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/-\
Aiden didn't realize he had been holding his breath until the elevator doors groaned shut behind them.
The descent wasn't smooth. Each level beneath the surface came with a jolt of aging servos and the uneasy hum of backup power rerouting through cracked conduits. The lights inside the lift flickered like they weren't used to running this deep. And maybe they weren't. According to the city schematics what was left of them this shaft terminated three levels ago.
Kiera stood across from him, arms crossed, jaw tight. She hadn't said much since they left Drey's workshop. Luro was beside her, back to the wall, absently scrolling through a portable signal reader patched into the tower's old relay net. Occasionally it pinged, a soft chirp in the silence. Whatever they were closing in on, it was still active. Just enough to leave a trail.
"Tell me again how you got this access point," Aiden said, breaking the silence.
"I bribed a vault technician with a packet of mint stim-gum and a neural bypass kit," Kiera replied dryly, eyes forward. "Which he used to unlock a door and then promptly fled from. So, technically, he didn't break any laws. Except for the part where we're here now."
Aiden nodded once. Fair enough.
The elevator wheezed to a halt. Floor -07 lit up in dull blue on the overhead panel. Kiera stepped out first, her boots landing quietly on the dust-caked metal. Luro followed, scanning the corridor. Aiden came last, the doors sliding shut behind him with a finality he didn't like.
This floor was colder. Not from a drop in temperature, but from something less definable like the walls remembered things and didn't want company. Thick cables ran like roots along the ceiling, drooping in some places, sparking in others. The hallway ahead was lit by thin, flickering strips of photonics embedded into the wall a standard tech used before the Fire, now mostly scavenged for parts.
"This doesn't feel like a storage wing," Aiden murmured.
"It's not," Kiera replied. "It's a containment corridor."
Luro looked up from his scanner. "You saying they locked something down here?"
She nodded, eyes scanning the corridor. "Or someone."
The deeper they moved, the less functional the systems looked. Doors were sealed with old sigils that pulsed faintly, chakra-weaved Uchiha marks, Aiden realized after a moment. Subtle, almost erased by time. But still there.
"Wait," Luro said, halting. He turned the scanner toward the far end of the hall. "I've got signal drift. Something's still active."
Aiden followed his gaze. A door at the end flickered as if trying to boot a long-dead hologram. A moment later, the projection sparked to life grainy, blue-tinted, and barely holding shape.
A face appeared.
Female. Eyes bandaged. Hair cut short, uneven.
"…Echo?" Kiera said before she could stop herself.
The projection looked directly at them, though it shouldn't have been able to. "I was not meant to be found," it said, voice distorting through the static.
Aiden moved toward it, but the projection wavered like a mirage.
"Who sealed this wing?" he asked.
"I did," the image replied. "Or what was left of me. This vault houses Phase Three of the ARASHI protocol. Initiating contact without authorization risks collapse of the "
The hologram fizzled violently, then re-formed, more distorted.
"Wait," Kiera said. "Phase Three? There were only two phases officially listed. Containment and neutralization."
"That was a lie," Echo's image whispered. "Phase Three was convergence."
Luro paled. "She's talking about the bloodlines."
Aiden stepped closer, staring into the grainy shimmer. "You're not just a projection. You're a residual consciousness."
Echo's image glitched, then leaned forward slightly, lips parting.
"Aiden Uchiha. Born in the shadow of two worlds. You are the lynchpin."
Before Aiden could respond, the lights in the corridor surged and the sealed door behind the hologram groaned violently as internal locks began to release.
Kiera took a step back. "Did you trigger that?"
"No," Luro said quietly. "She did."
A second lock disengaged. A wave of warm air swept over them, thick with ozone and the scent of old energy. The chakra seals on the door pulsed, then vanished absorbed into the surface like water into cracked stone.
The projection spoke one last time.
"ARASHI failed. We were not prepared for what came through the Rift. We thought it was a weapon. We were wrong."
Then she was gone.
The door slid open.
They weren't ready for what they found.
Beyond the threshold was not a lab or a containment chamber. It was a dome massive, organic, lined with fractal metal structures that pulsed with stored chakra. A garden of sorts, but wrong. Trees grew in spirals. Light curved in impossible directions. Gravity seemed confused, and sound dampened the farther they stepped in.
Aiden reached the center first.
In the middle of the chamber stood a structure shaped like a chrysalis. Metal, crystal, and chakra wound together in a lattice that hummed gently. Inside, suspended mid-air, was a child.
Eyes closed. Breathing shallow. Skin marked with faint sigils.
Kiera stared. "Is that "
"Another Echo," Luro finished, his voice barely above a whisper. "Or... the original."
"Why keep her here?" Aiden asked.
"Because she's not stable," Kiera said. "She's not a person. She's an anchor."
Aiden turned toward her.
"She's holding something back," Kiera explained. "Something that was never meant to cross over."
Luro tapped his wristpad. "The energy patterns in here... it's not just chakra. There's vibrational interference cross-dimensional residue. She's bleeding between layers."
The child's eye fluttered open.
Just one. The iris was black, rimmed in violet.
She looked directly at Aiden.
"You're early," she whispered.
Back on the surface, Drey stared at the empty lift panel in the workshop, tapping his foot against the cracked tile.
He hadn't liked the way they'd left. Too quiet. Too certain.
He checked the old city grid again. Their tracker was still active.
But so was something else.
Near the edge of the containment dome, a second ping appeared. Then a third.
Someone else was already down there.
Drey reached for his jacket, muttering to himself.
"No one ever listens until someone explodes."
/-\
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You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.