The Inheritance Protocol

7. The Blood Auction

"Every empire has a price. But some things aren’t sold, they’re unleashed." Lazarus Codex, Vol. II.

Location: Undisclosed Subterranean Bazaar, Istanbul, Midnight. No maps. No signs. No law.

You don’t find the Blood Auction. You’re either invited…Or you're hunted until you wish you were never born.

Kai Everhart had just received an invitation. Gilded. Coded. Delivered by a man missing two fingers and his tongue.

On it: Item #77: Asset Sample, Ash. Gene Class: Firstborn – Omega Tier. Status: Active. Threat: Uncontained.

Kai didn’t breathe when he read the last line, “Opening bid: $8,000,000 in weapons grade crypto. Buyer receives a full Lazarus file + genome sample.”

If that sample was real, the entire world could replicate Ash. Or worse, build more.

The Blood Auction was held beneath an abandoned Ottoman crypt. Torch-lit walls. Vaulted stone ceilings. The scent of incense and iron.

Guards in suits and ceremonial bone masks lined the walkways. High rollers sat in private booths behind obsidian glass.

Weapons dealers. Rogue military scientists. Heirs of dead nations. Kai walked in alone. Dressed like death in tailored black. Every eye followed him.

Not because they knew him. But because they felt him. Power changes a man’s walk.

He took his seat. The auctioneer spoke in six languages simultaneously, her voice digitized and mechanical.

“Welcome to Lot 77.”

A screen flickered on. Ash’s face. Cold. Rage coiled behind his eyes.

Next to it. A blood vial. Labeled in Everhart code. Kai’s stomach turned. It was real.

The bidding began. First bid: $10 million. Second: $15 million in bio-war bonds. Third: A private island.

Kai didn’t bid yet. He needed to know who came to own Ash, and that’s when he saw her.

Lady Calligra. Jet-black veil. Diamond scalpel around her neck. One of the last true Lazarus scientists. Thought dead. Now reborn as a biotech queen.

She raised her hand. “$30 million.”

Everyone went silent. Even the auctioneer paused. “Acknowledged. Lot 77 now belongs to…”

“Counter-bid.” Kai’s voice cut through the chamber.

Every masked head turned. “$70 million. Plus one share in Everhart Global.”

Shock. Murmurs. Someone choked on their champagne. A share in Everhart was like offering a throne.

The auctioneer tilted her masked head. “Accepted.”

A soft chime. Ash’s genome was Kai’s now. Or so he thought.

Backstage, Kai waited for the case. Guarded. Armed. But the handler who brought it… Wasn’t a handler.

It was a Firstborn sleeper agent. The real auction had been a setup. The case exploded in a flash charge, nonlethal, but blinding, and in that chaos… Ash’s vial vanished.

Kai tore through the underground tunnels after the thief, a ghost in a cloak, unnaturally fast.

Thorne patched in by earpiece. “You're not going to catch him alone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Kai activated Protocol Spire, Everhart drones cloaked above the city, and rerouted them underground.

One blocked the thief’s path. Another collapsed the tunnel behind him.

The thief dropped the vial, shattered. Gone. But he whispered something before biting a suicide capsule, “The Firstborn don’t bleed for kings. We burn them.”

Back at the Everhart estate…Kai slumped into his chair, bruised and furious.

Thorne entered. “No genome. No data. No leads.”

Kai nodded. But then, his screen blinked. An encrypted file appeared. From Nova.

“Tracked the sample before it was destroyed. Recovered 2% of the Lazarus code. But it’s corrupted. You’re not going to like where it leads.”

The file opened. Coordinates: Greenland. Site: Project Lazarus Original Facility. Status: Buried, Not Abandoned.

...

Location: Greenland, Coordinates Unknown. Time: 1:12 a.m. Temperature: –41°C.

Kai stood at the mouth of a glacier carved with symbols not even his AI translator could decode.

Nova stood beside him, arms folded tight in the cold. “You sure this is the place?”

Kai didn’t answer. His blood felt it. Like the land recognized his DNA, and hated it.

A storm howled behind them. Their team of six elite operatives descended into the glacier, using explosives to expose a narrow chasm.

Below. A tunnel. Frozen steel. Strange light pulsing from beneath layers of frost.

The door wasn’t locked. It recognized Kai’s presence, and opened on its own.

Inside, a facility powered by dormant nuclear cores and cryo-reactors.

Walls covered in test data. Filing cabinets fused into the walls. A hallway marked only by a single word, "EVE."

Room 9: The Firstborn Nursery. They found what looked like a surgical ward. But not for healing, for building.

Scanners. Genetic printers. Liquid data chambers. Then, a wall of photos. Babies.

Dozens of them. Each marked with a codename. All tagged with Everhart Blood Compatible.

Nova’s voice cracked, “They bred children here.”

Kai found one photo. Burned at the corner. His own eyes stared back. But the boy wasn’t him. It was labeled, “ASH , Subject 13”

Room 21: The Living Archive. In a sealed chamber, one cryo-pod was still active.

Nova cracked the encryption. “Bio-stasis. Still alive.”

Inside floated a young woman. No older than 22. Skin pale. Hair like ink. Eyes flickering behind closed lids. Her label, “Subject 01, ORACLE.”

Files scattered around the pod spoke of her abilities: Quantum recall, thought layering, perception of possible futures.

Thorne stepped forward. “If she wakes up, she might know what Ash is planning.”

But Nova hesitated. “Or she might be the one who started it.”

Kai had to choose. Wake her… or leave her sealed. He pressed the button.

The Oracle Wakes. She gasped. Then looked directly at Kai. “You're late,” she whispered. “He’s already here.”

“What?”

“Ash. He never left. This place… was never a lab.”

Her eyes bled tears of frost. “It was a throne room.”

The lights shut off. Screams echoed from down the hall. Gunfire. The facility went black.

Their team was ambushed by surgically enhanced killers, human in form, inhuman in action.

Firstborn loyalists. Still active. Still protecting Lazarus. In the chaos, Thorne took a blade to the shoulder. Nova dragged him to safety. Kai fought hand-to-hand, until a figure stepped into the chamber.

Ash.

Again. Unscarred. Calm. Like the ice obeyed him. “Welcome home, brother,” he said. “The empire doesn’t belong to you. It never did.”

He dropped a device. A Lazarus Trigger Bomb, coded to Kai’s DNA.

Countdown: 120 Seconds. Kai had two minutes to escape.

Nova shouted: “We’ll never outrun the blast!”

The Oracle , barely conscious , touched the bomb. “I can’t stop time.

 But I can slow it… for you.”

Her nose bled. Her hands shook. “Run.”

00:03 , Detonation Zone. Kai carried the Oracle through collapsing tunnels.

Nova beside him. Thorne limping with a gun. An entire mountain falling behind them.

They burst into the open air, just as the glacier erupted behind them in blue fire. They survived, But Ash had vanished again.

…

Aftermath, Everhart Estate, 4 Days Later. The Oracle lay in recovery. Monitored.

Kai looked over maps of ancient Lazarus facilities. Only one word burned at the top of the list, “The Nest.”

Nova, “What’s that?”

Kai, “The place wh

ere they trained the Firstborn to kill kings.”