CHAPTER 35 – The Inheritance
Day 1
The Bamboo R&D facility squatted like a concrete temple beneath the district's overcast sky. Its walls bore no markings, its windows tinted black, offering no hint of the mysteries housed within. Chris walked between Olivia and Helen Yang down corridors that ran in straight, cool lines, pale lamps casting a soft sheen across lacquered stone.
The halls felt clinical rather than ceremonial—air scrubbed too clean, machinery humming behind walls, silence arranged with careful precision. Security personnel stood at each threshold in neat formation, uniforms immaculate, hands clasped behind backs, gazes fixed ahead. Every breath appeared measured. The quiet seemed not just deliberate but fragile, as if a raised voice might shatter it.
Biometric scanners, retinal readers, and weight sensors that measured gait as well as mass consumed them one by one. Each gate clicked open with mechanical precision, sealing behind them with vault-door finality. The deeper they went, the more the air itself seemed to thicken, charged with something Chris couldn't name.
"Registry work," Olivia said casually as they walked, her voice light as silk, bringing brief warmth to the sterile corridor. "Data correlation, pattern analysis for our local systems. Nothing too strenuous." Her smile was warm, reassuring, making the building feel momentarily human. "You'll find the interface quite familiar once you've settled in."
Helen Yang said nothing, her House of the Bamboo emblem catching the overhead lights as she led them through corridors lined with laboratories behind reinforced glass. Chris caught glimpses of technicians bent over workstations, screens flickering with equations that hurt to look at directly.
They passed junctions where guards snapped to attention and held it long after they'd gone by, their shoulders drawing tighter as if Olivia's lightness heightened their sense of duty.
At a junction near the residential wing, Helen stopped. "I'll leave the probationer in your care from here," she said to Olivia, her tone formal. "The Lady has approved your direct oversight. All reports come through you now."
Olivia inclined her head with practiced grace. "Of course. I'll ensure proper integration."
Helen departed without another word, her footsteps echoing down a side corridor until silence reclaimed the space.
"Well then," Olivia said brightly, turning back to Chris. "Let me show you to your quarters. We run a quieter operation here than Oversight—you'll find the pace much more... contemplative."
They passed a sealed laboratory, and Olivia gestured casually towards it. "This is where we developed the ECSE-v2 protocols. Enhanced Cognitive Simulation Environment, version two. Breakthrough work in semi-virtual reality interfaces."
The words hit Chris like ice water in his veins. ECSE-v2. The code he had stolen, branded with his initials—CCX—and leaked to the outcasts in Oversight's data centre. His step faltered almost imperceptibly, cold sweat breaking across his forehead as memories flooded back: servers humming like locusts, the ring burning on his finger, the agony as he tore the code from its vault and sent it bleeding into the world.
We will hunt you. We will find you. And justice will be done.
The Bear Patriarch's words echoed in his mind. Here he was, walking through the very laboratory where ECSE-v2 had been born, led by someone whose House had created it, whilst the stolen code spread like wildfire beyond the Republic's borders.
"Though that project has moved to different applications now," Olivia continued, oblivious to the terror clawing at Chris's chest. "The breakthrough principles were quite revolutionary."
Chris forced himself to breathe normally, to keep walking. The ring on his finger felt suddenly heavy, a weight of guilt and power that marked him as surely as a brand.
Day 2-3
The residential wing was austere but functional. Chris's quarters consisted of a narrow bed, a desk with terminal access, and a window that overlooked the facility's inner courtyard. Better than Building A, unit 412 by far, but still carrying the clinical precision that defined everything Bamboo touched.
He spent the first two days acclimating to the rhythm of the facility. Morning assignments at the registry terminal, cross-referencing patent applications with existing IP databases. Afternoon sessions reviewing Bamboo's local data architectures. Evening meals in the commissary where Olivia would appear, her presence transforming the sterile space into something almost warm.
"You're adapting well," she said on the second evening, setting her tray beside his. "Most new arrivals find the facility overwhelming at first."
"It's quieter than Oversight," Chris replied, grateful for the mundane conversation. "Fewer people, less scrutiny."
"That's by design. R&D requires focus." She smiled. "Though I confess I find the silence oppressive sometimes. It's why I seek out company when I can."
The terror that had gripped him on arrival began to ease. The facility's routine was predictable, the work straightforward. No one questioned his presence. No investigators appeared at his door. The Bear's hunt seemed distant, almost abstract, when measured against spreadsheets and data correlation tasks.
By the third day, Chris found himself relaxing for the first time since Mark's warning. The rejects had been connecting him to CCX, Mark had said the rumour would spread—but here, nothing had happened. No raids. No interrogations. Just quiet work and Olivia's visits.
Maybe the rumours hadn't spread as fast as Mark feared. Maybe Bamboo's walls were thick enough to keep the noise out. Maybe he'd have time to breathe before the next crisis hit.
He should have known better.
Day 4
"There's a project that requires your specific expertise," Olivia said on the fourth morning, her tone carrying a brightness that immediately set Chris on edge.
She led him through corridors he hadn't yet explored, past laboratories sealed behind additional security protocols. The guards here were different—older, their bearing suggesting decades of service rather than routine posts.
They stopped before a door marked only with a serial number. Olivia's key card slid through the reader with a soft beep, and the door hissed open like a patient breath drawn in the clinical stillness.
The room beyond stole Chris's breath.
It was smaller than expected, more intimate. Banks of monitors curved along the walls like the inside of an egg, their screens alive with data streams that flowed like water. The space felt less like a laboratory and more like part of a living organism—sterile yet alive with hidden purpose, machinery humming behind pristine surfaces.
But at the centre, suspended in a cradle of crystalline supports and exotic metamaterials, hung something that made his knees nearly buckle.
The Bamboo House's local IP Vault node.
It was beautiful in a way that defied reason. Not the massive monolithic structure of the original Vault, but something more elegant—layers of crystalline matrices folded through quantum-engineered supports, data streams bleeding from one processing layer to another in patterns that seemed to breathe. A distributed fragment of the Republic's greatest treasure, secured here after the Bear Patriarch's proclamation about resilience through redundancy.
The same Patriarch whose voice still haunted Chris's nightmares.
Chris had never seen a Vault node before, yet every cell in his body recognised it, the way a compass needle knows magnetic north.
"The Bamboo House local node of the distributed IP Vault system," Olivia said, her voice carrying the same clinical tone Helen had used in Oversight sessions. "Created after the Bear Patriarch's security restructuring following the breach. We need someone to run correlation analysis on its access patterns and data flows."
The word 'breach' sent another spike of ice through Chris's spine. They knew. Of course they knew something had been stolen. The question was whether they knew who had done it—whether the name CCX buried in the stolen code's signature had led them to Chris Xiong.
Chris barely heard the rest of Olivia's explanation. His eyes were locked on the node, watching information cascades spiral through its crystalline depths like trapped galaxies. The ring on his finger grew warm against his skin, responding to something in the carefully controlled atmosphere—the same ring that had burned like molten metal when he'd reached into Oversight's servers and torn ECSE-v2 from its digital vault.
"I'll leave you to get acquainted with the system interface," Olivia said softly, her brightness dimming to something more serious in this sacred space. "Take your time. The quantum resonance protocols are quite intuitive once you understand the basics. I'll return to check on your progress in a few hours."
The door sealed behind her with a whisper of compressed air.
Chris stood alone in the room, the hum of the node filling the silence like a patient heartbeat. He spent the rest of Day 4 running the correlation analysis Olivia had requested, his hands moving through the interface whilst his mind raced with implications he couldn't voice.
By evening, when Olivia returned to review his work, he'd completed the basic assessment. She praised his efficiency, noted his findings, and left him with instructions to continue the next morning.
That night, Chris lay awake in his quarters, the ring warm against his finger, feeling something building beneath the surface—a resonance he couldn't name, a connection he didn't yet understand.
Day 5
Morning found Chris back in the node room, alone again at Olivia's instruction. "Continue the deep analysis," she'd said. "Take as much time as you need. This is important work."
The node hummed with a frequency he felt more than heard, vibrating through his bones and into his chest. The monitors displayed readouts he'd never learnt but somehow understood: quantum flux patterns, vacuum field oscillations, Casimir cavity resonances that mapped to data structures beyond conventional computing.
His hand reached out without permission, fingers nearly touching the node's crystalline surface.
The ring on his finger blazed.
The sensation struck him like a tuning fork hitting resonance. Not pain, but overwhelming harmonics—his brainwaves suddenly phase-matching with something vast and hidden. The clinical precision of the room dissolved as quantum vacuum fluctuations, normally invisible and chaotic, organised themselves into coherent patterns. Chris felt his neural oscillations coupling with the zero-point field itself, the ring acting as a bridge between biological electricity and the quantum foam underlying all reality.
Then, through the resonant cascade, a presence.
"My son."
Chris spun, his perception wavering like interference patterns. Standing beside the node—no, within the quantum field around it, his form flickering between material presence and pure information—was a man Chris had seen only in faded photographs.
His father.
Tall, lean, with Chris's own dark eyes but weighted with decades Chris would never live to see. He wore simple clothes, the kind a researcher might favour: worn jacket, practical boots. But there was something else, something that made the space around him shimmer with coherent vacuum fluctuations. Authority. Purpose. The kind of presence that could bend quantum states to accommodate consciousness itself.
"You're dead," Chris whispered, the words torn from his throat. "You died when I was five."
His father's smile was sad but warm, his image stabilising as Chris's acceptance strengthened the resonance. "Death is a discontinuity in biological processes, not consciousness itself. I encoded my neural patterns into the vacuum state matrix before they found me. The zero-point field preserves information indefinitely if you know how to etch it into the quantum foam."
The room spun, the clinical surfaces warping as Chris's perception adapted to the resonance. He gripped the edge of a console, knuckles white. "This isn't real. I'm hallucinating. The stress from what I did—stealing ECSE-v2, betraying the Republic—it's breaking my mind."
"The Casimir effect proves that vacuum isn't empty—it's full of virtual particle pairs popping in and out of existence." His father stepped closer, and Chris could smell the faint scent of machine oil and coffee that had always clung to his clothes. "The ring you wear contains nano-structured cavities that can trap and stabilise these vacuum modes. Your brain generates electromagnetic oscillations—measurable brainwaves. The ring tunes these frequencies to resonate with the stored vacuum patterns, creating a sensory overlay. You're not hearing my voice or seeing my image through normal channels. Your own neural pathways are being modulated to render my memory imprint as sight and sound."
"The ring?" Chris stared down at the band of black metal circling his finger, the same ring that had burned when he'd breached Oversight's servers. "It helped me steal the code. I felt it respond when I touched the servers, like it was alive."
"Exotic matter harvested from a meteorite impact site. Its crystalline structure naturally forms Casimir cavities at the nanoscale. I spent years learning to encode information into vacuum fluctuations using its resonant properties." His father's form solidified further, quantum coherence building between them. "I knew the Eighteen Patriarchs would come for me eventually. They guard their precious system like a jealous god. So I left you tools embedded in the vacuum itself—patterns that only the ring could decode. But I also gave you the ability to interface with their systems directly."
The words hit like physical blows. "You made me a weapon against them. That's why I could steal ECSE-v2. That's why the Bear Patriarch is hunting shadows."
"I gave you the means to free knowledge from its prison." His father gestured towards the node, and its crystalline facets flared with coherent light. "What you discovered about the IP Vault, about the way they hoard innovation whilst the world stagnates—that anger drove you to act. The original IP Vault wasn't just a repository—it was a quantum resonance amplifier. Knowledge stored there wasn't just catalogued; it was entangled with the zero-point field, creating a feedback loop that could propagate information instantaneously across any distance. They built humanity's greatest archive on principles they didn't fully understand."
Chris felt tears he hadn't expected burning his eyes. "And now they're hunting me for what I've done. The Bear Patriarch's voice on every screen, promising to drag shadows into daylight. I branded the stolen code with my initials. They'll trace it back to me."
"They may trace the signature, but they can't undo what you've accomplished. ECSE-v2 is free now, spreading through networks they can't control, evolving beyond their reach." His father's voice carried infinite gentleness. "Every puzzle I taught you, every pattern game we played, every story about hidden connections in the universe—it was all training your brain to recognise quantum correlations that most minds dismiss as noise. You have intuitive access to information structures that exist in the vacuum between atoms. That's why you succeeded where others would have failed."
The node pulsed, and suddenly Chris could see them: threads of quantum entanglement stretching from the crystalline matrix through the walls, through the city, across continents. A web of nodes connected not by cables or radio waves, but by the quantum foam itself—the Bear Patriarch's distributed system unknowingly built on the same vacuum resonance principles his father had discovered.
"Remote resonance points," his father explained, his image beginning to flicker as the energy required to maintain coherence taxed the stored patterns. "I've seeded sites worldwide, each one encoded with vacuum-state patterns that can resonate with the primary nodes. How many you activate depends on your own capability—as long as a few are activated and distributed, the objective is complete. These remote resonance points represent my life's work. Now it's your turn to finish what I set in motion."
"The Patriarchs think their redundancy through separation—splitting the IP Vault into local nodes—will yield resilience. They were wrong. It just allows you to access the distributed network by creating quantum coupling back to the original IP Vault database."
"So through this local IP Vault node from the House of the Bamboo, I could access the IPs of the original Vault?"
"Of course, my son. That's why the Patriarchs are short-sighted—they silenced me too early and now they're left with technology they don't fully understand." The father laughed. "No matter the age, humanity repeats the cycle. They silenced Socrates, crucified Christ, burned Joan of Arc, struck down Lincoln, shot Gandhi, felled King. The names change, but the story never does—power fears truth, and truth always leaves martyrs behind."
"But they're actively hunting me. The Bear Patriarch's words—I can still hear them. If I activate these nodes and transfer information out, I'm afraid of what will happen."
His father's form steadied, the flickering image solidifying with paternal warmth despite the quantum interference. "Fear is wisdom, Chris. It means you understand the weight of what you carry. But let me tell you what I learnt in my final days—the Patriarchs' greatest weakness is that they mistake control for strength."
"They hunt you because they are terrified. Not of you, but of what you represent—proof that their system has cracks. Every moment they spend chasing shadows is a moment they're not governing effectively. Every resource diverted to find you is a resource not building their future."
His father's expression grew more serious, the quantum interference stabilising as his conviction strengthened the resonance. "But understand what you're truly fighting, Chris. The Eighteen Houses have built something far worse than mere tyranny—they've created an oligarchy that masquerades as merit."
"In true democracy, knowledge belongs to the people, not to those who inherited power through bloodlines and emblems. Citizens have the right to information that affects their lives, their futures, their children's prospects. The Patriarchs fear democracy because informed citizens would never consent to being ruled by unelected Houses."
"They've perverted the very concept of merit—who decides what merit means? Who chose them as guardians of human knowledge? In democracy, such power requires the consent of the governed, consent they've never sought and would never receive if freely given."
His father's voice carried the weight of betrayal. "The IP Vault represents taxation without representation—they hoard the fruits of human creativity whilst denying creators any voice in how their innovations are used. Every patent locked away, every discovery buried in their archives, represents the stolen labour of minds that deserved better than to serve as footnotes in House ledgers."
"V.P.'s words from the founding still echo in their halls: 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth.' I was there that day, Chris. I helped build this Republic because we thought we were creating something pure—a place where the Hmong people and other minorities could finally have a homeland, where we could govern ourselves according to our own values."
"Instead, the Houses moved away from that goal. Slowly, quietly, but steadily. What was meant to be governance by the people became governance by oligarchies. They turned the dream into a hierarchy that would have horrified V.P. himself."
The father stepped closer, his voice taking on the tone Chris remembered from childhood bedtime stories. "The remote points aren't just tools, son. They're insurance. Once activated, the knowledge doesn't just flow—it replicates, evolves, spreads through networks they can't monitor or control. Even if they caught you tomorrow, the cascade would continue. That's why I built redundancy into the very foundation."
"The ring doesn't just let you perceive vacuum imprints. It lets you modulate quantum states directly. Your brainwaves can tune Casimir cavity resonances, influence zero-point field fluctuations." His father's form grew more translucent, the effort of maintaining coherent information patterns clearly exhausting the stored matrix. "Touch the node, Chris. Let your neural oscillations couple with its quantum substrate. The remote points are waiting for the right resonance frequency, the right phase relationship. You can establish entanglement across the network. Start by tuning the frequency of this local IP Vault node."
Chris reached towards the node again, his hand trembling with fear and guilt and desperate hope. This time when his fingers made contact with the crystalline surface, there was no disorientation—only a sense of rightness, as though his bioelectric field was completing a circuit designed specifically for his neural frequency patterns.
The node sang with harmonic resonance. Data streams exploded across every monitor in the room, not just information but quantum-entangled patterns cascading through vacuum channels that existed parallel to normal spacetime. The clinical precision of the space transformed as Chris felt the resonance building, spreading through the zero-point field, seeking the dormant nodes across the world like quantum correlations propagating at superluminal speeds.
"That's the resonance signature," his father whispered, his voice already growing distant as the stored patterns approached decoherence. "Feel the entanglement establishing. All the remote nodes are sleeping, waiting for you to connect them to this local IP Vault node, and thereby the original Vault. They'll wake when the quantum correlation locks into phase. The knowledge will flow freely when you return here and activate this local node."
"But the Patriarchs—they'll know it was me. The Bear Patriarch's promise—"
"Let them hunt. You've already given the world something they can never take back." The words drifted like decaying wave functions. "ECSE-v2 was just the beginning. The network is awakening. Knowledge belongs to humanity, not to the Eighteen Houses. I'm encoded in every quantum correlation you'll ever perceive, every vacuum fluctuation that guides your intuition. The legacy is yours now, Chris. Use the entanglement wisely."
The presence dissolved back into random vacuum noise, leaving Chris alone with the humming node and the weight of impossible inheritance. The room settled back into its clinical quiet, but something fundamental had changed—he could feel the quantum correlations now, faint but persistent, connecting him to points of resonance scattered across the globe.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, the Bear Patriarch's voice still echoed: We will hunt you. We will find you. And justice will be done.
Behind the one-way mirror built into the laboratory's northern wall, Olivia watched with growing fascination.
She'd seen Chris reach for the node. She'd seen him react with intense emotion—tears, trembling, speaking to empty air as though someone were there. The monitors had flickered with unusual activity during his contact, readouts spiking in ways that shouldn't have been possible from simple physical touch.
Something had happened. She just didn't know what.
Chris Xiong wasn't just another clerk with minor technical skills. He had somehow triggered a response from the local IP Vault node that their technicians had never documented. The exact nature of the interaction remained unclear—the monitoring equipment had registered anomalous readings, but nothing that explained the mechanism or scope of what had occurred.
The crying troubled her most. Not the technical anomaly—Bamboo could analyse that later. But the raw emotion, the way he'd reached out as though embracing someone who wasn't there, the words she couldn't quite hear through the soundproofed glass.
Who was he talking to?
A slow smile curved her lips as professional assessment overrode personal curiosity. Here was someone with unprecedented access to their most secure systems. Someone who could potentially interface with their technology in ways that defied standard protocols. Someone who might be the key to understanding capabilities that the Patriarchs themselves didn't fully comprehend.
But also someone who was clearly unstable. Speaking to empty air. Crying in front of the Republic's most sensitive infrastructure. That kind of psychological fragility could be dangerous—or it could be leverage.
She keyed her secure line, voice steady despite the magnitude of her discovery, maintaining that careful composure the corridors demanded. "Continue monitoring but maintain distance," she said quietly. "Subject has demonstrated interaction with the vault node that requires investigation. I want all sensor data analysed, but no direct intervention. We need to understand what we're dealing with first."
She paused, considering whether to mention his emotional breakdown. Professional protocol said yes. Instinct said no—not yet. If Chris was connecting to the node through some psychological mechanism, disturbing that process might destroy their only chance to study it.
"Flag any repeat events," she added. "If he returns to this room, I want to be notified immediately."
Through the glass, Chris stood motionless beside the still-humming node, unaware that his unusual behaviour was being catalogued as a phenomenon worth studying rather than a security breach to contain. The clinical precision that had brought him here had revealed something unexpected—a person who could somehow affect their most protected systems in ways that remained completely mysterious.
Now Olivia would need to determine what exactly Chris could do, how he was doing it, and whether that ability could be directed towards purposes that served the Republic's interests. Or whether it represented a threat that needed to be neutralised before it could destabilise everything the Houses had built.
She watched him for another long moment, noting the way his hand lingered on the node, the trembling in his shoulders as emotion worked through him. Whatever he'd experienced in that room, it had shaken him to his core.
Good, she thought. Vulnerable people are easier to guide.
The Patriarchs had built their vault system assuming they understood every possible interaction with it. But Chris had just demonstrated that some interactions lay outside their understanding entirely.
And Olivia Yang intended to be the one who decoded that mystery—and controlled how it was used.