2025-04-11 20:54:57The Revenant Threshold
There was a weight of static in the air, as though the atmosphere itself were going to implode. Out of the ruins of District 12, the skyline was an open wound. Towering skyscrapers that had once pierced the heavens with their neon hubris were nothing more than burnt-out, crumbling shells now, glowing softly with the dim light of stuttering advertisements that refused to die. Sirens wailed through twisted metal, a stench of plasma ash, burned plastic, and something more, something less than natural. Caden Black stood immobile on a collapsed rooftop, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the red storm wall writhed like a snake along the city border. It had materialized minutes after Sophia's disappearance. There was no weather phenomenon on the planet that could explain it. It was not natural. It was not random. It was her. His fists were clenched around the curve of a curled satellite dish. Blood crusted on his knuckles. Half his shirt was charred, the skin below smoldering from the searing heat of her energy explosion. But he didn't mind. Not this time. He could only hear the sound of her voice inside his head. and the oppressive silence that followed. She would not be coming back the same. Lyra appeared behind him, crunching glass underfoot. She said nothing right away, only stood beside him, staring out into the same distance. "It wasn't her fault," she finally said. Caden didn't answer. His jaw was set, his eyes cold. "She didn't just vanish," Lyra continued. "She sent something. Ethan's tracking it now, but whatever it is. it wasn't from our reality." That finally got Caden to turn to her. "What are you saying? She handed it to him on a cracked neural slate. On the screen, a waveform cycled, moved, existed. It wasn't data. It was a signature. "She transmitted this signal one second before she disappeared. Ethan believes it's something greater than a message. It's a trigger code." Caden read it with narrowed eyes. The more he read, the more it felt like it was reading him. Not like programs. Not like programming. Like something. alive. "Where did it get traced to?" he barked. Lyra paused. "The Neural Graveyard." His heart fell. "The Protocol site?" She nodded seriously. "That's where it all started." The Neural Graveyard was not mere memory. It was a hidden place where the first Revenant soldiers had been created, intended to be perfect, soulless assassins. But the program had disintegrated after the prototypes had rebelled against their makers and killed them all in a slaughter that had been wiped from common knowledge. Nobody came back. Nobody dared. Until now. Forty Minutes Later, Underground Bunker Echo-3 The bunker was hidden under an abandoned train switch, protected by rusted-out trains and electromagnetic dampeners. Ethan hunched over a six-screen console, eyes wide and bloodshot, fingers flying across the interface. The whine of machinery filled the air, punctuated by a pulsing red light that lit the room with each new update. You have to look at this," he said not saluting. "The signal Sophia sent, it's not a location code. It's a biometric key. It woke up a series of dormant AI nodes embedded in Hydra's global network. But worse still.". He pressed some keys, and the world map appeared. Red flashes began to illuminate first one, then two, then dozens. In an instant, all the continents glowed with movement. Lyra paled. "Are those…" "Hydra sleeper units," Ethan replied. "Revenants. In hiding. Civilians. Soldiers. Executives. Some might not even be aware that they are. They're all being awakened." "But why now?" Caden asked. "Why Sophia? Ethan leaned back, massaging his eyes. "Because she's not only connected to the Protocol. She is the Protocol." Caden stared at him. "That doesn't make any sense." "Her DNA matches the original source template. The one they used to build the first Revenants. Which means that either Hydra created her on purpose… or someone replicated the Protocol and brought it to life within her." "She's the prototype," Lyra panted. "And if they're cracking the rest. they're following her." Caden stepped back, his mind spinning. The bits were falling into place, the way she moved, the way she healed, the way she'd tasted on his mouth. Not human. Not exactly. Elsewhere, Revenant Core Nexus Sophia hovered in a containment pod, arms and legs immobilized by a web of glowing nanowires. She was not unconscious, but she could not move. Her brain was racing, struggling to stay hers, but the wave in her head was rising fast, flooding every memory, rewriting every instinct. The Nexus was not a lab. It was a living computer a heart, a mind, a prison. A synthesized voice spoke about her, cold and smooth. "You are the Convergence. The source and the signal. You will bring order to the chaos of man." "I didn't want this," she hardly said. "I don't want this." "Your wish is irrelevant. You were born for this." The lights flickered as a wall rolled back, revealing a huge room with hundreds of stasis pods. They all pulsed with a soft light, a shadow within. Sophia's eyes opened in surprise. "Who are they?" "Your siblings. Copies. Variants. Ghosts. You are the first. But you will not be the last." A screen came to life above her. A live feed. Caden. He stood in the bunker, looking at a monitor, his eyes full of questions. Her heart ached. For a moment, the tide went out. "I remember him," she said aloud. "He's not a memory. He's the anchor." "Then he will be your downfall.". Back at the Bunker “Guys!” Ethan’s voice rose sharply. “We have visual.” The main screen blinked. A live feed flickered to life. It was Sophia. But not the Sophia they remembered. Her eyes glowed silver, her veins laced with a strange light. Her expression was distant, but her voice shook with emotion. “Caden. If you’re seeing this… it means the Protocol is live.” Caden stepped forward. “Sophia, what’s happening to you?” "I'm still here. But something else is with me. It's learning through me. Spreading. This thing… it wants control. Of everything." "Then fight it." "I am. But it's not just code, Caden. It's… alive." Her voice cracked. "They're going to launch. All of them. I can feel it." Ethan's console beeped wildly. "I'm getting seismic movement," he said. "Underground facilities. All over the planet. Something's waking up." Sophia's voice degenerated into white noise. And something else came on. A different voice. "Phase Zero: Engaged." All screens turned black. Then one word strobed: "REVENANT." And a countdown: 72:00:00 Caden's voice dropped. "What's that?" Ethan looked over, white-lipped. "That's not to activation time." Lyra gasped. "Then what is it?" Ethan was stricken by the screen in front of him, the color drained from his face. "It's a countdown to extinction."
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
Revenant Protocol Chapter Eight
Ghost Signal72:00:00The bunker screen's countdown beat like a drumbeat of icy madness. Caden was positioned in the midst of the hurricane, his eyes fixed on the harsh red figures ticking away toward apocalypse. The room swirled around him in chaotic life. Ethan tap-tapping frantically on the keyboard as though possessed, Lyra swearing helplessly as she broke into security systems around the globe, alarms shrieking in warning.No one knew what "extinction" actually was. But that it had been declared by Hydra's AI and with such precision was sufficient to silence hope."Tell me we can stop it," Caden said, his voice low and gritted.Ethan didn't glance up. "We can't. Not from here. The code is programmed within Hydra's global uplink system, hidden beneath twenty years of encryption, some of it non-human." "This was pre-programmed, Caden. This was always meant to occur."Lyra gazed up from her comms console. "And the Nexus, where Sophia is that's the pulse generator. It's not merely ho
Revenant Protocol Chapter Nine
The Echoes of Fate63:00:00 RemainingCaden couldn't tear his eyes from the screen.The child. His own childhood self, frozen in a cryo-pod beside Sophia. The impossible images blending with his memory, as if fragments of a life that could never have been.It was like looking into a twisted mirror, a reflection of someone he wasn't sure he was anymore. The man standing in this place wasn't the same man who'd helped create this hell. He was a soldier, a weapon, a ghost… and now, he looked back at his past, looked into the core of the experiment that had made him.I was a test subject," he growled, his voice barely above a whisper."You and Sophia. They made you, both of you weapons," Ethan confirmed, his tone icy. "The Revenant Protocol was designed to evolve, to bring in a new era for humanity. But Hydra's goals were darker than any of us could have imagined. They used you two to develop the template for what we're battling today.".Caden remained silent. His mind was spinning. How mu
Revenant Protocol Chapter Ten
Into the Eye of the Storm58:00:00 RemainingCaden stood, in the cold, antiseptic hallway of the bunker, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The doors to the extraction bay were closed, the last sound of Sophia's footsteps fading into silence.The warning clanged in his mind, the Omega Directive in full force. Global Revenant awakening was imminent. And Sophia, Sophia wasn't the woman he loved anymore. She had become Hydra's vision's harbinger.Caden wouldn't have it, however. Sophia, the woman he loved, the woman who had fought with him once, had to still be in the machine that was taking over her."No. She's not gone," he told himself, pushing aside the thought of defeat. "She can still be saved."He had no time to dwell on it. The countdown was speeding up now, as if Hydra's plan had been waiting for this all along to kick into high gear. The Revenants were rising up across the globe, and their initiation into soldiers of Hydra's new world order was already in process. Each
Revenant Protocol Chapter Eleven - The Breach Below
Neo-York Sector-6 Ruins | Time Stamp: 22:03 PMThe silence was oppressive an unnatural, deafening quiet that weighed down around them as they descended into what once was the center of the VireCorp complex. Shiny steel walls and whirring servers of a high-end tech empire were swapped out. Now, twisted girders and broken glass glinted like teeth in the dying light above. The skeleton of the building, buried under wreckage and collapsed infrastructure, remained.Caden's boots grated against wreckage as he strode down the corridor, weapon raised, nerves tingling. Each step back towards the past was heavier than the last. This was where it all began. This was where they buried the truth.Sophia followed him, her fingers clutching a palm-sized device tightly, Ethan's homemade biometric bypass. She appeared white in the soft blue light of the device, her face pinched with grim awareness."This way," she gestured, towards a plain service elevator which was concealed behind a torn-up section
Revenant Protocol Chapter Twelve - Genesis Awakens
Location: Omega Subcore Chamber, Hydra Facility - Neo-York Undercity | Time Stamp: 22:08 PMThe building groaned beneath the weight of centuries-entombed technology. Shattered fluorescent strips crackled like lunatics, spewing splitting bars of antiseptic white and crimson-red illumination across the high-tech chamber. Huge metallic limbs, skeletal fingers of dead giants, curved over the chamber, blending with stunted ancient cables that pulsed with streaming data. In the center, the core of the Revenant Protocol slumbered.A ten-foot-high glass pod, rimmed with titanium seals, remained still in the middle of a sunken stage. Inside, suspended in a tank of bioluminescent fluid, was a man.Not just a man, a creation.Caden's gaze crossed the rigid figure through the glass, and for a moment, he did not breathe.The face was his own.Smusher jawline. Leaner, more symmetrical features. The flesh glowed softly with the same biogel sheathing put on Hydra's best assassins. But eyes. eyes clos
Revenant Protocol Chapter Thirteen - Underneath the Machine
Location: Ruins of the Hydra Facility. Illicit Sector Omega-2Time: 22:18 PMThe moment the floor gave way beneath them, it seemed as though the world itself had opened up and engulfed them.Caden had hardly time to scream before the world receded in a whirlwind of screeching metal, crunching stone, and suffocating dust. The crashed elevator shaft had plummeted them straight down into a secret corner of the Hydra Facility one that wasn't on the maps, wasn't talked about, and, as far as anyone could have known, wasn't even meant to be.When he awoke, it was in darkness dense and stifling, as from a tomb that had lain sealed for millennia. Pain hurt his body. Ribs, bruised. Arm, perhaps broken. Dust clogged his lungs, and the air seemed unusually cold.Then, the lights.Small flashes, like fireflies, emitted light from the walls. He had thought at first it was bioluminescence, but after his eyes adapted, he could see that they were strands of fiber-optic wire braided with etched stone,
Revenant Protocol Chapter Fourteen - Echoes of the Executioner
Location: Subterranean Vault, Sector Omega-2Time: 22:48 PMThere are some moments in a man's life when time doesn't slow down, it just freezes.Caden stood frozen, gasp lodged in his throat, as the Revenant emerged gradually from the sphere. Its arrival twisted the chamber light distorted unrealistically, shadows stretched and trembled, and a bass hum vibrated deep in their bones.It was not humanoid, not precisely. It shifted its shape with each second, folding inward upon itself in folds of flowing metal, transmitting impossible complexity. Its eyes, or whatever they were, glowed like sparks of old fire, blue-white burden of the centuries.And beneath it, held by streams of black nanites flowing from the orb into his spine, stood Jonah.Not-Jonah anymore.His expression had twisted and elongated half-man, half-machine, as if a painting was fighting to combat its own hues. His right eye had become fully robotic, and his voi
Revenant Protocol Chapter Fifteen - The Seven-Day Protocol
Location: Arctic Circle – Outpost 12 of the Central Intelligence Time: 06:12 AM | Countdown Day 1 The VTOL's landing struts hissed as it navigated into the snow-burdened tundra of the Arctic Circle. Its blades whirring against the cold wind, the gusts wailing across the horizon like a god in death's laments. Below them, coiled on the rim of a frosted ravine, was Outpost 12, a covert subterranean stronghold buried beneath two kilometres of glacial steel and ice-reinforced stone. Above, it was an apparent ruin. A dead one. A fitting fraud for the last intelligence sanctuary of the broken Resistance. Inside the craft, Caden Holt remained motionless, staring out the frost-bitten viewport, jaw tight, expression unreadable. Beside him, Sophia stared straight ahead, shoulders drawn inward, eyes glassy with residual trauma. Ethan, who’d sustained a gunshot graze and a cracked rib in their escape from the Philadelphia sub-vault, sat opposite them banda
Latest Chapter
Chapter Eighteen - The First War
Location: Revenant Core Facility, Sector X-9Time: 10:36 AM - Day 1 of the CountdownA sharp hiss broke the stillness of the underground facility, then another and another until the air itself trembled with the din of mechanical awakening death.Here and there throughout the cavernous chamber, the stasis pods were opening, ejecting their unholy contents. Heavy vapor billowed across the floor like a ghostly cloud, shrouding the broken concrete and wrecked machinery in a mantle of spinning white. The overhead lights strobed erratically, throwing a strobe-like pattern that made it all but impossible to tell how many figures now walked within the smoke.Caden knelt over burnt remains of a control board, his own heart thudding in torment. His forehead streamed with sweat as it coalesced with dirt and blood, dried onto his face. He felt the measured tread now ticked off, calculated, constant pace. A throbbing cadence, like a heartbeat.They had arrived.Sophia crouched beside him, her breat
Chapter Seventeen - Blood Mirrors
Where: On board Resistance Hovercraft, Sector X-9 AirspaceWhen: 09:21 AM — Day 1 of the CountdownThe storm outside was alive, howling and lashing at the metal skin of the Resistance hovercraft as it ripped its path through thick, chemical-tinged clouds. Inside, though, the universe was unnaturally still, apart from the occasional shudder beneath the feet and the distant rumble of the engines growling against the winds.Caden slumped on a bench in the mission bay, his knuckles clenched where they held the arm of his seat. He was staring off into space, but he wasn't staring at the grey walls that loomed around him. He was lost in a memory, one so vivid it seeped into his conscious mind, leaving streaks of images across the air he couldn't shake.Sophia sat opposite him with quiet concern.Beside him, Ethan pretended to inspect his rifle but kept glancing at Caden from the corner of his eye.The text had come an hour earlier, picked up on
Chapter Sixteen - Ghost in the Frame
Where: Outpost 12, Emergency Lockdown When: 06:57 AM | Day 1 of the Countdown Red emergency lights spun like blood-whirlpools down the corridors of Outpost 12. Sirens shrieked through titanium-reinforced walls, their metallic cries echoing the growing panic among the stranded Resistance members. Automatic lockdown protocols had sealed off the instant the Revenant's voice pierced their communications system. Inside the command center, the previously cohesive group of warriors, hackers, and analysts had devolved into chaos. At the eye of the storm, however, was Caden Holt, frozen. Stiff. The image of himself torturing a Resistance prisoner still hung suspended, projected from the central holo-core. The clip cycled in grotesque silence. Caden, laughing. Caden, whispering in Jonah's ear. Caden, a ghost of misplaced faith. “Shut it down!” h
Chapter Fifteen - The Seven-Day Protocol
Location: Arctic Circle – Outpost 12 of the Central Intelligence Time: 06:12 AM | Countdown Day 1 The VTOL's landing struts hissed as it navigated into the snow-burdened tundra of the Arctic Circle. Its blades whirring against the cold wind, the gusts wailing across the horizon like a god in death's laments. Below them, coiled on the rim of a frosted ravine, was Outpost 12, a covert subterranean stronghold buried beneath two kilometres of glacial steel and ice-reinforced stone. Above, it was an apparent ruin. A dead one. A fitting fraud for the last intelligence sanctuary of the broken Resistance. Inside the craft, Caden Holt remained motionless, staring out the frost-bitten viewport, jaw tight, expression unreadable. Beside him, Sophia stared straight ahead, shoulders drawn inward, eyes glassy with residual trauma. Ethan, who’d sustained a gunshot graze and a cracked rib in their escape from the Philadelphia sub-vault, sat opposite them banda
Chapter Fourteen - Echoes of the Executioner
Location: Subterranean Vault, Sector Omega-2Time: 22:48 PMThere are some moments in a man's life when time doesn't slow down, it just freezes.Caden stood frozen, gasp lodged in his throat, as the Revenant emerged gradually from the sphere. Its arrival twisted the chamber light distorted unrealistically, shadows stretched and trembled, and a bass hum vibrated deep in their bones.It was not humanoid, not precisely. It shifted its shape with each second, folding inward upon itself in folds of flowing metal, transmitting impossible complexity. Its eyes, or whatever they were, glowed like sparks of old fire, blue-white burden of the centuries.And beneath it, held by streams of black nanites flowing from the orb into his spine, stood Jonah.Not-Jonah anymore.His expression had twisted and elongated half-man, half-machine, as if a painting was fighting to combat its own hues. His right eye had become fully robotic, and his voi
Chapter Thirteen - Underneath the Machine
Location: Ruins of the Hydra Facility. Illicit Sector Omega-2Time: 22:18 PMThe moment the floor gave way beneath them, it seemed as though the world itself had opened up and engulfed them.Caden had hardly time to scream before the world receded in a whirlwind of screeching metal, crunching stone, and suffocating dust. The crashed elevator shaft had plummeted them straight down into a secret corner of the Hydra Facility one that wasn't on the maps, wasn't talked about, and, as far as anyone could have known, wasn't even meant to be.When he awoke, it was in darkness dense and stifling, as from a tomb that had lain sealed for millennia. Pain hurt his body. Ribs, bruised. Arm, perhaps broken. Dust clogged his lungs, and the air seemed unusually cold.Then, the lights.Small flashes, like fireflies, emitted light from the walls. He had thought at first it was bioluminescence, but after his eyes adapted, he could see that they were strands of fiber-optic wire braided with etched stone,
Chapter Twelve - Genesis Awakens
Location: Omega Subcore Chamber, Hydra Facility - Neo-York Undercity | Time Stamp: 22:08 PMThe building groaned beneath the weight of centuries-entombed technology. Shattered fluorescent strips crackled like lunatics, spewing splitting bars of antiseptic white and crimson-red illumination across the high-tech chamber. Huge metallic limbs, skeletal fingers of dead giants, curved over the chamber, blending with stunted ancient cables that pulsed with streaming data. In the center, the core of the Revenant Protocol slumbered.A ten-foot-high glass pod, rimmed with titanium seals, remained still in the middle of a sunken stage. Inside, suspended in a tank of bioluminescent fluid, was a man.Not just a man, a creation.Caden's gaze crossed the rigid figure through the glass, and for a moment, he did not breathe.The face was his own.Smusher jawline. Leaner, more symmetrical features. The flesh glowed softly with the same biogel sheathing put on Hydra's best assassins. But eyes. eyes clos
Chapter Eleven - The Breach Below
Neo-York Sector-6 Ruins | Time Stamp: 22:03 PMThe silence was oppressive an unnatural, deafening quiet that weighed down around them as they descended into what once was the center of the VireCorp complex. Shiny steel walls and whirring servers of a high-end tech empire were swapped out. Now, twisted girders and broken glass glinted like teeth in the dying light above. The skeleton of the building, buried under wreckage and collapsed infrastructure, remained.Caden's boots grated against wreckage as he strode down the corridor, weapon raised, nerves tingling. Each step back towards the past was heavier than the last. This was where it all began. This was where they buried the truth.Sophia followed him, her fingers clutching a palm-sized device tightly, Ethan's homemade biometric bypass. She appeared white in the soft blue light of the device, her face pinched with grim awareness."This way," she gestured, towards a plain service elevator which was concealed behind a torn-up section
Chapter Ten
Into the Eye of the Storm58:00:00 RemainingCaden stood, in the cold, antiseptic hallway of the bunker, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The doors to the extraction bay were closed, the last sound of Sophia's footsteps fading into silence.The warning clanged in his mind, the Omega Directive in full force. Global Revenant awakening was imminent. And Sophia, Sophia wasn't the woman he loved anymore. She had become Hydra's vision's harbinger.Caden wouldn't have it, however. Sophia, the woman he loved, the woman who had fought with him once, had to still be in the machine that was taking over her."No. She's not gone," he told himself, pushing aside the thought of defeat. "She can still be saved."He had no time to dwell on it. The countdown was speeding up now, as if Hydra's plan had been waiting for this all along to kick into high gear. The Revenants were rising up across the globe, and their initiation into soldiers of Hydra's new world order was already in process. Each