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/-\
The access panel hissed closed behind them with a finality that made Aiden's spine stiffen.
Kiera swept her flashlight along the descending stairwell, catching long-forgotten signage carved into rusting steel. Dust hung in the air like fallout. Below them, Kotai's substructure seemed endless layers of concrete and chakra-insulated plating descending into engineered silence.
No alarms. No system response. Just the sound of their boots on the stairs and the echo of old things waiting to be remembered.
Drey tapped something on his console. "Still no grid interference. We're inside the isolation field."
Aiden didn't answer. He was focused ahead. Each step down tugged at something within him not instinct exactly, but a pressure. Like a signal being transmitted on a frequency only he could receive. He clenched his fist. His chakra, normally calm, now felt like it was being pulled in reverse like a tide dragging toward a hidden moon.
Luro brought up the rear, rifle slung but ready. "I've got movement thirty meters ahead. Not alive, but active. Machinery?"
Kiera nodded. "Could be the inner shell of the ARASHI vault. Kotai wasn't just a storage site. It was part of the smart-chassis network nodes capable of thinking through containment scenarios on their own."
"Thinking how?" Luro asked.
"Like a shinobi," Drey muttered.
They reached a wide bulkhead etched with concentric kanji seals. The door was partially ajar, warped at one corner as though something had tried to push outward. Kiera hesitated.
"Aiden," she said, "I want you behind me for this part."
He didn't move. His fingers grazed the seal.
"It recognizes me," he said softly.
Kiera looked back sharply. "What?"
But the glyphs on the seal began to pulse. Slowly, with a rhythm like a heartbeat. The symbols altered not disappearing but unfolding, as though some deeper message had been buried beneath their surfaces.
Then the door opened.
Not all at once. Just enough to permit entry, and just enough to suggest it was allowing them, not being forced.
The chamber beyond was wide, round, and darker than it should've been. Only narrow beams of filtered light dropped from apertures above. They moved cautiously, flashlights tracing thick cables and dormant pylons. The walls were slanted outward, giving the room a bowl-like shape. In the center sat a raised dais, partially collapsed. And on it, a humanoid figure slumped motionless, armored in worn plating that shimmered faintly with chakra-reactive alloy.
Drey approached first. "That's not a corpse."
The figure's chest panel rose and fell with impossibly slow breath. Aiden circled closer, drawn to the worn insignia carved over its breastplate: a distorted leaf, half-buried beneath a seal tag branded in Uchiha script.
"Echo," Kiera said. "That's Echo. The prototype ARASHI construct."
"No," Aiden said. "Echo was destroyed. That's what the file said."
Luro knelt beside the dais, running a scanner across the construct's surface. "Something's wrong with its core. The chakra lattice is active but… misaligned. Like it's running incomplete directives."
"Which would explain the behavioral anomalies," Drey said. "The original ARASHI protocol was reactive defensive, but rational. But if Echo's incomplete"
"Then it's like a genjutsu loop," Aiden finished. "Caught in its own illusion."
He reached forward and touched the armor.
There was a low hum, then a sudden jolt power surged through the room as dormant machinery awakened. The lights stuttered on. From the walls, storage pods shifted and hissed open, revealing not weapons or drones, but preserved memory drives wrapped in chakra-seals. Kiera stepped back, scanning fast.
"These aren't data. They're constructs. AI shells. Echo wasn't the only one."
Drey's expression darkened. "This whole place was a cloning core for combat minds. They were making copies."
"But why leave them sealed?" Luro asked.
The floor beneath them pulsed then a voice, mechanical and whisper-soft, echoed through the air.
"Designation recognized. Lineage confirmed. Uchiha presence authenticated."
Kiera swung her light around. "Who said that?"
"ARASHI Directive: Status Sundered. Core identity fragmented. Awaiting repair."
Drey's console flickered as new data flowed in. He tapped quickly. "This isn't from the AI. It's from the vault itself. The system is talking directly to Aiden."
Aiden stepped forward. The figure on the dais Echo twitched. Its eyes remained closed, but the chakra around it began to stir. The room shifted with it, growing hotter. Lines of old circuitry glowed faintly along the walls.
"They buried it alive," Aiden said. "They built this and didn't know how to stop it once it began thinking for itself."
"They locked it away," Kiera murmured, "hoping no one would come down far enough to hear it thinking."
A new panel slid open on the far wall, revealing a narrow corridor leading deeper underground. No lights. Just a cold breath of air that carried the scent of ozone and old blood.
Aiden turned.
"We're going down there."
Kiera hesitated. "We should finish securing this level get backup."
"We don't have time," he said. "The vault didn't just wake up because of me. Something else is moving. The ARASHI protocol wasn't isolated it was plugged into the Dusk Grid. If it's coming online now, then that means someone out there is forcing it."
Luro narrowed his eyes. "That would mean this wasn't an accident. Someone's trying to bring the system back online."
"And if they're using Echo as a vector," Drey added, "we've got less time than we thought."
The group exchanged looks, then followed Aiden through the corridor. The walls became cleaner the farther in they went. Less decay. Less rot. The systems here were still alive.
Halfway through, they passed a glass panel overlooking a chamber below. Kiera stopped.
Inside, six pods stood vertically. Within each was a humanoid form, pale and incomplete, wrapped in sealing threads that shimmered red and gold.
"Are those…"
"Genetic clones," Drey whispered. "All Uchiha signatures. Look."
Aiden's hands clenched. These weren't just replicas. They were unfinished hosts grown for something, but abandoned mid-process.
Kiera turned to Aiden.
"You're not the only one who survived."
Aiden didn't speak. His face was unreadable.
Then the corridor lights cut out.
The temperature dropped. From the far end, a static-ridden voice hissed across the embedded speakers.
"Termination: Incomplete"
Aiden drew a kunai from his jacket, chakra flickering across its edge.
From the end of the hallway, something moved. Fast. Unnatural. A blur of flickering light, like a mirage shaped from fractured memory.
It hit the wall beside them with such force the metal bent inward, and Kiera stumbled. Drey pulled a seal barrier up just in time to catch the second strike a sweeping arc of distorted chakra that hit like a windstorm.
"Echo's awake," Luro shouted. "But it's not him it's something riding his signal!"
The voice returned.
"Initiating Override. Begin Dusk Directive."
From the shadows at the corridor's mouth, the Echo construct stepped into view. But its eyes weren't blue anymore. They were red.
And spinning.
/-\
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.