Episode2
1112 Words
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
Facility Black-23, Exo-Waste Region
His hands were covered in blood, but none of it felt real.
Dante Ivara stood in the center of a shattered laboratory chamber. Alarm sirens screamed overhead, echoing in tones he couldn't process. Everything smelled like burnt copper and ozone, but the memories wouldn’t settle. They drifted in fragments—flashes of order, the cold grip of restraints, the glint of a surgical knife. Someone had been inside his head. He was sure of it.
But every time he reached for the truth, it slipped away like oil through water.
His combat suit was torn. Nanoweave mesh clung to his back in shreds. Embedded across his collar were serial numbers—stripped. That meant someone had erased his command ID, which meant he was no longer a soldier.
He wasn’t supposed to be alive.
A screen across the cracked glass wall flickered.
[Subject I-0X9 confirmed deviation from the Vulture Protocol pathway...]
[Immediate containment advised. Memory splices are incomplete.]
[Restraint protocol: failure.]
He stared at the screen, dazed.
“Who did this to me?”
The screen didn’t answer.
Behind him, the walls shook. A blast echoed up the corridor—gunfire. But not standard issue. Something heavier. Like military-grade breach rifles.
He looked down at the blood on his hands. Something inside him whispered: you killed your own team.
*****
PRESENT DAY – Grid Underground, Sector G6
Dante sat in silence as Kaito traced the neural glyph again and again across the data-sphere.
“You said you went dark after the breakout,” Kaito said. “That facility—Black-23—was where they were holding you?”
Dante nodded once. “Or someone that looked like me.”
“You think you were cloned?”
Dante’s jaw tensed. “I don’t know.”
Kaito leaned in. “Listen, man. There are only three operations that had access to Protocol-level neural tech: Unit Null, the Syndicate’s Ghost Architects, and the private military biotech division in Breach Zone 7.”
“They all burned,” Dante replied. “We were there.”
“No,” Kaito said. We thought we were. But what if someone staged it? Rewrote the records?”
Dante stood. His mind was racing. “What’s the closest data port to Drogo’s ruins?”
“West Tunnel 3C. But you’ll need a Neural Pylon Key to decrypt the wreck.”
“Where do I get one?”
Kaito hesitated.
“…You’re not going to like the answer.”
*****
THE IRON WASTES
There were parts of New Lagos where even Syndicates didn’t tread. The Iron Wastes were one of them—twisted metal graveyards filled with the carcasses of fallen mech wars, collapsed crawler rigs, and AI-powered weapon husks gone rogue.
Dante entered with the weight of a ghost and the silence of a predator.
He moved through rusted corridors, past drones that no longer buzzed, past bones that no longer mattered. The wasteland stank of memory and decay.
Then he saw the figure.
Towering, wrapped in an armored exo-frame etched with jagged prayer tattoos, one arm replaced by a biomechanical cannon, stood Basir “Bone” Dogo.
Old friend. Former monster. Still dangerous.
“You came,” Bone said without turning. His voice grated like sand in broken gears.
“Are you still holding the Neural Pylon Key?” Dante asked.
Bone turned. His one organic eye scanned Dante. His cybernetic eye pulsed red.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I was.”
“That makes two of us.”
Dante didn’t smile. Neither did Bone.
“I need access to Drogo’s wreckage. His podium transmitted the Protocol code.”
“Then you’re already dead twice,” Bone said.
He reached into a rusted panel beside him and yanked free a chrome disc—heavy, scarred, marked with a Syndicate command crest long extinct.
“Neural Pylon Key, last generation. I was saving it to erase myself.”
Dante took it.
“You still hear the voices?”
Bone’s face darkened. “Every night. They whisper orders I’ve never followed. Maybe they’re from the clone. Maybe they’re from you.”
They stood in silence for a long beat.
“Come with me,” Dante finally said. “Kaito’s in. Zuri’s next.”
“I burned my way out,” Bone replied. “I won’t make it past the scans.”
“Then we go around them.”
Bone’s grin was slow and bloody. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
*****
TOWER 3 RUINS (Now Quarantined)
The blast zone was still radiating heat two days later. The podium had melted into the ground like wax poured over bone. All surveillance drones were offline—someone had wiped the network in real time.
Dante approached under cloak field while Bone disabled two Syndi-sentinels using brute force.
They reached the crater.
The remains of Drogo were fused to the metal. His skull had exploded from within. Dante activated the Neural Pylon Key.
A hum erupted.
The air rippled as invisible data packets poured from the metal into Dante’s implanted lens.
(Protocol Subthread 17.Origin:)
(Subject Ivara.D: Primary Prototype)
(Initiation Triggered by Vulture Instance:)
(Memory Partition: Active.)
(Next Node: ZURI FENYA.)
Dante froze.
“What is it?” Bone growled, stepping close.
“They’re not just rewriting Syndicate heads.”
He turned slowly.
“They’re rebuilding Unit Null. One operative at a time.”
Excellent. We now continue into Chapter 3 of Vulture Protocol, maintaining fast pacing, psychological tension, and tight narrative continuity.
*****
Ten Clicks East of the Grid – Sector 14C, Outside Memory Law Jurisdiction
“The Reach”
They called it The Reach because it was where people went when they’d run out of places to reach for.
A city of memory smugglers, washed-up mind-divers, and experimental AI that couldn’t legally exist. There were no cameras here. No fingerprints. No pasts. And absolutely no names.
Which was exactly why Zuri Fenya chose it.
Dante crouched on a ledge above a flickering arcade building, watching the alleyway below. The glow of half-dead neon signs cast eerie colors on puddles filled with oil and old blood. The air smelled like fried circuits and ozone.
Bone crouched beside him, scanning the crowd. “Are you sure she’s here?”
“She always said if it ever got bad enough, she’d come to the one place they couldn’t track memory,” Dante replied. “And we’re running out
of options.”
Bone shifted his weapon arm. “And if they found her first?”
“Then she’s already gone.”
*****
INSIDE THE MAZE
Zuri moved like someone who didn’t want to be noticed.
- Writer
