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!
/-\
The echo of footsteps moved ahead of them just faint enough to make you question if you'd imagined them.
Aiden, Kiera, Luro, and Drey descended deeper into the chamber, their boots pressing dust into long-undisturbed floor tiles. Everything smelled of old metal and static charge, the air charged with invisible tension, like the chamber was waiting.
Kiera flicked open a side interface on her wristpad, syncing to the residual chakra signatures embedded in the walls. "This wasn't just an off-grid node. This was designed specifically to be forgotten."
Luro swept his scanner across a ridged wall lined with black piping. "And yet something remembered it. Something or someone who knew the override."
"Not just someone," Aiden murmured. His fingers hovered near the edge of a sealed panel. "The console said 'Uchiha Access Granted.' This wasn't a random intrusion."
Kiera raised an eyebrow. "You're saying you were the access key?"
"I didn't do anything," Aiden said quietly. "But maybe… whatever's inside me did."
He pressed his hand against the panel. It didn't react.
Then click.
The metal slid open with mechanical grace, revealing a long, black chamber housing an obelisk of obsidian glass. Inside, blue lines pulsed like a heartbeat. Data ran up and down the spire, moving in old script something older than binary, older than chakra code. It was neither physical nor digital.
It was living.
At the base of the spire was a single engraved plate.
"DUSK PROTOCOL // PHASE II ENGAGED"
Drey stepped back. "Wait. Phase two? What the hell was phase one?"
Kiera's lips thinned. "Probably everything that's already happened."
Aiden stared at the obelisk, shadows stretching out behind him like veins. The lines pulsing through the spire seemed to respond to him. Their rhythm slowed as he stepped closer, syncing.
"Stop," Kiera said. "Back away from it."
But the room was already shifting.
The lights dimmed. Panels along the walls activated, one by one. Each projection showed the same image: a grid overlay of the city only, instead of the familiar five districts, there were seven. Two black zones, previously hidden.
Labeled:
D3 RECONSTITUTED
D0 PROTOCOL INCEPTION
The projections blurred, then realigned. A schematic zoomed into a buried sub-vault below District Zero. The label read:
SLEEPER CODE 3X: INITIATED.
Elsewhere, in a quiet apartment near the fringe of District One, a man opened his eyes.
He was middle-aged, hair flecked with gray, dressed in a maintenance uniform. He looked like anyone a technician. Unassuming.
But now, he was something else.
He stood slowly, moving to the mirror. Reached under his collar and pulled free a black tag that glowed faintly with red seals.
He pressed a thumb against it.
:: CODE 3X CONFIRMED. ::
The tag burned away in his hand.
In the chamber, the holoscreen flickered. A new overlay took shape.
An old mission file.
:: SUBJECT: ECHO // DECLASSIFIED ::
:: ARASHI PROTOCOL // GHOST EXECUTION BRANCH ::
Lines of text poured into view, faster than anyone could read.
Aiden reached toward it instinctively and the screen responded to him, stabilizing, decrypting, translating.
Luro took a cautious step back. "That's not chakra. That's responsive memory code. The vault's treating him like an admin."
"More than that," Kiera said slowly. "It's adapting to his neural input."
Drey gave a sharp breath. "You're telling me this system was waiting for someone with Aiden's mind?"
"No." Kiera frowned. "It was waiting for someone with his bloodline."
Aiden narrowed his eyes. "This entire vault it's keyed to the Uchiha?"
Kiera bit her lip. "Not the Uchiha. A specific one."
She turned, projected the DNA trace from the earlier log. The sequence was incomplete, corrupted but one fragment stood out, looped in recursive duplication.
A fragment not found in any civilian record.
She glanced at Aiden. "This pattern it matches the chakra signature from the other side of the vault breach."
Luro's brow tightened. "Wait. Are you saying the intruder is Uchiha too?"
A long silence passed.
Then the holoscreen pulsed, as if answering.
A line of text appeared.
"ACCESS GRANTED: SUBJECT CODE // KAGUTSUCHI."
Aiden's throat went dry.
"That name "
Kiera stepped back. "You recognize it?"
"It was a forbidden technique. From the old world. Fire so intense it devoured even light. But that wasn't a jutsu. It was a person's name once. A code name. One my clan locked away."
The obelisk flashed again. This time, an image surfaced.
A child. Pale-eyed. Raven hair.
Marked with the Uchiha crest but the eyes were wrong.
One Sharingan.
One blank.
Back at the apartment, the sleeper agent reached into the floorboards and retrieved a sealed briefcase marked with burned kanji.
He placed it on the table, opened it slowly.
Inside was a crystalline dagger and a whisper-thin piece of scroll paper.
Words formed in ink without contact, writing themselves line by line:
"Begin Phase Three. Retrieve the Echo."
Kiera's voice dropped low. "If that image's real then there's another Uchiha alive. And he's been hiding inside the ARASHI network."
"And he knows how to control Echo," Luro said, piecing it together. "Maybe even created him."
Drey looked around the chamber. "So what now? We just wait for this ghost protocol to activate on its own?"
Before anyone could respond, the floor beneath the obelisk began to split.
A low rumble sounded from far below like something ancient waking up.
The structure descended into darkness, dragging its data spire with it.
A voice not mechanical, not digital, but alive spoke through the room.
"QUERY ACCEPTED. FINAL KEY: PRESENT."
Kiera glanced at Aiden. "It means you. You're the final key."
Aiden shook his head. "I never agreed to this."
The voice responded again:
"AGREEMENT IS NOT REQUIRED. YOU ARE A LEGACY."
Then the room locked down.
Doors slammed shut. Energy walls flickered to life. Lights shifted to a warning red hue.
Drey pulled his pistol. "What just changed?"
A new interface opened in mid-air, unprompted. This one bore a countdown.
"PHASE THREE – EXECUTION PROTOCOL: T-MINUS 07:00"
Kiera looked to Aiden, tense. "Seven minutes until something happens. Possibly city-wide."
Luro swore. "Or worse. System-wide. If this is the center of Dusk Protocol, then the pulse is going global."
Kiera's fingers flew over her wristpad. "I can't override it. It's locked to DNA-coded permissions."
Aiden's eyes burned red, Sharingan swirling. "Then I'll stop it myself."
He stepped into the center of the vault, his chakra flaring meeting the system with resistance. Fire collided with code. Chakra scraped against the machine's inherited memory.
And it responded.
The countdown paused at 5:33.
Kiera's eyes widened. "You're slowing it !"
But then another sequence activated in the system's core. Not from Aiden.
From the outside.
An override code.
KAGUTSUCHI ACCESS DETECTED. OVERRIDE IN MOTION.
Kiera spun toward the projection. "That's him. The other Uchiha."
The countdown reset.
"T-MINUS 02:00"
Far across the city, in an abandoned military relay tower above District Zero, a figure stood by a control spire.
Cloaked. Motionless.
His eye the single Sharingan glowed faintly red.
And in his hand, a second access shard.
He pressed it into the interface. Spoke one word.
"Awaken."
Back in the vault, the obelisk erupted in a pulse of black fire.
The ARASHI core responded.
Lines of code bent into flame.
The vault began to collapse.
And from beneath the floor, a sealed coffin began to rise.
Metal. Glowing red seams.
Kiera pulled Aiden back. "Move now!"
But the coffin split open
Inside was a boy.
Eyes closed. Wires in his skin.
A perfect replica of Echo.
Except this one opened both eyes.
And one was the Rinnegan.
/-\
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.