Chapter Four: Blood Debt
Author: Hop-Grip
last update2025-08-11 02:46:11

Helena Blackwood could barely breathe, Her wrists were bruised from the steel cuffs, her lip split from the last blow, but her eyes still burned with fury, not fear. She’d grown up in boardrooms and battlefields. She wasn’t fragile. But she knew one thing for certain:

This wasn’t a ransom, This was a message. Mr. Sable stood across from her, gloved hands folded behind his back, expression unreadable. His two masked associates stood silently nearby. “You’re not here because we want you dead,” he said calmly. “You’re here to force the king to kneel.”

Helena spat blood at his feet, Sable didn’t flinch. “Lucas Sebastian has meddled in things far above his paygrade. The Circle tolerated him in exile. But now… he threatens legacy, blood, and order.”

Helena lifted her chin. “Then you don’t understand him at all.”

Sable’s voice dropped. “On the contrary. We created him.”

Lucas’s fists slammed against the steel table, the sound echoing through the cold room, A screen displayed a live drone feed of the city’s west docks, where a black SUV had gone dark hours ago.

“She’s in there,” Lucas said. “I can feel it.”

His lead strategist, Monica Vale, adjusted the satellite map. “Consortium ghosts are all over that block. No digital traces. We’ll have to go old-school.”

Lucas turned to his old mentor, Gerald Knox, the same man who once trained him inside the Circle’s camps. “Ready the Vanta unit,” Lucas said quietly.

Gerald blinked. “You’re activating the Vanta?”

Lucas met his eyes. “If they want a ghost war, I’ll give them one.”

Rachel stared at the screen replaying Helena’s torture again and again. She was spiraling, Sable’s voice still echoed in her head: “Deliver us Lucas’s bloodline, or we cut hers.”

Her hands trembled as she opened the second folder Sable left behind. Inside were medical records. Birth certificates. DNA reports.

And one line circled in red: Lucas Sebastian – Carrier of Project Sovereign. Genetically Irreplaceable.

Rachel’s stomach twisted This wasn’t just a power play, They needed Lucas for something deeper, something biological.

And if they couldn’t have him, they’d take, Her eyes locked onto the sonogram photo taped inside the folder. His child, Their child, “Oh God,” she whispered. “They’re going after the baby.”

Lucas’s Strike – 3:41 A.M... Dressed in tactical black, Lucas moved like a shadow through the abandoned shipyard near the docks.

Behind him, the elite Vanta unit followed, silent, invisible, precise, Lucas’s earpiece crackled. “East door guarded. West stairwell blind.”

He signaled. Two guards dropped silently, Then he saw her, Helena, strapped to a chair beneath a hanging light, blood dripping from her nose, but still defiant. Lucas’s rage boiled like magma.

He stormed in before backup could stop him, grabbing the nearest guard and slamming him into a steel beam. Another rushed him, but Lucas moved with brutal grace, elbow, knee, silence.

In less than thirty seconds, the room was his, Helena blinked up through swollen eyes. “You’re late.”

Lucas knelt, touching her face gently. “You’re indestructible.”

She smirked. “You’re predictable.”

He cut her free, but before they could leave, a soft click echoed, Sable stood in the doorway.

“Now that’s a reunion,” he said smoothly. “But you’re forgetting one thing, Lucas…”

He tossed a flash drive onto the ground. “Your past never stays buried.”

Back at Black Tower, Lucas stared at the decrypted contents of the flash drive, His entire history. His real history, Photos from the Circle’s underground facilities. Test results. Training logs. One document stood out:

PROJECT SOVEREIGN – Subject #13: Lucas Sebastian

Status: Survived

Threat Level: Omega

Authorization: Eliminate upon Re-Emergence

His hands curled into fists, They never meant for him to leave, Helena stepped beside him, holding the sonogram photo. “They want the child,” she said.

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “Then they’ve declared war on my family.”

Rachel stood outside Black Tower in the rain, holding the flash drive Sable gave her a second one, containing the location of Lucas’s child’s doctor and Helena’s next private appointment.

She could deliver it… and win her place in the Consortium’s favor. Or, She could walk inside, hand it to Lucas, and finally tell the truth, Her eyes flicked between the building and the night sky Then she took a single step, Toward the tower.

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