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/-\
Luro hadn't slept, and the dim blue of dawn made his cluttered apartment feel like a storage unit for ghosts. The file ARASHI//PROTOCOL//RED sat open on three monitors now, each showing the same blank page, the same hollow string of coordinates, and a steadily pulsing access seal marked [CLASS-ECH0/NOIR].
Government ciphers this old weren't supposed to function anymore. The encryption alone predated the last firewall update by a generation. Half the system fonts used in the header no longer existed on modern interfaces.
Yet the file responded.
He had tried pinging it with a blank protocol sweep, hoping to force a data spill. Instead, the feed returned a signal spike from a buried substation beneath District Two a comms hub that, officially, didn't exist.
He rubbed his temples and swore under his breath. The Uchiha tag was still pinned to three outbound pings. Someone was scanning for it now. Not Drey. Not Kiera. Not even Aiden.
Government-level surveillance, long dormant, had just flinched.
He reached for a dataworm injector, slid the capsule into his uplink, and muttered, "This is a terrible idea."
Then he accessed the file directly.
Forty-five seconds later, Luro's system crashed. Not a freeze. Not a power-out. A hard cut like someone had flipped the breaker on every node at once.
His eyes widened.
The monitors stayed black for ten heartbeats.
Then something appeared.
A message, carved in red across the dark:
"THE EYE OPENS. THE SKY BURNS. ARASHI REMAINS."
Then:
"QUERY ACCEPTED. CONFIRM BLOODMARK."
Bloodmark?
He leaned forward, breath catching.
This wasn't just a file. It was a biometric lock keyed to something or someone from the Uchiha lineage. And somehow, he had tripped it.
"Impossible," he whispered.
Unless…
He reached under his desk, pulled a battered box of old family records, and slid the drawer open. His grandfather's ID card lay on top. Luro had never really looked at it closely hadn't cared. But now he flipped it over and scanned the origin stamp.
REGIONAL ARCHIVE: KONOHA DISTRICT 03 (INTEGRATION PHASE)
The words hit him like a jolt.
His grandfather had been part of the Integration Era. One of the last Shinobi registered under the original Uchiha intake. That made Luro…
Not full-blooded. Not active. But…
Linked.
His fingers trembled as he returned to the interface.
"Confirm bloodmark," he muttered. "Okay. Fine. Let's see where this goes."
He reached for a senbon from his tool kit. Pricked his finger. Pressed it to the screen.
Nothing happened for three seconds.
Then the screen filled with light.
Across the city, the pulse registered in five dormant towers backup relay nodes left over from the first city network. Towers no longer on the grid. Forgotten by the public. Still alive.
Each one lit red.
Back in the apartment, Luro stared at the file's new content.
It was a transmission log. Buried under layers of false metadata. Comms records from a forgotten operation labeled DUSK PROTOCOL. The log contained voice fragments, location snapshots, and corrupted security footage stitched together like a patchwork of broken truths.
One clip survived intact.
[AUDIO RECORD TIME: 23:44:08 / SECTOR: VAULT-THETA]
[SPEAKER: UNKNOWN FEMALE]
"He's not dead. He was never dead. We just sealed it. The chakra was too volatile. The boy... he wasn't supposed to survive the merge."
Luro froze.
He rewound the clip.
"The boy."
"The merge."
"Volatile chakra."
The audio fuzzed, then cut off.
He ran the voice through three filters, tried to map it to existing speech archives. The result came back with a 78% confidence match:
MATCH FOUND: DR. ITO SHINAMI – Classified Archives, Integration Biotech Division
She had disappeared 14 years ago.
Presumed dead.
But here she was. Talking about a boy sealed beneath a facility.
His hands moved faster now, scrubbing through the rest of the data. Another clip played this one visual.
A dark chamber. A figure slumped against a wall. Black hair. Faint flicker of red in the eyes. And something else: a burn scar across the jaw. Luro didn't know who it was.
But he looked familiar.
Then the feed scrambled and died.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the wall.
The file wasn't about a protocol.
It was about containment.
And that boy whoever he was had been sealed, not buried. Alive.
Which meant that vault Aiden had opened wasn't just a relic. It was a prison.
Kiera stood under the harsh orange glow of a rooftop antenna array, staring at her wristpad. The message Luro sent was short, but it said everything:
[ARASHI PROTOCOL. FOUND LOG. IT'S NOT JUST HISTORY. WE NEED TO TALK.]
She didn't like it. Luro was careful, neurotic even. He didn't spook easily. And now he was spooked enough to breach a blackout protocol.
She tapped the pad, sent one line back:
[Meet me at the old arc station. No signals. Bring hard copy.]
Then she turned to Drey, who was half asleep on the stair rail, slumped in a hoodie two sizes too big.
"You remember those conspiracy threads you used to read about Uchiha war ghosts and the failed resurrection experiments?"
Drey blinked. "Yeah. The ones I said were 90% crap?"
"Turns out you were only about 10% wrong."
He raised an eyebrow. "Should I be excited or terrified?"
"Both," Kiera muttered.
That night, Luro arrived at the arc station with a backpack full of decrypted fragments and a loaded pulse blade strapped beneath his coat. Kiera was already there, seated against a support beam, scanning the night.
"Show me," she said.
He handed her a cracked pad. She scrolled in silence for five minutes.
When she looked up, her voice was flat.
"Why didn't you report this?"
"Because I think it connects to your guy," Luro said. "The one who tripped the seal in Vault-Theta. Aiden."
Kiera narrowed her eyes. "You think he's the boy from the protocol?"
"I think he's either the boy… or the key to releasing whatever they locked down. The chakra resonance. The Uchiha name showing up on dead frequencies. This isn't coincidence. Someone tried to erase this from history. And they failed."
Kiera stared into the dark, weighing his words.
"They sealed something inside that vault," Luro added. "But not a weapon."
Kiera looked at him.
"A bloodline."
Far below, deep within the vault, Aiden touched the inner wall of the antechamber. His fingers brushed ancient stone.
Then something stirred.
A breath of air.
A whisper.
And on the far side of the dark, two red eyes blinked open.
/-\
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.