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/-\
The cold wasn't real not in the literal sense but the simulated temperature inside the off-grid relay station still made Kiera's skin pucker. It was one of those abandoned nodes where old data was supposed to die quietly, but the signal they'd followed from Luro's makeshift scanner told a different story.
"This place should be dust and silence," Luro murmured as he swept his scanner left to right, watching static bloom in cyan spikes across the readout.
"That'd be too easy," Kiera said. She crouched by a junction plate and peeled back the rusted cover, revealing an old chakra filament cluster. The coppery threads shimmered faintly active. Ancient tech, pre-Integration, probably blacklisted. Her fingers hovered over it. "It's still running. And look at this it's bleeding into the grid through a bypass I've never seen before. That's not civilian code."
Luro frowned. "Then whose is it?"
There was a silence that followed, not uncomfortable, but taut with unspoken suspicions. They both knew the only ones who'd used hybrid chakra-circuitry like this were either buried in sealed vaults… or erased from record.
"Echo was here," Kiera said finally.
"You sure?"
She nodded toward the terminal. "Same fragmentation pattern in the data stream. I've been tracking her signal patterns long enough to know them in my sleep."
Luro crouched beside her, the blue of his scanner flickering over his face. "If she's reactivating these nodes, she's not just wandering. She's building something. Or waking something."
Kiera didn't answer. Not right away. Her gaze lingered on a panel behind the terminal a heavy-set pressure door that looked more like a bulkhead than part of a data relay.
Behind it, faint pulses thudded like a slowed heartbeat.
Meanwhile, back in District Seven, Aiden stood beneath the rain-thick eaves of the upper transport yard. Water dripped in slow, echoing plinks from the overhead pylons, pooling in rivulets that slid past his boots. The air smelled of ozone and ferrocrete charged, heavy, expectant.
Across from him, Drey balanced a portable node on a power box, adjusting dials with quick, practiced flicks.
"I backtraced the signal Luro sent. He wasn't wrong," Drey said. "The code fragment pinged something under Old Sector Twelve."
Aiden squinted. "That area's sealed."
"Not anymore. The ARASHI protocol is bleeding into the lower bands. Someone's waking up the legacy AI layers."
Aiden looked down at his hands. Chakra lines flickered under his skin, barely visible but unmistakable. Ever since the pulse from the vault, his connection to whatever the Uchiha once were had deepened. Sometimes he could hear whispers in the static echoes of memories not his own.
"We need to get ahead of this," Drey added.
Aiden turned his gaze toward the distant skyline. "We're already behind."
In the abandoned relay station, the door behind Kiera hissed and groaned as the pressure seal unlocked. Dust bled from the edges as it parted. Beyond it was a chamber bathed in low blue light. A collection of stasis coffins lay in a circular pattern, some cracked open, some still sealed. Wires and chakra-conductive filaments ran from each pod to a central column where an interface screen glowed faintly.
Luro stepped in slowly, weapon at the ready.
"Looks like cryo-suspension," he said. "Late-gen. Post-collapse tech."
"No," Kiera said, her voice distant. "Earlier than that. This isn't cryo. It's stasis suppression via chakra sedation. Like a sealing jutsu, but industrialized."
On the main console, a flicker text appeared.
ARASHI NODE 4: LEGACY PERSONNEL: ECHO-7 / STATUS: EXTRACTED.
Then another name appeared: UCHIHA PROXY / STATUS: UNSTABLE.
Kiera's breath caught. "Proxy? You think that means "
"A clone? A failed vessel?" Luro shook his head. "Or maybe Echo was part of a recovery project something to salvage DNA from pre-cataclysm bloodlines. It would explain her resistance to neurological interfacing. And why the vault responded to her."
Kiera's mind raced. "That would mean someone some organization was trying to rebuild the Uchiha."
"And they failed," Luro said quietly. "Or succeeded, depending on your definition."
The console flickered again. A third line of text appeared:
VAULT PRIMING: 12% COMPLETE.
Then, a timer began counting down.
By the time Aiden and Drey reached Sector Twelve, the atmosphere had shifted. The city above buzzed with strange static. Terminals glitched in predictable intervals. Drones shorted mid-flight. It was like a heartbeat had been embedded into the system's undercode.
Aiden stood at the edge of a long-disused magline terminal. The platform was cracked, metal struts bent from forgotten impacts. He placed a hand on the cold stone. His chakra pulsed outward, a wave of sensation echoing down into the dark.
He saw flickers.
A girl, eyes blindfolded, standing in a sea of machines. A name she refused to speak. A mirror that didn't reflect.
"Echo's not a tool," Aiden said softly. "She's a tether."
Drey tapped his pad. "I'm reading a shift underground. Massive power surge. Kiera and Luro are already inside."
"We go now."
Inside the relay vault, Kiera tapped a control rune. The countdown paused, barely.
"Help me isolate the source node," she said.
Luro moved beside her, sweat collecting along his brow despite the cold. "These pods were meant to suppress more than just memory. They were containment units."
"For what?"
"Bloodlines," he said. "Weaponized ones. They were trying to break apart the Uchiha template and filter out the volatility. The ARASHI protocol isn't a defense it's a failsafe."
Kiera stared at him.
"They weren't building soldiers," she said slowly. "They were trying to bury ghosts."
A sudden tone echoed through the room. One of the still-sealed pods shuddered, then hissed open.
Mist spilled out.
Inside was a figure young, female, barely more than a teenager. But her chakra was already active, twitching against the edges of containment. Her eyes flickered open, and they were ringed with concentric patterns.
Not Sharingan.
Not Rinnegan.
Something else.
Kiera stepped back, whispering, "This isn't just Uchiha tech. This is hybridization."
The girl blinked slowly. "Where... am I?"
Outside, Aiden and Drey reached the entry bulkhead just as the vault's defense systems powered up.
"We're out of time," Drey warned.
Aiden didn't hesitate. He pressed his palm against the seal, chakra rushing outward in waves. Symbols glowed across the old stone, then shifted recognizing him.
The door groaned and opened.
They stepped inside, the corridor alive with blue pulses. Each step carried echoes not just of sound, but memory like walking through another life.
As they entered the chamber, the girl in the stasis pod turned toward Aiden.
"You're the one they called the Remnant," she said.
Kiera looked between them, alarmed. "You know her?"
"No," Aiden said. "But she knows me."
The girl raised her hand. Symbols danced along her skin. "They warned me you'd come. That when the Remnant returned, the lock would fail."
Luro stepped between them. "What lock?"
"The one holding back the ARASHI failsafe," she whispered. "It's not just a protocol. It's a purge cycle. A cleansing. Of everything tied to the bloodline's memory."
The chamber pulsed again.
The countdown resumed.
PRIMING: 27% COMPLETE.
Outside, across the city, lights flickered. Old terminals booted up. Forgotten systems whirred to life.
And somewhere in the dark beneath the core, an ancient mechanism began to spin.
/-\
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.