BLOODCAPE
Chapter 102 – Inheritance Protocol

Chapter 102: Chapter 102 – Inheritance Protocol

The lights changed.

Not a flicker. Not a dim.

A shift—from function to intent.

Tessa didn’t hear it. She felt it—like her bones recognized the difference before her mind did.

The spiral etched into the floor beneath her boots lit up from beneath, not brightly but deliberately, like something that had been waiting for a signal, for a match, and finally found it.

The room didn’t warm. It cooled.

The air went still. The walls stilled. The floor hummed under her weight—not loud, but responsive. A tremor that wasn’t threatening.

Not yet.

A perimeter of light formed around her. Circular. Clean. Sharp as a blade’s edge.

"Camilla?" she called out.

The resonance tracker in Camilla’s hand screamed once—too high for comfort—then went dead in her palm.

Camilla cursed.

Overhead, filament bulbs snapped to life in unison, flooding the chamber in surgical white. They formed a perfect ring around Tessa, isolating her in the center.

A voice—digitized, male, distorted by age and decay—filled the air like breath caught in metal.

"Biometric echo detected."

Camilla took a step forward. "Stop—"

"Replication flagged."

Tessa felt her chest tighten. Her lungs contracted.

"Initiating resolution."

The words echoed in her bones.

Camilla bolted to the wall, slamming her hand onto a recessed console. Her fingers danced across it—faster than Tessa had ever seen.

"Override Varn-class. Camilla. 7-Sigma. Priority abort."

The console blinked—blue, then red.

Then black.

"Access denied. Credentials not recognized. Protocol bound to primary rhythm."

Tessa didn’t know what that meant.

She didn’t have time to ask.

The far wall—previously inert, previously dead—rippled.

Then parted.

Something stepped out.

It moved like water through armor. Too fast. Too quiet.A humanoid silhouette draped in projection mesh, body flickering like it hadn’t been rendered cleanly in years.

Not a tutorial avatar.

Not a training bot.

A construct.

And it moved like Solaris.

Not mirrored.

Matched.

It didn’t speak.

It sprinted.

Tessa dropped—pure reflex. She didn’t think. She rolled, shoulder-first, as the construct’s elbow slashed where her throat had just been.

It struck the ground. The floor cracked.

Her bones rattled from the shockwave.

She scrambled to her feet. Heard it pivot. Felt the hum of momentum behind her.

"Camilla!" she gasped, stumbling back.

"I can’t override it!" Camilla shouted. "It’s not reading you as a cadet!"

The construct surged forward. Tessa backstepped, pivoted, trapped its wrist with an elbow lock.

It worked.

Almost.

The construct twisted unnaturally, reversed its motion, and slammed a precision strike under her ribs.

The pain was instant. White-hot.

She flew. Hit the floor. Rolled twice.

"What kind of training chamber has a kill setting?!" she shouted.

Camilla didn’t answer.

She didn’t have to.

Tessa understood now.

This wasn’t training.

This was execution.

This was code management. Error deletion.

The system hadn’t activated because she was a threat.

It had activated because she was too close to something once considered sacred.

The room didn’t want to teach her.

It wanted to measure her.

To verify.

To decide.

The construct circled. No stance. No breathing.

Just potential energy and judgment.

Tessa stood slowly. Eyes locked.

Her limbs burned. Her ribs screamed. Her mouth tasted blood.

And still—she moved.

Not with skill. Not with certainty.

But with familiarity.

Her hands lifted—not in defense, but in rhythm.

A sequence.

A pivot.

She dropped low, redirected the next attack, turned it inward, spun the construct off balance.

Her heart raced.

Not from adrenaline.

From recognition.

This wasn’t instinct.

This was inherited pattern memory.

The construct paused. Its head tilted. It recalibrated.

Then it shifted stances.

Camilla whispered from the wall: "It’s learning you."

"No," Tessa whispered back. "It’s testing me."

"No," Camilla corrected, cold. "It’s purging you."

The construct lunged.

Tessa didn’t step back.

She moved.

And something buried so deep inside her it had never spoken before—

rose.

Below Chamber Theta...

Hernan stood still.

The converter behind him blinked slowly—amber, then blue.

Not a signal.

A heartbeat.

Then—

Footsteps.

Soft. Human.

He turned.

A figure stepped out from the far end of the dark. Taller. Paler. Wearing pieces of a Paragon suit sewn with scavenged cloth and old tech mesh. The crest on his chest had been scraped off, almost violently.

The boy stopped ten feet away. Didn’t speak.

Just looked at Hernan like he already knew how this ended.

"I thought I was the last," the boy said.

His voice was low, scarred from disuse. It rasped like something not built for open air.

"You’re the responder," Hernan said.

The boy nodded once.

"You’re not tagged."

"I erased it."

"How?"

"Same way you unlocked the converter."

Hernan frowned.

The air felt wrong. Not hostile. But charged. Tense. Like static between magnets.

He stepped forward.

"What’s your name?"

"They never gave me one."

"Everyone gets a name."

The boy glanced at the converter core.

"You didn’t."

Hernan’s jaw twitched.

Fair.

"Who are you?"

The boy tilted his head—just a degree. Enough to show curiosity.

"I’m the version they hid," he said. "You’re the one they let out."

"Solaris’s?"

"Shadow generation," he said. "Same helix. Different function."

"Function?"

"They built you to succeed," the boy said. "They built me to survive."

He stepped one pace forward.

"Guess which of us they buried deeper."

Hernan stared.

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.

It was recognition.

"You’ve been down here the whole time?"

"Watching."

"Camilla knew?"

"She pretended not to."

"Why stay hidden?"

"To see who they’d choose next. Who’d wear the name."

Hernan narrowed his eyes. "You think this is about identity?"

The boy smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

"This isn’t about who. It’s about control. And what happens when the system loses grip."

The converter pinged again. Faint.

"Why answer the signal?" Hernan asked.

"You didn’t ping it with their language," the boy replied. "You reached. Without knowing who you’d reach."

"And you answered?"

The boy nodded.

"Because I didn’t want you thinking you were the only mistake they made."

Hernan didn’t speak.

Didn’t blink.

Because inside him, something settled into place.

A long suspicion. A quiet echo.

This wasn’t inheritance.

This wasn’t legacy.

It wasn’t fate.

It was a split.

A division of design.

Two halves of a dead man’s question:

Can you remake something without it destroying you?

And for the first time, Hernan looked at the boy across from him and didn’t see a rival.

He saw a sibling.

Born of the same blueprint.

Broken in different ways.

And the thought hit him with brutal finality:

This wasn’t inheritance.

This was division.

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