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/-\
The rain started light, tapping on the upper ventilation shafts like a code someone had forgotten the key to. Luro stood beneath the corroded canopy of the East Transit Exchange, clutching his worn satchel, watching as the grid-lights flickered beneath the downpour. The message hadn't repeated, not once in the fourteen hours since he'd first heard it. That alone made it worse.
"Find the exile. Uchiha. Dusk protocol."
Not a warning. A directive.
He hadn't told Kiera everything. Not yet. She would've pushed too hard, pulled Aiden too close to it. This wasn't a message to intercept it was bait. And bait meant a trap. He needed proof before anyone else walked into it.
His fingers slipped inside the satchel and brushed the side of a rust-colored ID tag, once magnetic, now flaking with age: "DRX-1: Transit Division, East Cell."
It had been ten years since he'd burned his connection to the Dusk Watch. They were supposed to be a failsafe a group of silent operators embedded inside the surveillance systems after the collapse of the city council. But things had spiraled. The deeper he'd gone, the more he'd seen: phantom culling records, black-site test logs, implants tested on children tagged as "subversive prototypes." He had unplugged the day his handler handed him a target packet labeled "Genetic Anomaly – Bloodline Risk."
Luro crossed the threshold of the abandoned transit hub and scanned for motion. No guards. Just a single maintenance drone hovering overhead, its sensors fogged and passive.
He descended.
The lower levels were dormant, sealed since the district's restructuring. His bootsteps echoed, softened by ash-laced dust. On Level C7, he turned right, past a shattered thermal scanner and an old locker bay scorched with graffiti: "We are not ghosts. We are what you made."
He keyed in a buried access code not his own, but one he'd copied years ago from an old handler's sleeve. The console blinked green. A pneumatic hiss groaned open a narrow corridor, lit by failing blue halogens. Luro exhaled.
Time to see if the Dusk Watch was still watching.
Meanwhile, in Kiera's workshop, Drey was arguing with a coffee machine.
"You're a disgrace to caffeine," he muttered, jabbing its interface. "How do you burn instant powder?"
"You're the one who keeps trying to make triple concentrate," Kiera called over her shoulder, elbow-deep in the chassis of a broken surveillance bug.
Aiden watched from the mezzanine above, sitting against a stack of derelict server towers. He wasn't trying to listen, but their voices filled the space like music casual, bickering, oddly comforting.
Below, the sphere rested in its containment field, still pulsing, still inscrutable.
His thoughts returned to the rooftop. The boy who'd called him "exile." The way he'd vanished.
He didn't like how Drey had looked at him afterward. Not fear something worse. Recognition. As if he suddenly belonged to a different category of person. One they had a label for. One they'd prepared for.
He didn't want to be a legend. He didn't even want to be different. He just wanted the world to stop treating him like a secret he hadn't agreed to keep.
"You still thinking about the kid?" Kiera asked from the ground.
He glanced down. "I think he's connected to what's under the vault."
Drey looked up from his cup, face twitching. "If he is, we're in over our heads."
"Speak for yourself," Kiera said. "I brought my soldering iron and a healthy disregard for rules."
Aiden smirked. But he didn't reply.
In the tunnels below East Transit, Luro stepped into a chamber that hadn't seen human presence in nearly a decade.
Its walls were lined with dormant interface stations, their curved screens dark. In the center, a cylinder of cryo-glass housed a memory spindle once used to compile full genetic logs from intercepted DNA pings in the city grid.
He activated the terminal.
A few lights flickered to life. The screen crawled with corrupted script before stabilizing into a partial menu. Half the entries were dead links. One blinked yellow:
PROTOCOL: DUSK_RELAY_ACTIVE_7
He hesitated. Then opened it.
The file wasn't audio. It was a transcript. Logged two days ago.
INTERLOCUTOR A: Confirm anomaly location District Seven, under industrial vault compound 304.
INTERLOCUTOR B: Confirmed. Sphere is active. Host is unaware of full genetic match.
A: Initiate proximity surge. If resonance triggers, implement carrier phase.
B: And if the Uchiha fights back?
A: He won't. Not yet. The seal's incomplete.
Luro swallowed.
Carrier phase. Resonance. Seal.
He copied the log and pocketed the chip, then pulled the emergency relay switch hidden beneath the panel. A clatter echoed in the dark. Rust peeled. Somewhere, a hallway unlocked.
Not a trap anymore. A trail.
Back in the workshop, the sphere pulsed once then went completely dark.
All three froze.
"That's... new," Drey said slowly, stepping toward it.
Aiden was already beside it. The containment field still held, but the internal motion had vanished. He touched the panel gently. Nothing.
Then, without warning, the sphere flared back to life not blue or violet, but red. Bloodred. Lines shot across its surface like veins under tension.
The shadows moved.
And for the first time, the eye opened not a slit or a lens, but a Sharingan. A perfect three-tomoe wheel spinning behind the ink.
Kiera swore under her breath. "Well. That's not ominous at all."
"Step back," Aiden said.
He didn't know what he was doing. Only that something in him responded. Like a pressure in his spine unlocking a memory not his, crawling through his skin.
He reached out. His fingertips brushed the surface.
And he was somewhere else.
A hallway, narrow and warping. Stone underfoot, but burning. Screams, distant and echoing. A man with black eyes and a red cloak, blood across his face. Another with silver hair, shouting a name Itachi before the fire swallowed them both.
He snapped back.
Drey caught him before he hit the floor.
"What the hell was that?" Kiera asked.
Aiden's eyes stayed shut. "A memory. But not mine."
He opened them.
"I think... I think this thing is showing me who I used to be."
Meanwhile, Luro emerged in the underground ring of District Seven's vault perimeter. It was colder here. Sterile. The city grid didn't hum. It waited.
He found a relay panel disguised as a wall conduit. Used his chip. The door didn't open. But something inside stirred. The vault's outer lights blinked once, then twice.
The Uchiha was inside.
He activated the emergency node and sent a single word to Kiera's pad:
RUN.
/-\
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.