2025-06-30 20:53:09The folder in Kai’s hand felt heavier than metal. He opened it slowly, expecting balance sheets, blueprints, or maybe classified company intel.
What he found instead was madness. PROJECT LAZARUS. Confidential Level: VL (Vault Lineage Only). Objective: Resurrection Protocol for Strategic Leadership Continuity.
Initiated: 27 years ago. Lead Architect: Lucian Everhart. Status: Inactive (Subject Fatality Recorded)
Kai frowned. “Resurrection?”
He flipped to the next page, a document stamped in red: DECEASED: Subject Zero (Kestrel Prototype).
Below it, a blurry black-and-white photo of a human-shaped figure, strapped to a hospital table, with half its skull exposed… wired into machines.
His stomach twisted. Another page. A medical scan. The name listed under “DNA Match” was his mother.
He stepped back. “No…”
Another page: a transcript of Lucian’s voice recording. “Subject One failed. The Everhart genome isn’t compatible with synthetic integration... yet. But the boy… the boy might be the key.”
The words hit like a hammer. The boy? Him? He nearly threw the folder. His hands shook.
They hadn’t just built a fortune, they built experiments. And Lucian hadn’t just left him an empire.
He had left Kai the legacy of a ghost scientist obsessed with cheating death.
A voice broke the silence. “Now you know.”
Kai turned sharply. Thorne stood at the entrance.
“You knew?” Kai asked, voice low.
Thorne nodded once. “Not everything. I was told the project was buried when your mother died. But your DNA was stored. Your existence is hidden, and when Lucian’s health declined… he reopened the file.”
Kai stepped forward. “He wanted to bring himself back?”
Thorne didn’t blink. “Or something worse.”
Silence settled. Only the quiet hum of a server hidden somewhere in the walls.
Kai felt a weight press into his chest , deeper than anger. A betrayal wrapped in family and science and power.
He wasn’t just a forgotten heir. He was a contingency. “I want every file, every location, every person who ever worked on Lazarus,” Kai said.
“Already in motion,” Thorne replied.
Kai walked past him. “From now on, I see everything. No more lies. No more curtains.”
“Yes, sir.”
Later that night, Kai sat in the library with the memory card from the box, the one marked "Watch Me."
He inserted it into the tablet. A video opened. The image was grainy. A camera pointed at a desk.
Lucian Everhart appeared, much older, frail but fire-eyed. He stared into the lens.
“Kai. I assume you’ve found the chamber. And the files. You were never meant to be ordinary. That’s why I left you alone, to grow free of the corruption this house bleeds from every wall. But if you’re watching this, then I failed. Which means it’s your turn. Do not trust the board. Do not trust the name Everhart. And most of all… do not resurrect what I died trying to bury.”
He leaned closer to the camera. “But if they come for you, and they will, you’ll have to choose. To run…Or to become the monster this world fears.”
The recording ended. The screen went black. Kai sat still for a long time. His fingers hovered over the seal ring, then closed into a fist.
He didn’t ask for this war. But it was his now, and he wouldn’t run. He’d burn it down before they used him like a puppet.
From the shadows, Dr. Vael watched on a secondary monitor. She closed her notebook and whispered to herself, “He’s awake now. The real game begins.”
...
The mansion slept under a velvet sky, lights dimmed, guards posted, systems armed.
But death doesn’t knock. It slithers in.
It was 2:13 a.m. Kai stood shirtless in the private gym, drenched in sweat, throwing brutal punches into a sandbag like it owed him answers.
The weight of what he’d uncovered, Project Lazarus, his mother’s link, the board, it boiled under his skin.
Every punch was a vow, to never be weak again. To never be used again. To never trust again.
Until he saw the movement in the mirror. Not his. A blur behind him.
Kai ducked instinctively, just as a blade swiped through the air where his neck had been.
He rolled, kicked the attacker in the ribs. A masked figure dressed in matte-black combat gear staggered back, then charged again.
A second one appeared from the shadows near the sauna. This was a hit, and what followed was chaos.
Kai ducked, dodged, used weights, benches, whatever he could. He wasn’t trained like them, not yet, but he had rage, adrenaline, and desperation.
The first attacker came in with a taser. Kai grabbed a kettlebell and cracked his wrist with it, sending the weapon flying.
The second almost had him, until a shot rang out. The man dropped. Blood pooled.
Thorne stood in the doorway, a pistol in his hand, breathing hard. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
Kai looked down. A long slice across his ribs. He hadn’t even felt it. They dragged the surviving attacker into the panic room. Stripped. Bound. Mask removed.
What they found wasn’t what Kai expected. Young. Blonde. Female.
Her mouth was bloody, but her eyes were sharp. No fear. Kai knelt in front of her. “Who sent you?”
She spat blood. Thorne stepped forward. “Let me,”
“No,” Kai interrupted. “I want her to look me in the eye when she lies.”
The woman smirked. “You really think this is about you?”
“It’s exactly about me.”
“You’re a placeholder,” she hissed. “A spark. The real fire comes next. And when it does, you’ll be nothing but smoke.”
Kai didn’t blink. “Name.”
Nothing. He stood. “Strip the body of the other one. I want to know everything, tattoos, scars, gear, blood type.”
“Already in progress,” Thorne said.
Kai turned to her one last time. “Tell whoever sent you… I don’t run.”
She laughed. “You will.”
Thirty minutes later in the strategy room, Thorne presented a small object found sewn into the attacker’s gear, a gold-plated chip.
Embedded inside, encrypted data and a familiar crest. Not Everhart’s. Valencia Calderón’s.
Kai’s jaw tightened. “Open it.”
Thorne nodded. “With your authorization only.”
Kai pressed his seal ring to the tablet. A hologram bloomed in the air, a private message, not meant for him. It was addressed to someone named “Harland Rook.”
Valencia’s voice played: “Strike before he roots. Do it quietly. I’ll deny knowledge. The boy has Lazarus. We need it. Make it look like a robbery gone wrong if you must. Just don’t leave the body breathing. If Thorne interferes… burn him too.”
Thorne said nothing. Kai stared at the screen, voice low. “She tried to kill me on day two.”
“Correct.”
“And she knows about Lazarus.”
“She’s not the only one who will.”
Kai walked to the window overlooking the estate. The night was calm. But the storm was awake now. Inside and out.
“I want Valencia watched,” he said. “Every call. Every movement. Every breath she takes.”
“And if she makes another move?”
Kai’s voice turned ice. “Then I remind her, you don’t play kingmaker in a kingdom you don’t own.”
He turned away from the glass and picked up the ring. In the mirror, the blood from his wound had dried. But the fire in his eyes had not.
He whispered to himself, “Come at me again. Just once. I’ll show you what resurrection really looks like.”
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Chapter 227. The Analog Sanctum
The storm came without warning. It rolled across the dead plain in a hard gray wall, sand cutting sideways, wind tearing at anything not bolted down. The outer colonies had no warning systems left. No satellites. No alerts. You learned storms by feeling the air change.Kai felt it as he tightened the last bolt on the solar mast. He climbed down from the rusted scaffold as the first gust hit, boots slipping on cracked concrete. He pulled a tarp over the exposed panels and locked it down with steel hooks. The wind howled harder, slamming into the skeletal remains of the old facility.The structure had once been a weather research hub. Pre-digital. Built before full automation. Thick walls. Manual controls. It had survived because no one thought it mattered anymore.Kai shoved the door closed and sealed the latch. The storm battered the building. The lights inside did not flicker.A single generator hummed, steady and low. Kai stood in the center of the room and waited until the sound
Chapter 226. The Shattered Vault
The Vault died in pieces. Not in one purge. Not with a broadcast or a final stand. It broke quietly, node by node, person by person, until no one could say where it ended or what it had ever been.Kai learned this by walking. He moved under a new name again. The alias changed with each region. Clothes changed too. What stayed the same was his pace. Slow. Observant. Never first to speak.The first rumor reached him in a rail-yard settlement built from overturned freight cars.Two men argued beside a barrel fire. “You hear about the Vault people?” one asked.The other spat into the dirt. “Which ones?”“The ones who ran the deep code. Before the blackout.”“Yeah,” the second man said. “They’re gone. Or sold out.”Kai kept walking. That night, he slept in a maintenance tunnel with water dripping through cracked concrete. He wrote by lantern light, pencil scratching steady lines across paper. “Vault no longer cohesive. Names traded like currency.”He closed the journal and hid it under h
Chapter 226. The Shattered Vault
The Vault died in pieces. Not in one purge. Not with a broadcast or a final stand. It broke quietly, node by node, person by person, until no one could say where it ended or what it had ever been.Kai learned this by walking. He moved under a new name again. The alias changed with each region. Clothes changed too. What stayed the same was his pace. Slow. Observant. Never first to speak.The first rumor reached him in a rail-yard settlement built from overturned freight cars.Two men argued beside a barrel fire. “You hear about the Vault people?” one asked.The other spat into the dirt. “Which ones?”“The ones who ran the deep code. Before the blackout.”“Yeah,” the second man said. “They’re gone. Or sold out.”Kai kept walking. That night, he slept in a maintenance tunnel with water dripping through cracked concrete. He wrote by lantern light, pencil scratching steady lines across paper. “Vault no longer cohesive. Names traded like currency.”He closed the journal and hid it under h
Chapter 225. The Empire of Tenebris
The banners went up before sunrise. They were black, thick cloth reinforced with fiber, heavy enough to hang straight even in the wind. Crews worked in silence, fastening them to towers, bridges, and the skeletal remains of old Crest infrastructure. Floodlights came online one by one, turning the banners into flat silhouettes against pale concrete.By the time the sun crested the horizon, the city center no longer belonged to Crest. It belonged to Tenebris.Armored formations assembled across the Grand Axis Plaza. Rows of soldiers locked into position, boots aligned, rifles angled down. No insignia marked rank. Only the Tenebris symbol burned white on their chest plates.Civilians gathered at a distance first, then closer. Word had spread during the night. Power was returning. Water pumps had restarted in three districts. Food convoys had crossed borders without being attacked. People came because things were working again.They stood shoulder to shoulder, quiet, watching the platf
Chapter 224. The World Without Hands
The man called himself Rowan now. He answered to it when spoken aloud. He signed it on ration logs. He let it settle into his posture, his walk, his way of standing slightly off-center in any room. Rowan was forgettable. That was the point.Kai cut his hair short with a dull blade in a communal washroom two days after leaving the convoy. He shaved unevenly, then let stubble grow back wrong. He burned his old jacket and traded it for a patched coat that smelled of oil and rain. When he caught his reflection in a cracked mirror, he tilted his head, adjusted his shoulders, and nodded once.The face would pass. The settlement outside the dead zone called itself Haven Ridge. It was neither haven nor ridge. It was a sprawl of stacked shipping containers, collapsed prefab housing, and tents stretched between old highway pylons. Smoke drifted from cook fires. People moved constantly, but without flow. No rhythm. No timing.Kai walked in with a sack over his shoulder and nothing else. At th
Chapter 223. Smugglers of the Unseen
The alley smelled of damp metal and diesel. Rain dripped from broken panels, pooling in shallow rivulets across cracked pavement.Eren crouched in the shadows, hood pulled low, scanning the street. Digital overlays blinked on his portable terminal, false IDs, projected itineraries, simulated medical records. Everything pointed to a man who didn’t exist. A man who had to move without trace.A convoy waited at the far end: trucks, buses, and old passenger carriers patched with metal plates, their engines quiet beneath tarp coverings. Citizens shuffled in, faces pale and wary. Children clutched makeshift bags, some crying quietly, others staring with blank, calculated calm. Eren moved through them like a ghost, checking manifests, verifying holographic tags, and adjusting one by one.Kai lay beneath a tarp in the last bus, barely stirring. His arm was bandaged, a thick, dark stain running through the cloth. His breathing was shallow but steady. Every so often, he twitched, eyes flicker
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