Vulture protocol

The rain never stopped in New Lagos—not that anyone expected it to. It wasn’t raining, not really. Not anymore. It was a chemical runoff from the upper atmospheric spires, acid-tinged mists bleeding down from cloudy cities and forgotten satellites, raining corrosion on rusted tin roofs and neon-lit gutters. Some said the city was alive. Dante Ivara didn’t believe that. He believed it was dying—and wanted to take everything down with it. From the edge of a shattered rooftop in Old District 13, Dante crouched beneath a half-melted statue of some forgotten general, watching the crowd below swell like a virus. Every seat in the square was filled. The standing room was packed. Broadcast drones hovered above the square, their lenses gleaming red as they recorded history. Or propaganda. These days, it is the same thing. They had all come to see one man: Kasim Drogo, the last of the inner-circle kings of the Umbra Syndicate. He stood tall atop a titanium-plated podium in front of the burnt shell of Tower 3, wearing a glimmering black overcoat that shimmered like it was woven from the night itself. Every movement was calculated. Every word that left his mouth poured honey over hidden razors. “…and let this be known: the Protocol is a myth. A scare tactic meant to disrupt the balance we, the Umbra, have upheld for two decades. We are not afraid. We are not broken. The Umbra Syndicate does not fall.” Cheers erupted. Real or paid, Dante didn’t care. From his perch, hidden in the shadow of a comms relay, Dante zoomed in with his left ocular lens—one of the last gifts from a war he barely remembered. The lens sharpened, marking biometric readings in green across Drogo’s face: steady heartbeat, thermal normal, ocular dilation low. No signs of stress. A professional liar. “See that?” a voice buzzed softly in Dante’s earpiece. Kaito. Underground tech-dealer. Old squadmate. Paranoid as hell—and for good reason. “I see it,” Dante whispered. “Where’s the drive?” “Three meters below the stage. Built into his podium. He’s broadcasting on a locked Syndi-band frequency—narrow spectrum neuro-signal.” Dante’s eyes narrowed. “He’s already infected?” “No,” Kaito Said. “Worsøe. He’s the broadcaster.” Before Dante could respond, Kasim Drogo’s speech stumbled. It was subtle. A flicker of silence. His lips moved, but no sound came. Then his left eye twitched, like a system reboot mid-sentence. The crowd shifted, murmurs rising like waves. And then—he screamed. The scream was not human. It sounded digital, like a corrupted file screaming through blown speakers. Drogo’s face twisted. Veins stood rigid along his temples. Blood dripped from his ears as he clawed at his skull. The crowd froze in stunned silence. Then he spoke again—but it wasn’t his voice. “THE PROTOCOL IS NOT A MYTH.” The voice boomed across the plaza. Deep. Mechanical. Dozens of broadcast drones cracked midair and dropped from the sky, sparking as they exploded into the crowd. People screamed, scattered. And Drogo… Drogo kept speaking, even as his body collapsed. “This is your warning. You live in a lie. We will set you free. Those who resist… will be rewritten.” He jerked once. Then again. Then he fell forward, his head slamming into the podium. Dead. The podium flared. Flames erupted from its base—self-destruct. Dante was already moving, sprinting across the rooftop. Behind him, the crowd erupted into chaos. Security drones dropped in formation. Gunfire burst across the square. Civilians screamed, trampled each other, clawed toward exits. “Pull me out,” Dante snapped into his comms. “No,” Kaito barked. “We’ve got a bigger problem.” “What?” “I picked up a shadow trace right before Drogo dropped. Brief spike on Unit Null’s command band.” Dante’s chest tightened. “That’s impossible,” he muttered. “It was your signature.” Silence. Kaito's voice dropped. “It wasn’t you… right?” Dante didn’t answer. ***** TWO HOURS LATER The Grid – Subsurface District G6 The Grid wasn’t a place—it was a sensation. You didn’t walk into the Grid. You fell into it. Built into the deep underground ruins of the first Lagos, it pulsed like a hive of synthetic spiders—neon veins, flickering signage, noise. The air was thick with data smog and machine musk. Here, nothing was real, and everything was for sale. Dante walked through the slums of encrypted night like a ghost wrapped in shadowtech armor. His coat fluttered behind him in slow, oily motion, its threads absorbing light. No cameras could follow him here. But in the Grid, it wasn’t the eyes that hunted you—it was memory. He found Kaito in a warehouse bunker carved from the bones of an old train tunnel, hunched over a rusted neuro-sphere the size of a chair. “You look like s**t,” Kaito muttered, not turning. “You say that every time.” “And it’s always true.” Dante stepped forward. “The trace. Show me.” Kaito ran a hand through his locks, now wired with silver threads. He gestured, and the neuro-sphere spun. A projection flared in the air—line after line of fragmented code, floating around a central glyph: a vulture with its wings wrapped around a human skull. Dante felt it in his stomach. “The Vulture Protocol,” he whispered. Kaito nodded. “It’s real. And it’s rewriting people at a neural level. Memory. Identity. Command structures. It overrides everything.” “How long has it been living?” “Since last week. Quiet hits. Syndicate capos have been vanishing, only to reappear a day later with different loyalties, different memories. They think differently. Move differently.” “And Drogo?” “He wasn’t infected. He was the transmitter. He launched the second wave.” Dante scowled. “You said there was a trace—my signature.” Kaito turned slowly. His face was pale. “There was. And it was tagged with something else. A Unit Null sub-code: Ivara Prime.” Dante’s blood ran cold. “There’s only one person who could’ve activated that,” he said quietly. “And he’s dead.” “Is he?” Kaito pressed a button. From the sphere’s core, a grainy video played: a lab corridor, flickering with red alarm lights. A man in black tactical armor stepped into the frame—tall, confident, familiar. The camera caught his face as he turned. Dante staggered back. It was him. Not a lookalike. Not a digital clone. Not a mask. It was Dante Ivara. Or someone who wore his body like a suit. “Where the hell did you get this?” he rasped. Kaito looked up. “It was tagged as top-level Syndi-data. Someone was trying to bury it in Drogo’s mind—encrypted deep. But he didn’t even know it was there. Whoever that is… he’s already rewriting the past.” Dante stared at the image of himself, frozen on screen. “I didn’t come back alone,” he said finally. “Something followed me.”