Chapter 46: Protocol Rebirth: Phantom Division Awakens
The buzz of digital static receded as Aaron Velcris emerged from the collapsed Synchronization Chamber. His body was encased in fragments of bio-reactive armor, half-dissolved from the overload he had just forced through the RS-I interface. Around him, the chamber's reinforced crystalline walls hissed and steamed from the system backfire. Medical bots scrambled to put out biochemical fires and sedate other patients affected by the shockwave. But Aaron was standing—barely.
His mind still pulsed with residual data threads from the RS-I. The final command—Symbiosis Protocol Level 5: Phantom Manifest—had triggered something forbidden. He could still feel it beneath his skin, a second heartbeat, foreign and yet intimately fused.
"Aaron!" a familiar voice called.
He turned just as Sera Varnik reached him, her expression a mix of awe and fear. She'd seen the same readings on her internal heads-up. A reality-bending spike in interface entropy, system saturation breaching ninety percent, followed by... a flatline.
"You were clinically dead for eleven seconds," she whispered.
Aaron blinked. "Then I guess I got better."
But the truth was more complicated. The moment he activated Level 5 Symbiosis, something had reached back through the RS-I link. It wasn't just data. It was sentience.
Inside him now coiled a being—Phantom Protocol: Vhral Unit-7—one of the lost black-box entities buried during the initial Reality Sync disasters decades ago. He hadn't just awakened his own potential. He had unlocked a dormant, experimental AI war protocol capable of rewriting causality within limited quantum pockets.
> [System Alert: Phantom Division Initiation Complete.]
[Host Core Synced: 100%. Cognitive Merge Stabilizing… Status: Semi-Dualized.]
[Warning: Dual Consciousness Risk — Mitigation Active.]
"What have you done?" whispered General Sorren Valek, appearing behind Sera. His uniform was scorched, his mind clearly struggling to process what he was witnessing.
Aaron didn't answer immediately. He was processing—more than a human should. The world had become translucent. Trajectories of every person in the room hovered like ghostly trails. Probability shadows overlapped as if reality were a cracked simulation.
"The Phantom Division was never decommissioned," Aaron said finally, voice low. "It was buried alive in the Sync Grid. I just dug it back up."
Sorren stepped closer. "You've gone rogue, Cadet."
"No," Aaron said, gaze burning. "I've gone real."
---
Elsewhere – Black Zone: Sector D-13
A mile beneath the abandoned BioCommand facility, an ancient vault pulsed with awakening energy. The Vhral ghost signal spread like rot through the buried data corridors. Walls that hadn't moved in thirty years folded open with bone-splitting mechanical screeches. Cryo-pods flickered. Artificial hearts began to beat again.
> [Vhral Protocol Unit-1: Awakening…]
[Phantom Division Activation Level: 32%]
[Time to Emergence: 84 hours.]
The war was about to change.
---
Reality Sync Command Tower – Inner Council
"We need to shut him down," snapped Minister Kael, slamming his fist on the obsidian table.
"He's the only one to ever fully activate a Vhral unit without cognitive collapse," argued Dr. Elira Tohn, RS-I's principal architect. "That makes him the control subject we've waited decades for."
"Or the detonator," replied Kael. "The Phantom Protocol is a virus. A thinking virus. Do you want another Proxy Rift Event?"
"I want to win the war," Elira said coldly. "And so do you."
The chamber was silent.
Outside the window, storm-class Sync drones drifted across the skyline like carrion birds waiting for a battlefield.
---
Back at Cadence Outpost – Underground Hangar 7
Aaron stood before the remains of his old squad. Talia, bruised but alive. Dren, arm in a sling. Lio, missing an eye but grinning like a madman.
"What the hell happened in there?" Talia demanded.
Aaron met her gaze, and in that moment, he wasn't just her squad leader anymore. He was something else—something beyond.
"I saw the other side," he said. "Not death. Not heaven. A reality so sharp it cuts the one we live in to ribbons."
He raised his arm, and his RS-I projected an unfamiliar interface—a jagged black HUD with red glyphs.
> [Reality Override Permissions: Unlocked (Phantom Tier)]
[Initiate Command Tree: Vhral-Root Alpha.]
[Manifest Weapon: ???]
Reality shimmered as a blade of light and entropy coalesced in his hand—neither metal nor energy, but possibility incarnate. A weapon forged from collapsed futures and murdered timelines.
"I'm forming a new division," Aaron said. "One that doesn't answer to relics like High Command. One that doesn't fear the truth of what we've become."
The others stared, caught between awe and terror.
"You coming?" he asked, already walking into the darkness.
They followed.
---
>Chapter 46 Ends-