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/-\
The storm hadn't hit District Three yet, but the sky over the outer platforms was already bruised with it an ugly charcoal mass that pressed against the layered glass of the upper arcologies. Static licked the edges of the sky like warning flares.
Inside the safehouse, Echo hadn't moved in hours.
She sat, knees drawn to chest, in the corner of the power room lit only by the slow blink of a failing emergency node. Cables snaked around her like vines. She was humming. Or maybe that was just the magnetic resonance from her containment shell. It was hard to tell.
Kiera adjusted the output regulator, fingers moving with the precision of someone trying not to look directly at a bomb.
"She's stabilized, but it's like she's waiting for a signal," Kiera said under her breath.
Luro crouched beside the old junction stack, checking power levels. "You said she was running hot earlier. Now she's what? Passive?"
"No. Listening."
Luro froze. "To what?"
Kiera didn't answer.
Echo's eyes opened just for a second. A glint of violet static chased the movement. Then they closed again. Kiera turned back to her tools, too quickly.
"She's not hostile," Kiera added, as if to convince herself. "If she were, we wouldn't still be breathing."
Luro didn't argue. He ran a final diagnostics sweep, then backed away from the unit.
"Still think we shouldn't have told Aiden?" he asked, eyes flicking to the side room.
"He has enough to carry," she said. "Besides, if ARASHI activated because of him, then Echo might be... something else entirely."
In the other room, Aiden stood facing a projection of the Vault map. Layers of crumbling infrastructure and static-choked data logs hovered above a low table. Drey was seated nearby, half-asleep with a stim patch on his neck and a cracked keyboard balanced across his lap.
"You're sure the signal bounced from inside the containment shell?" Aiden asked.
Drey nodded slowly. "Two relays caught the signature, both echoing off dead servers in Sector Eleven. Same frequency ARASHI used before the shutdown."
Aiden didn't speak right away. The silence stretched.
"The boy I met," Aiden finally said, "he talked like ARASHI wasn't a program."
Drey blinked. "What do you mean?"
"He called it a memory trap. Said it wasn't made to destroy things. It was made to hold them. Seal them."
"Seal what?"
Aiden's Sharingan flickered once behind his irises. He didn't answer.
Meanwhile, down in the sub-levels of District Four, a very different conversation was taking place.
Councilor Jin Vara stood at the edge of a private comm chamber, arms behind his back, watching a wall of looping security feeds. The lights above him pulsed green, then red. A distorted voice came through the hidden speaker.
"The Uchiha is no longer dormant."
Vara didn't turn. "And the asset?"
"Partially awakened. She's waiting for an anchor."
"Then find the link."
A pause. "You believe it's him?"
"He's survived exposure to protocols that should've vaporized him. The older systems react to his presence like a catalyst."
Vara finally turned from the feed wall, his expression unreadable. "If he reaches the inner vault, we lose control of the narrative."
"We could trigger a failsafe."
"No," Vara said. "Let him open the door."
There was silence on the line.
"We're accelerating the timeline, then?"
"Yes. And when the vault opens..." Vara's voice went cold. "...kill everything inside."
Back in the workshop, Echo stirred.
The room dimmed, the overhead lights flickering. Her lips parted, and a single word escaped almost silent, but the vibration of it ticked through the walls like a pressure change.
"Aiden."
Kiera snapped around. "Echo?"
The girl's fingers twitched. She looked up, eyes glowing softly.
"I remember," she said.
Kiera stepped forward. "Remember what?"
But Echo didn't answer.
Instead, she rose slowly, like gravity had to renegotiate with her bones. The cables detached on their own. Her containment shell flickered once, then deactivated entirely. Energy shimmered faintly across her skin.
She walked past Kiera and out the door without a word.
Aiden met her halfway in the corridor. His breath caught when he saw her not because of the glow or the change in her expression but because her presence felt like a ripple in the air. She wasn't heavy, but the space around her was.
Like a void walking in the shape of a girl.
"You called me," Echo said.
"No. You called me."
She tilted her head, hair falling across one glowing eye. "Then maybe we called each other."
Aiden's gaze dropped to the faint webwork of seals now visible across her forearms chakra-based, but interlaced with some kind of technology that buzzed against his senses.
"You're not a normal construct."
"No," Echo said. "And neither are you."
Kiera approached cautiously from behind. "Echo... why are you active now?"
The girl touched the side of her head, as though adjusting an invisible headset.
"Because ARASHI is no longer asleep," she said.
Luro arrived at the doorway just in time to hear that. "You mean the protocol?"
"I mean the being," Echo said. "It's not code. It's a prison. For something that's still alive."
They stood in silence.
Later that night, while the others debated whether to move Echo deeper into the old shelter tunnels, Aiden stood on the balcony overlooking District Three's flooded lower block. The rain hadn't come yet, but he could feel it in the air a pressure building in the bones of the city.
He activated the Sharingan, peering into the dark. Across the skyline, in the shadow of a ruined broadcast tower, something shimmered.
A chakra signature.
Faint. But familiar.
He narrowed his eyes. A slow grin touched his lips not joy, but recognition.
"You're watching me," he murmured. "So come out already."
Behind him, a low hum activated near the communications relay. Drey's voice crackled through.
"You're gonna want to see this," he said. "Someone just breached the vault perimeter. They're not from here. And they're using a chakra signature."
Aiden turned, eyes burning red. "Then it begins."
Three blocks away, under a decomissioned metro station, the figure moved silently through the shadows.
They were dressed in black combat silk, with a red insignia stitched into their collar an eye, inverted. Their chakra was suppressed to near-zero, but still carried a peculiar density.
They reached into their coat and withdrew a scroll.
One touch, and it unfurled midair. Glyphs illuminated the cavern with a soft amber light.
"Target confirmed," they whispered into the seal.
A voice responded.
"Proceed with secondary objective."
The figure paused.
Then spoke again: "Authorization Theta-Seven. Initiate Black Root extraction."
As the scroll disintegrated in a burst of flame, the air behind them shimmered and something stepped through.
It wasn't human.
Not exactly.
Back at the safehouse, Echo jolted upright.
Kiera rushed to her side. "What is it?"
Echo's voice came like a whisper from a dream.
"They're already here."
/-\
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.