2025-04-11 20:53:59Ghost Signal
Rain had dwindled to a whisper, a misty breath against the chill steel roof of the clandestine bunker hidden deep among the Blackpine Forests. Outside, the world was bespattered wet in fog and quiet, as though nature herself held her breath. Inside, a storm seethed one not of clouds but of war, betrayal, and something even uglier. Caden Black sat by himself in the armory room, hunched over the temporary war table littered with surveillance photos, schematics, and decrypted encrypted files extracted from the last Hydra base he and Lyra had breached. His knuckles were white as paste on the edge of the steel, his jaw tense as his gaze was fixed on the light-emitting center of the device before him. The Failsafe. The size of a palm, made from a combination of old-tech and neural biotech, the device was designed to circumvent a Revenant's memory blockage system. Catch? It needed to be implanted in the host's spinal interface. And the host was Sophia Hart. Caden swallowed, his mind replaying the day she had stood before him blank and unemotional, eyes broken glass, voice the echo of the woman he loved, not. Omega, they had begun referring to her now. The peak of the Revenant Project. She wasn't brainwashed, she was rewritten. Caden." Ethan's voice pulled him out of the daze. "She's in the Crescent Sector. That's where Hydra's keeping her. Below the ruins of the ancient city. I tracked the trail of her last recorded neural spike." "How safe?" Caden asked, getting to his feet. Ethan reoriented the holo-map. "The compound's buried beneath sixty feet of concrete, hydro-grid defense, and bio-reactive sentinels. It's not an outpost, it's a fortress. But this is the kicker, it's not just her in there." He touched the screen. The image shifted, heat signatures: moving bodies, asymmetrical, irregular, not quite human. "They're not human?" Lyra stepped forward, armored up, blade strapped to her thigh. Ethan shook his head. "Revenant Phase Four. I think. Hydra finally cracked hybridization. They're merging neural AI implants with bio-synthetic exoskeletons. These creatures don't simply follow, they learn." "Then we eliminate it all," Caden stated. Ethan hesitated. "It doesn't work like that. Sophia's not linked into the system. She is the system. If we take it all down, we get her along the way." Caden exhaled slowly. "Then we remove her first.". Somewhere beneath Crescent Bay The Hydra Core Facility was a cathedral of darkness and quiet, alive only by the soft hum of machinery and the occasional flash of blue light coursing through the walls of obsidian. In one of the central chambers, Omega lay motionless. Suspended in the air on delicate tendrils of neuro-conductive fibers, her body floated in a state of induced stasis. She was a tool to the world beyond, a human computer programmed to kill without question. Deep within the recesses of her shattered mind, though, something stirred. A memory. A whisper. His voice. Her fingers twitched wildly. In her mind, a scene played like a broken film reel, snow falling on scorched rooftops, the warmth of someone’s jacket draped around her shoulders, blood on their hands but not hers. A hand reaching out. “You’re not like them, Sophia. You’re more.” Then it was gone, wiped clean by a surge of static, followed by the cold, artificial tone of her internal AI. “Memory contamination detected. Reconstructing.” But still, the sensation lingered. That ghost heat. That name. Sophia. But she was Omega now. Wasn't she? The Approach The stealth skiff cut through the darkness like glass sliced by a blade, engines barely audible underwater. Caden, Lyra, and Ethan wore black infiltration suits, heavily armed. Above, a hum of drones blanketed the region in signal jammers and simulated heat signatures to confuse Hydra's perimeter defense systems. Ethan tapped into the comms feed. “You’ll have a ten-minute window before their counter-surveillance recalibrates. After that, you’re ghosts.” “Copy that,” Lyra said, strapping her helmet into place. Caden loaded a serum cartridge into his rifle. Not bullets, stunners. He couldn’t risk killing Sophia’s bodyguards before finding out if they were still… salvageable. “Last chance to back out,” Ethan said. Caden looked up, eyes hard. “This isn’t a rescue mission. It’s redemption.” Breach The Crescent Sector was a graveyard of steel and concrete ghost skyscrapers overrun by vines and ash. Beneath a collapsed subway terminal, they found the access shaft, just as Ethan had promised. Caden went first, boots thudding on the metal floor in a muffled sound. The air reeked of rot and ozone. Below, throbbing veins of Hydra tech pulsed like arteries along the walls. They moved like shadows. Lyra cut a path, slicing past security locks with her plasma blade. Ethan lingered behind, scanning feeds, keeping the digital net in shambles. Soon they found themselves within the main complex. And it was worse than they had imagined. Rows of human-like creatures sat in rooms, Revenants offline. Some writhed in their pods. Others mindlessly stared as if already conscious. Caden was sick. "This is not a lab. It's a womb." They proceeded. Outside the labs. Outside the data vaults. Until they reached the inner sanctum, a throne room-shaped room, with writhing neural cables and a raised dais in the center. She was there. Suspended in mid-air, cables implanted in her spine, eyes shut. Omega. Sophia. Caden approached slowly. "It's me," he whispered. Her eyes opened. Blue, glowing, empty. "IDENTIFY," she said in a deadpan voice. "You know who I am." Her eyes weakened. Recogntion stammered. "Caden… Black." Then her eyelids shut. "THREAT LEVEL: MAXIMUM." Her hand went up. Energy flashed out of her palm. Caden didn't flinch. "You recall me. You're fighting against it. I know you are." Her hand pulse light diminished but arm trembled. There was a sound of sirens. A door blasted. Elara Raze strode in, flanked by Revenant Phase Fours, body wired to machine, eyes aglow ember-like. "Well," Elara murmured, sliding between them. "Isn't this romantic?" Caden raised his gun. Elara giggled. "You don't understand, do you? She's not damaged. You are. We didn't erase her memories. We buried them. And you've dug them up." Sophia stood between them, shaking now. Elara turned to her. "Kill him." Sophia took one step forward. Stopped. Another memory surged, her hand in his. His whisper: “No matter what they do, I’ll find you.” She screamed, clutching her head. The cables retracted violently. Sparks flew. Elara lunged forward, reaching for a neural override device. But Sophia was faster. She caught the Failsafe from Caden’s belt and stabbed it into the base of her own neck. There was a moment of silence. Then everything exploded. A surge of raw energy shot out, burning up half the Revenant guards. The power went out. Emergency power kicked in. Sophia slumped in Caden's arms, panting, bathed in perspiration. He pulled her closer. "You're back." But she was trembling. "I can't turn it off. They've discovered it." "What are you talking about, who knows?" She seized his wrist. Her face was contorted with fear. "The Protocol. it's not a project. It's a signal. And it's woken up.". Suddenly, her body glowed with light. She had used a teleportation recall node inserted in her spine, something Caden hadn't known she had. "No!" he roared. She was gone. The only thing that remained behind was the sound of her final words: "They're coming for you, too."
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
Revenant Protocol Chapter Seven
The Revenant ThresholdThere 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 s
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
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