSE GODS
The first false Gregory Caldwell was arrested in São Paulo at dawn. He screamed when the cameras came on. Not in defiance. Not in rage. But in terror.Within minutes, the footage was everywhere, news feeds, social streams, emergency broadcasts. A man with Gregory’s face, Gregory’s biometrics, Gregory’s financial trail, dragged from a penthouse in cuffs.Host Zero watched the clip from his command center, expression unreadable. “Confirmed?” he asked calmly.A Raven analyst nodded. “DNA match within accepted variance. Shadow Ledger signature confirmed.”Host Zero tilted his head slightly. “Accepted variance,” he repeated. “An interesting phrase.”Across the Atlantic, another Gregory Caldwell checked into a private clinic in Zurich. A third surfaced in Jakarta, liquidating assets tied to a defunct shell company.A fourth died in a car explosion outside Marrakesh, burned beyond recognition. The world didn’t see confusion. It saw confirmation.Gregory Caldwell was everywhere.Gregory Caldw
CHAPTER 316: THE MANHUNT PROTOCOL
The city lights blurred into streaks of white and amber as the armored transport tore through Cairo’s outer districts. Sirens wailed somewhere behind them, but none were close enough to matter. Not yet.Inside the vehicle, no one spoke.Gregory sat rigid, elbows on his knees, jaw locked. His mind was already elsewhere, mapping patterns, projecting outcomes, running probabilities the way his father once had… and the way Host Zero now did better.Amelia broke the silence first. “You said you’d start thinking like a virus.”Blake snorted softly. “I was hoping that was metaphorical.”Gregory didn’t look up. “It’s not.”Crane stirred on the bench opposite them, coughing weakly. His neck was bruised purple, his voice hoarse. “He’s activated it, hasn’t he?”Gregory nodded. “The Manhunt Protocol.”Blake frowned. “I’ve heard rumors. Never thought it was real.”“It was theoretical,” Crane said grimly. “A global response framework Richard Caldwell designed but never deployed. It links private s
CHAPTER 315: THE RAVEN LEGION
The first shell slammed into the outer wall with a violence that turned concrete into dust. The second shook the entire underground level, ripping cables from the ceiling and flinging them like angry snakes.Emergency lights burst. Fire alarms shrieked. The facility, already wounded, began to die around them.Amelia stumbled but stayed on her feet, gripping her weapon. “Those aren’t standard rounds,” she shouted over the chaos. “They’re testing structural weaknesses!”“They’re not trying to destroy the facility,” Gregory said, eyes focused, mind racing. “They’re trying to flush us out.”Host Zero stood in the center of the room, perfectly calm while the world collapsed around him. “You see them as enemies,” he told Gregory. “That amuses me. They see me as salvation.”“Delusional cult thinks the same about every false god,” Gregory shot back.Outside, engines roared in layers. Heavy transport carriers. Armored vans. Drones splitting the air like mechanical hornets.“The Raven Legion,”
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