2025-04-23 22:37:28The wind howled through the derelict shipping yard like a warning.
Gregory pulled his hoodie tighter and stepped through the rusted gate of Dock 14, heart thudding with every step. The place looked like something out of a thriller—abandoned crates, broken lights, metal chains swaying in the breeze. Perfect spot for a meeting… or a trap.
He checked his phone. 11:58 PM.
Two minutes to midnight.
He waited in the shadows, scanning every flicker of movement. A cat skittered past. A door creaked open somewhere in the darkness.
Then a voice:
“Don’t move.”Gregory stiffened.
From behind one of the stacked containers stepped a man in a long coat, cap pulled low over his eyes, face mostly obscured by the shadows. But his stance wasn’t threatening—just cautious.
“You’re Gregory?” the man asked.
“Depends on who’s asking,” Gregory replied.
The man stepped closer, pulling out a slim envelope. “I used to be Caldwell’s personal assistant. Name’s Jalen. I left the company when things got… dangerous. Caldwell doesn’t know I’m contacting you.”
Gregory’s brow furrowed. “Why now?”
Jalen glanced around. “Because if that family you live with finds out you’ve got this—” he held out the envelope—“you’re dead.”
Gregory took it with trembling fingers. Inside were copies of original hospital records, birth ID tags, and a photo—a baby in Caldwell’s arms, wearing the same hospital wristband Gregory had kept hidden his whole life.
He felt like the ground beneath him cracked.
“It’s real,” Jalen said quietly. “I’ve been comparing those records with the files the Rosewells submitted. They forged their request for a fake heir. They’re trying to plant someone before Caldwell finds the truth.”
Gregory’s throat was dry. “They knew I was the real son.”
Jalen nodded. “They’ve known for months.”
“Why not just kill me?”
“They need to delay. As long as Caldwell never meets you face to face, they have a shot at installing a fake heir and siphoning the empire before he dies.”
Gregory gritted his teeth. “How long does Caldwell have?”
“Maybe weeks. Days, even. He’s deteriorating faster than his doctors predicted.”
Gregory felt a cold fist wrap around his spine.
He had no time.
Jalen stepped closer. “You need to leave that house. Now. You need to go to Caldwell directly. If you wait for the DNA test, they’ll rig it or erase it.”
Gregory’s fists clenched. “I have no money. No access. They watch everything.”
Jalen looked around and handed him a burner phone and an old ID badge.
“This will get you through the back gate of Caldwell’s estate. 48 hours from now. After that, the security protocols change. You miss that window… you’re out.”
Gregory nodded slowly.
Then they both froze.
Footsteps.
Fast. Heavy.
Coming from behind the containers.
Jalen cursed. “They followed me—run!”
Gregory didn’t need to be told twice.
He bolted through the maze of crates as flashlights burst to life and voices shouted behind him.
“Stop him!”
Gunshots cracked through the night.
Gregory zigzagged through the shadows, leaping over rusted rails and ducking under chains. One bullet hit a crate beside him, splintering wood like thunder.
He burst out of the gate, sprinting through the alleyways, not daring to look back.
He didn’t stop running until he reached a subway station. Breath ragged, chest heaving, he ducked into the bathroom and locked himself inside.
His reflection in the mirror was pale, blood splattered from a graze on his shoulder. He didn’t even feel it until he saw it.
But it didn’t matter.
He’d seen the records. He had the photo. He had the proof.
He was Richard Caldwell’s son.
And someone was willing to kill to make sure he never got to claim it.
Back at the mansion, it was pitch black.
Gregory slipped through the shadows, avoiding every creaking board and security camera. He returned to the attic like a ghost, clutching the envelope and burner phone like his life depended on it.
Because it did.
He collapsed on his mattress, mind racing.
He had 48 hours.
Forty-eight hours to get to the estate, to meet the man who unknowingly held the key to everything Gregory had never had—power, identity, family.
But as his eyes fluttered shut, he heard something that turned his blood to ice:
The click of his attic door unlocking.
It creaked open slowly.
A figure stepped inside.
Tall. Silent.
And holding something metallic.
Gregory’s breath caught—
Then the light snapped on.
It was Marcus.
Smiling.
Cold.
“Time to talk, Gregory.”
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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,”
CHAPTER 314: THE DARK FACILITY
Darkness swallowed the chamber in one savage gulp. For half a second, the world no longer existed, no walls, no floor, no enemies, no allies, only a vacuum of black, punctuated by the shriek of emergency sirens choking themselves to death.Then Gregory felt the cold concrete beneath him, the copper taste of blood on his tongue, the dull ache radiating through his ribs. And the sound. Breathing. Not his. Not Amelia’s.Something else. Slow. Even. Unafraid. Host Zero was still standing. He didn’t need light. He already knew where everything was.“Stay still,” Blake’s voice crackled in his ear. “Thermal imaging’s all over the place. He’s moving like he doesn’t care if we see him.”“He doesn’t,” Gregory muttered, pushing himself upright. “He wants us to know he’s here.”A low chuckle echoed through the dark. “You always understood me better than the others,” Host Zero said pleasantly. “Even as a child, your threat assessments were beyond your age. You saw weaknesses before anyone else.”“T
CHAPTER 312: THE HUNT FOR HOST ZERO
The jet tore through the night sky like a blade through cloth, its engines humming under Gregory’s feet. Below him, Eastern Europe stretched out in darkness, cities flickering like signs of life on a dying circuit board.Gregory stood in the cabin, headset on, eyes fixed on the two split-screen feeds in front of him.Blake’s bodycam showed a decaying industrial compound. Snow drifted across rusted metal gates. His strike team moved in tight formation, weapons raised, breath fogging the air.Amelia and Crane navigated a labyrinth of sandstone corridors beneath an old research annex. Sweat glistened on Amelia’s brow despite the low light. Crane’s portable scanner pulsed in his hand.Two locations. One real. One a trap. And every instinct in Gregory’s bones told him they were already walking into his father’s game. “Status,” Gregory said, steady and clipped.Blake’s voice crackled through the left feed. “Compound is quiet. Too quiet. Motion sensors haven’t triggered once. I don’t like it
CHAPTER 311: RESURRECTION PROTOCOL
The jet-black clouds over Prague hadn’t lifted by the time Gregory, Amelia, and Blake touched down in Berlin. Crane’s secure-lab bunker sat beneath a decommissioned intelligence outpost, one of the few places left where Gregory trusted the walls not to listen.The moment they entered the operations bay, Crane shoved a tablet into Gregory’s hands. His face looked like it had aged ten years in a night. “You need to see this,” Crane said. “Now.”Gregory scanned the screen, and froze. A biometric profile glowed in red. Vitals. Neural rhythms. Cognitive mapping signatures. All linked to a single ID tag: CALDWELL_GEN_01.Amelia covered her mouth. “That’s the same algorithm signature embedded in your scans.”Blake’s brow furrowed. “But that shouldn’t be possible. The vault is gone. The mainframe’s fried. How the hell do we still have activity?”Crane swallowed hard. “Because it’s not in the mainframe anymore.”He tapped another window. A live feed appeared. A man strapped to a medical gurney
CHAPTER 310: THE GHOST MARKET
The technician who opened the courier envelope never saw the sunrise. By dawn, the small East London warehouse was nothing but twisted metal and ash.When news reached Caldwell Tower, Gregory was already at his desk. He didn’t flinch when Blake slammed the report down. “Another leak,” Blake said. “Same pattern as before. The drive you locked up, a copy somehow got out.”Gregory’s jaw tightened. “It didn’t ‘get out.’ Someone took it.”Amelia stood by the window, arms folded. “Then we’re not just fighting your father’s ghost anymore. Someone out there thinks they can profit off it.”Gregory turned to Crane’s live feed on the screen. The intelligence director’s face was pale, even through static.“The chatter’s real. The black-market networks are calling it Project ECHO. They think it’s a full digital clone of Richard Caldwell’s mind.”Gregory’s voice was flat. “They’re wrong.”Crane hesitated. “Are they? Because governments, cartels, and defense contractors are already bidding for it li
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