Chapter 35: Chapter 35: Fractures of Hope
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Despite the cold sterility of the morgue, the air hummed with tension. Aiden stood in the fluorescent glare beside Mandara, who remained seated at a stainless-steel examining table. Chilled drawers lined the walls like silent witnesses.
Mandara met Aiden's gaze evenly, the red of his Sharingan stark beneath the surgical mask. "I answered because I heard the call," he said quietly. "But this world is unfamiliar now."
Aiden nodded. "We understand. Awakening wasn't just spontaneous it was deliberate. Someone triggered Stage Two, then lied about its purpose." He laid the shard-talisman on the table its soft crimson hum distinct in the background hush. "We need you. Your voice can anchor the awakened. But it's your choice."
Silence stretched as Mandara studied the shard's flicker.
"When the vault collapsed, I heard thousands inside me… memories, sensations, names I never lived." He shook his head. "I remembered the boy I was before the morgue, the person I nearly became. I lost control then the shard helped me find it back."
He paused, chin lifted. "I will help. Not as a weapon but as a memory guide." He met Aiden's eyes. "If you'll guide me, too."
Aiden offered a steady nod and reached across the table. "We'll guide each other."
Outside the morgue, rain slicked the pavement. Aiden's hand tightened on the shard. For a moment, tears glinted in his eyes, but he squashed them this was just the beginning.
Half a world away in Berlin, Drey poured over monitors and a burst of readouts. The host inserted into their containment pod convulsed violently. Red chakra flares twisted like serpents in the bio-chamber flickering alarms read: SYNC_ERROR – Chakra Feedback Loop Imminent.
He reached for the shard clone, its faint glow showing the unstable resonance.
"Not now! Hold it together," he muttered, snapping wires into clamp arrays. But the host jerked its limbs, smashing the glass behind it. The alarms shrieked. Sensors showed cortical data leakage rapid spirals of chakra flaring into neural loops.
Drey clutched the control pad. Through the reinforced glass, the host raised her head, eyes wild and spiraling. "Who who are you?" she rasped, voice raw. Then laughter strained, dangerous.
"Stage Three cascade in progress," Drey gasped. He hit containment override, but the doors were locked. "Emergency egress denied. Override lockdown!" He slammed his fist down, shards from his own container crackling under his trembling hand.
The host thrashed. "I… am me." Her voice rushed: "And it's time." Lasers aligned, sensors spun. The pod fractured from within glass shards fell like red rain onto the tile. Drey dropped to his knees.
"Contact Chicago. Now."
Meanwhile, Echo weaved through back alleys in the fringe district, silent as a moonbeam. He'd tracked sleeper cell activity pockets loyal to the old Dusk Directive, active under the inverted sigil. Now they watched him along a shuttered screen door. Flameless, they glowed against broken glass.
He stepped into their circle without hesitation.
One brandished a pulse-blade. Echo didn't pause: chakra flickered along his fingers, and he caught the weapon mid-strike. No harsh blows just disarming elegance. He tapped the sigil on the blade. With one gesture, its circuitry folded, permanently locking the symbol under its steel skin.
The second guard dismounted a drone tube. Echo slapped its joystick and causally grabbed the drone's receiver twisting it until sparks flared. The drone collapsed, lifeless.
Nearby screens glitched. Echo's eyes shifted to the screens: they flashed with encrypted messages monitoring his progress.
"No," he whispered. "I don't serve your Directive." He scribbled on a surveillance pad: I come bearing truths, not commands. He left them bound under a shutter, eyes wide with something like awakening.
"Tell your handlers," Echo whispered before slipping away. "We don't take orders anymore."
Back in their safehouse, Aiden convened the convoy's team under flickering monitors. Four of them: Aiden, Kiera, Luro, Drey with Mandara seated by the wall. The Chicago shard's glow brightened the cramped room like a torch of possibilities.
"Mandara trusts us," Aiden started. "He's first not to lead an army, but to guide them." He pointed at the grid map displayed on the wall: Chicago node wireframe blinking red, Berlin dimming, others dormant or active.
A sudden harumph from the shard clone, then the ghost talisman. Drey touched it.
"I've begun stabilization coding," he said hoarsely. "Mandara's imprint is clean just a fuse to tie us together." He flicked a pointer at the Berlin host data. "Berlin's broken we don't have containment time. We can't risk that fragment fragmenting again."
Aiden exhaled. "We proceed. We integrate his stabilization code into the grid's hypernode manager. It'll anchor each awakened host… if we can reach them in time."
Luro closed comm feeds. "Echo's out. He's tracking sleeper cells. Once the broadcast appears he'll show up." He pulled a tactical pad down. A schematic of the city appeared.
Aiden stared at the map. "We're forming a team Mandara anchors, Echo scouts, Kiera supports emergency containment, Luro monitors grid, I lead." He laid out a plan of target cities: Berlin first, then São Paulo, then a cluster in Asia.
Kiera swallowed. "It's ambitious. We need a distraction to get in."
Nikko, who'd been silent in the corner, raised his hand.
"I know a way in," he said softly. "There's a cult hall near Berlin reborn Dusk followers. They might hold the host."
Aiden's jaw set. "Good. They'll be the first test."
While they spoke, the safehouse screen glitched with breaking news: "Signal Interruption Unverified Uchiha Sigil Broadcast Hits National Feed". Below, local news anchors staggered through their lines, voices rattled, as phone screens and monitors flashed with the black-sigil inversion.
Viewers across the city murmured. Some flipped off their TVs. Others stared in frozen horror.
Aiden pressed his palm to the talisman. "The sleeper cells are broadcasting it. We expected a public recall but this is early."
Kiera closed her eyes. "And untrained hosts are hearing the call, thinking it's their purpose."
Aiden nodded. "Then we accelerate. We have to anchor others. Now."
He gathered the team. Sparks from the inverted broadcast flickered in their eyes. The hushed unease in the room resembled a countdown.
"Any one of them could be Berlin's host," he warned. "We don't know which direction to go."
The shard hummed in his hand. Mandara's faint voice echoed in his mind: They remember. They seek purpose.
Aiden set his shoulders. "We will be their purpose."
He reached for Kiera's hand. She met his glare a mix of determination and fear.
They piled into the convoy, shards strapped to belts. Aiden took the wheel as they rolled into the earliest ache of dawn.
The airwaves broke again. This time, the Berlin node's reporting cluster registered the activation:
"Stage Three cascade triggered in Berlin distortion waves surging at +0.33 us…"
The map on Luro's pad erupted in red flashes around the Berlin circuit. Audience cams blinked open across Europe.
Aiden froze at the wheel.
He pressed the talisman against his chest.
He whispered: "Hold them. Hold who you can."
The shard's glow flared like a flare in the dim cabin.
The convoy followed a shattered freeway highway toward unknown fate. On their screens, the Berlin host image fractured like a glitch in reality fragments of memory, shards of history, shards of future flicking like strobing fire.
And as Aiden's lips moved to speak again, the screen shocked to black then replaced by a single black sigil.
CLACK.
The convoy jerked to a halt. Every engine shut down. The shard in Aiden's hand pulsed as though alive.
He locked eyes with Mandara.
They're not just calling them. They're summoning them.
/-\
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.