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/-\
Luro never liked returning to District Two.
It wasn't the decay District Seven had its fair share of rust and rats but something about the quiet here felt manufactured. Too many sealed service routes. Too many blackout windows. People didn't live in District Two anymore. They tolerated it.
He stood in front of the old comms substation where the ARASHI signal spike originated. It looked like an abandoned utility box grafted to the understructure of a sunken plaza, surrounded by layers of graffiti, half-flooded tiles, and vines that had somehow adapted to consume stray bits of copper.
Kiera crouched beside the station's override panel. Her gloves clicked as she rewired a bypass circuit with the care of someone who'd shorted a few systems too many times before.
"How old is this tech?" she muttered.
Luro unfolded a dusty schematic from his bag. "Pre-Integration. Possibly pre-Civil. It's older than the solar grid and not listed on any of the recovery maps."
Kiera yanked open the panel, revealing a series of crystalline filaments arranged in an octagonal lattice. The whole setup looked more ceremonial than functional.
"Runic memory lattice," she said softly. "That's shinobi tech."
Luro nodded. "Sealing matrix, probably. I think the ARASHI file was a broadcast trigger. This place is listening for a command signal."
"And it got one."
He hesitated. "Yeah."
There was something else he hadn't told her. The data fragment he decrypted last night contained a partial personnel roster. One name stuck out.
"PROJECT HEAD: SHINAMI, ITO // UCHIHA SECTOR OVERSIGHT"
Kiera didn't know Dr. Shinami was his grandmother.
He kept that to himself. For now.
They descended the utility shaft behind the station in silence. The ladder was rusted in places, and at one point, Luro's boot slipped on a rung slick with condensation. Kiera grabbed his jacket collar before he could fall.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," he muttered, cheeks burning. "Just my pride."
The shaft led to an old transfer conduit, wide enough for cargo drones and armored personnel. It hadn't been touched in years. Crates marked with faded Konoha seals were stacked against the walls like forgotten promises.
Kiera knelt beside one and brushed away the grime.
"Explosive tags," she said, surprised. "Old ones. Still intact."
Luro frowned. "Why would they leave weapons down here?"
"They didn't. They ran."
She pointed to the scorched wall across the corridor. The blast mark had a radial pattern outward. Detonation from inside.
"They tried to seal this place from something," she said. "And failed."
The corridor ended in a pressure door sealed with a biometric lock.
Kiera turned to Luro.
"You said the file recognized your bloodmark. Think it'll open this?"
He hesitated. Then stepped forward.
The lock pulsed red. He placed his hand against it.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a single word formed across the door's display in glowing chakra script:
"ACCEPTED."
With a hiss of depressurized air, the door began to open.
What lay beyond wasn't a bunker.
It was a lab.
Most of the facility was dead. Emergency lights flickered like dying stars above shattered consoles and glass tanks filled with dry moss and collapsed tubing. The place had been clean once. Surgical. Now it smelled of mildew, cracked ozone, and old blood.
They moved cautiously, passing rows of containment units marked with handwritten tags:
SUBJECT B-03 [FAILED]
SUBJECT A-15 [MUTABLE]
SUBJECT C-01 [SEALED]
Luro paused at the last one. "Sealed?"
The container was empty. Or maybe just looked empty. A faint hum lingered in the air around it a frequency you didn't hear so much as feel in your teeth.
Kiera adjusted a lens on her visor. "The seal's active. Subharmonic barrier."
Luro turned slowly. "We should leave."
But Kiera stepped closer.
"That symbol on the casing," she said, pointing. "It's not just chakra control. It's a binding mark. Uchiha-specific."
She turned to him. "This is about you."
"No," he said. "It's about them."
He knelt and cracked open the facility's last standing terminal. The screen flickered to life, lines of corrupted data tumbling across it. Then a file opened automatically.
Another recording.
[ARCHIVE FEED: VISUAL + AUDIO – ACCESS TIER: SHINAMI/I]
[DR. ITO SHINAMI standing before containment unit C-01, voice calm, strained]
"Today marks the 11th year of Project Arashi. We've failed more than we've succeeded. The integration of chakra-based genetic code into modern physiology has produced... unstable results."
"But the boy from the Vault-Theta incident… he's different."
"He was born after the fire. Shouldn't have any residual Uchiha markers. And yet… he accessed the seal."
[long pause]
"We thought we were building weapons. But this... this may be a key to something older. The vaults were not just containment cells. They were anchors."
"If the Arashi Protocol fails, and the sky burns again "
The feed cut off.
Kiera sat back against the terminal, her expression unreadable.
"What the hell is this place?" she whispered.
Luro stood silently, fingers clenched around the strap of his bag.
"It's where they tried to rebuild a clan," he said. "One piece at a time."
At the far end of the lab, something stirred.
Not a sound. A shift in pressure.
Kiera pulled her stunblade. Luro reached for his sidearm.
A shape stepped from the dark. Not quite human. Not quite shadow.
Its eyes shimmered red.
Luro raised his weapon.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
The figure tilted its head. Then spoke voice low, distorted, almost reluctant.
"You opened the door."
"What are you?" Kiera asked.
The figure stepped closer. Now they could see it had no mouth. The words echoed from within, carried by chakra.
"I am Echo. Memory of Seal C-One. You should not be here."
Luro narrowed his eyes. "We're not here to break anything."
"You already have," Echo said. "The Protocol is falling. And when it breaks, everything sealed beneath this city will rise."
Kiera raised her blade. "So help us stop it."
The figure stared at her.
"I am not a person," it said. "I am a contingency."
And then it turned and walked through the sealed door at the back of the lab, vanishing into the shadows.
Outside, in the surface-level relay grid, a series of dormant power cells activated.
Each one bearing the Uchiha crest.
Each one glowing brighter.
/-\
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.