The Inheritance Protocol

8. The Nest

"Only the unbroken can be programmed. The broken must first be erased." The Nest’s Codex, Entry 0001.

Location: Blacksite Coordinates, The Ural Mountains, Russia. Temperature: -22°C. Access Level: Red-Class Only.

For years, The Nest was dismissed as legend. An underground fortress where Lazarus trained child operatives into Firstborn enforcers. No satellite found it. No survivor left it.

Until now. The Oracle pointed Kai to it, and Kai was ready.

…

In her room at the Everhart estate, Oracle lay pale and wired to neural stabilizers.

 Her voice was thin, but clear. “You won’t win by killing Ash. You win by understanding who made him.”

Kai leaned in. “And who’s that?”

She looked at him, eyes shining violet in the dark. “You are.” Then she passed out again.

Kai, Nova, and Thorne traveled by stealth jet. The Nest was buried in an old nuclear bunker, protected by cryo-mines and biometric traps.

They entered through a cave rigged with ancient motion detectors. Even the air felt coded.

This was where minds were reprogrammed. Where futures were erased.

Inside, they found a vault , full of floating memory discs, wired into the walls.

Each one was a recorded consciousness, training simulations burned into the brains of children.

Nova hacked one. It played through Kai’s earpiece. A child, screaming, “Who am I?”

A reply, “You are no one. You are Firstborn.” Then the boy fought ten others, all identical.

Only one survived. The file ended with a name. “Subject: Ash. Status: Graduation, Complete.”

They moved deeper. A courtyard lay ahead. Scorched. Cracked tiles. Rows of bleachers… filled with bones.

The Oracle’s voice echoed faintly over their comms. She’d regained consciousness remotely. “They made them fight. One by one. No mercy. No rest. If they hesitated, they were terminated.”

Nova whispered, “They weren’t soldiers. They were… gladiators.”

From the shadows emerged three Firstborn survivors. Not children anymore, fully grown weapons.

Codenames. Vesper , silent, blade expert, body laced with carbon bone implants. Mire, toxin specialist, smiles when she kills. Echo, cybernetic vision, speaks only in riddles. Kai stepped forward. They didn’t speak. They attacked.

What followed was brutal ballet. Thorne held Vesper with twin knives. Nova used hacking drones to scramble Echo’s vision.  

Kai faced Mire, a whirlwind of venom-dipped claws and spite. In the middle of it all, the Nest’s AI rebooted, walls shifted, sealing exit points.

Time ran out fast. Kai finally knocked Mire unconscious with a voltage round, barely alive. Vesper and Echo retreated, but not before leaving a parting message, “Ash awaits you at the Summit. But you’ll never reach him alive.”

Then they vanished into the inner corridors. Behind the last sealed vault, they found The Throne Room.

Not for royalty. For monsters. Holographic images of Firstborn stood in lines, 200 in total. Each one tagged with a code, a specialty, and a kill count, and on a pedestal, a recording.

Nova pressed play. Lazarus Recording, 14 Years Ago.

“Subject 13 has surpassed all parameters. But he is unstable. Solution: Insert familial trauma. Let him watch Subject 01 perish. Rage will sharpen him.”

They had tried to kill Oracle in front of Ash. To turn him from a soldier into a god of vengeance.

Kai whispered, “They broke him on purpose.”

And then, the twist, “If Subject 13 fails, fallback Subject will be activated. Subject 14: KAI.”

Kai stumbled. Nova stared at him, stunned. “You… you were next?”

Thorne, “They never planned for you to inherit your father's company. They planned for you to replace Ash.”

Kai sank to one knee, fists clenched. Every war. Every humiliation. Every moment of poverty. It was engineered. To test whether he’d break, and he didn’t.

A file unlocked on Nova’s screen. One last Lazarus outpost. Marked, "Project Crownfall, Himalayan Summit Base."

She looked at him. “He’s waiting for you.”

Kai rose. “No. He’s summoning me.”

...

Location: Himalayan Summit, Blacksite “Crownfall” Elevation: 21,600 ft. Atmosphere: Oxygen-depleted. Radio-silent.

Kai stood at the base of the frozen stairway, the wind slicing like razors.

Above him, hidden in clouds and stone, was Crownfall, a Lazarus fortress carved into the bones of the mountain. Unmapped. Now reactivated by Ash.

This was where everything pointed. Every betrayal. Every mystery. Every scream.

Nova’s voice came in through comms. “This place shouldn’t exist.”

Kai, “It shouldn’t. But neither should we.”

Crownfall was inverted. Not a tower that rose, but a citadel that burrowed down into the mountain.

It was a graveyard of kings. Ash had transformed it into a war temple.

Walls painted in blood-signal runes. Skulls set into the floor, and a throne made from the weapons of the Firstborn who tried to challenge him.

Kai, Nova, and Thorne passed through each corridor like ghosts in their own memories.

Every chamber was a test. Every trap whispered, "Not worthy."

In one chamber, Kai was separated. Gas hissed from the vents, a Lazarus neuro-toxin designed to simulate trauma loops.

Suddenly, he wasn’t in Crownfall anymore. He was Back in his childhood apartment. Watching his father die again. Seeing his ex laugh at his poverty. Watching himself fail.

But this time… he didn’t break. He embraced it. Smashed through the hallucination. Shattered the walls.

When the gas cleared, he stood alone. Breathing. Bleeding. Alive.

At the lowest level, the doors opened. Ash sat on the throne. Calm. Regal. Wearing armor forged from Nest steel. His eyes glowed with Lazarus energy, not artificial. Evolved.

Flanking him. Vesper, now his silent blade. Mire, reborn as his oracle of poisons. Echo, watching everything, recording everyone

Ash smiled. “Welcome home… Subject 14.”

Kai said nothing. He stepped forward. “No more riddles. No more tests. You called me here, now say what you want.”

Ash stood. “I want you to take your place beside me. Not as an enemy. Not as prey. As the only one who understands what I am.”

Ash walked to Kai. “The world is broken. You and I , we were made to rebuild it. The Consortium, Lazarus, the Blood Auction, they’re all ashes now. But we… we are fire.”

He held out his hand. “Join me. Burn it all down. Build something stronger. Or… try to stop me.”

Behind him, a screen lit up. A countdown, “Global Asset Disruption, T-Minus 6 Days”

Nova stared. “He’s going to crash the world economy.”

Ash: “Not crash. Reset. The ultra-wealthy? Gone. The corrupt elite? Erased. A world where only the strong survive. Firstborn rule. No more kings.”

Kai looked at the countdown. Then looked at Ash, and said, “You want a god beside you. I’m just a man who survived hell.”

Ash’s smile faded. “Then you’ll die like one.”

Ash moved first, inhumanly fast. Kai dodged the strike, barely. Thorne covered the flanks, dueling Echo in a flurry of sparks.

Nova fired EMP rounds to disable the facility's core defenses. Mire attacked with airborne venom, which Oracle, patched in through drones, countered in real-time by hacking the ventilation.

The chamber became a war. Ash and Kai fought like twins, mirror images, opposite destinies. Blades. Fists. Fire.

Ash landed a near-fatal hit. Kai fell back, bleeding.

“Still think you’re just a man?” Ash growled.

Kai coughed blood. Grinned. “Yeah. But you forget… men don’t fight alone.”

He activated his gauntlet. Nova’s drone crashed through the ceiling, unleashing a directed sound weapon tuned to Firstborn neural oscillations.

Everyone dropped, except Kai. He’d taken the antidote earlier.

As the fortress crumbled, Kai stood over Ash. He could kill him. “I’m not like you.”

Ash coughed, laughing. “That’s what makes you weak.”

“No. That’s what makes me human.”

Kai carried a stunned Ash to the extraction point. Nova, Thorne, and what remained of their team evacuated as Crownfall exploded behind them.

As the helicopter rose into the sky, Oracle’s voice came through. “Ash isn’t done. Not even close. That was just one reset node.”

Kai nodded. “Then we find the next.”