If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want!
/-\
The rain in District Three didn't fall so much as condense thick, unrelenting mist that clung to the rusted scaffolding and guttered lightposts like a second skin. Beneath it, life breathed in hushed, staccato rhythm. Neon signs flickered through haze, footfalls padded on waterlogged steel, and deep under the foundation of the city's old monorail system, resistance pulses quietly faint but undeniable.
Somewhere in that skeletal undercity, a small room hummed with encrypted signals and worry.
Jessa leaned forward over a fragmented map array. Her face, lit by cold digital light, bore the marks of sleeplessness and someone trying too hard to stay invisible. The resistance network she'd been rebuilding after the Fire was barely held together fractured into cells, some loyal, some bought off, some gone dark entirely.
But tonight, something crawled out of the data grid.
"He's active again," she muttered, fingers trailing over the red-blinking node marked "Echo."
Across from her, Ryke tilted his chair back until it creaked. "Didn't we write that ghost off months ago? Phantom code, false ping, glitch from the ARASHI blackout. Take your pick."
Jessa didn't look away from the screen. "That ghost just hijacked an energy spooler from a drone-depot in Seven. That's not a glitch."
Ryke raised an eyebrow, then let the chair fall forward. "And?"
She turned, the underlight catching in her eyes. "Echo isn't a person. He's a protocol. Pre-Fire, top-tier clearance. Untraceable routing nodes. Half of what he does the grid doesn't even register. And now he's awake again. Just like the rumors said."
Ryke's smirk faded.
"Let's say you're right," he said slowly. "What does this have to do with the ARASHI protocol?"
Jessa tapped a separate feed. It displayed a warped waveform jagged and non-repeating, looping like a signature. "This frequency was used to mask Echo's outbound traces. But two hours ago, the same signal pulsed from the containment vault under District Seven."
A silence settled between them, punctuated only by the ambient hum of a repurposed air-filtration unit in the corner. Old tech, barely functioning.
Ryke folded his arms. "So the vault's active. And Echo's paying attention."
"Maybe more than paying attention." She pulled up a blurred video still taken from a busted rooftop drone cam. It was timestamped from the night of the last energy surge in Seven. It showed Aiden, silhouetted against a burst of bluish light. Static obscured most of the image, but the outline was unmistakable.
Ryke stared. "Who is he?"
Jessa's jaw worked a moment before she answered. "No one on file. But someone knows his name. I intercepted a command-line burst just after the vault reopened. It was a phrase. 'Initiate Dusk Protocol. Target: Uchiha.'"
Ryke blinked. "Dusk Protocol?"
"Suppressed directive. Black-level. Came from a repeater node buried in Old Konoha sector ruins. Someone buried deep is watching this unfold."
Outside, thunder cracked like a bone snapping.
Jessa stood, pushing away from the console. "We need to make contact. If this kid really is an Uchiha, he might be the key to unlocking what's inside the vault. But more importantly…" She hesitated. "If ARASHI is back online if Echo is awake he's not just watching. He's preparing something."
Ryke stood too, wariness finally cutting through his skepticism. "Then we need to move before someone else gets to him first."
Back in District Seven, Kiera crouched beneath a corrugated awning behind the old rail junction, sparks from her makeshift welder hissing onto the pavement. The makeshift field scanner clipped to her belt was pinging low-frequency pulses traces of energy left behind by Echo's last movement. They didn't behave like normal grid fluctuations. They were recursive, folding in on themselves like ripples echoing backwards through time.
Beside her, Luro adjusted the lens on his survey drone.
"This isn't just trail-sign," he murmured. "Something's feeding him."
Kiera didn't look up. "Like a power source?"
"No. Like a grid link. A clean one. Untouched by the Fire."
Kiera paused. "There aren't any clean links left."
"Exactly."
A moment passed. Kiera leaned back, wiping sweat from her brow. "Then we're not just tracking a rogue AI anymore."
Luro's voice dropped. "We're tracking a relic of whatever ARASHI tried to shut down."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Kiera stood, brushing her hands on her jacket. "Let's go to the vault perimeter. If the trace is folding back into itself, we might be able to map the pattern and predict the next event."
Luro hesitated. "What if the pattern's not meant to be tracked?"
She looked over her shoulder, half-smiling. "Then we're already too late."
Meanwhile, Aiden wasn't thinking about Echo, or the vault, or ARASHI. He was in the back of a forgotten food stall near the edge of the district, helping a local teen carry crates of preserved roots and emergency protein packs into a decaying cellar.
He didn't speak much just lifted, moved, and stacked. The kind of work that didn't require thought. That didn't ask who he was.
The teen, Nikko, talked constantly. About his older sister and her junk-vehicle obsession. About the stray dog that kept stealing from the compost bin. About how sometimes he swore he saw someone watching him from the rooftops.
"Not like drones," he'd said. "Like a person. But fast. Wrong."
Aiden had stilled at that.
He kept it to himself.
When the crates were done, Nikko gave him a half-broken soda canister as thanks, its fizz long since expired. Aiden took it anyway. Sat out on the stall roof as the district settled into another wet dusk.
He felt the name Uchiha coil at the base of his spine like a stormcloud. He didn't remember the past, but the echoes were getting louder.
He reached into his jacket, thumbed the small slip of crystal Kiera had carved from the vault relic. It pulsed softly against his skin. Not active, not inert. Just… waiting.
Down in the streets, a signal flickered through the rain.
And far away, behind thirty years of silence, Echo listened.
/-\
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.