BLOODCAPE
Chapter 80: Inheritance Protocol

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Inheritance Protocol

Some memories aren’t recalled. They awaken.

Ava — Below the Archive

The pod was breathing now.

Not metaphorically. Not figuratively.

It inhaled—slow, deliberate—and the floor beneath Ava’s boots lifted a millimeter, like something alive shifting beneath the floor panels. Then it exhaled, and with it came a hush of air that smelled of static, old soil, and wilted orchids.

The pulse of blue beneath the black bio-thread was faster now. Twitching turned to flexing. The thing inside wasn’t dreaming anymore.

It was remembering.

And Ava... she wasn’t a witness.

She was part of it.

Her body knew it before her mind did. The tiny muscle twitches in her fingers, the tightening in her throat. Something in her blood hummed—like static winding itself through her veins.

The lights above her flickered, then stuttered into a staccato pattern: three slow blinks, pause, three fast.

Code. Rhythm. Language.

The pod was syncing.

Ava’s hand itched. Deep in the wrist, beneath skin and bone.

Not with pain. With recognition.

She stepped forward.

The pod reacted. Its fibers drew tight, like a diaphragm contracting in anticipation.

Then a voice filled her skull.

"You were born open."

It wasn’t Solaris’s voice.

"You were hollowed to make room."

The voice was female. Ancient. Not cold—but terrifying in its calmness.

"And now the inheritance begins."

Ava stumbled back.

Her elbow struck an old console. Dust erupted into the air like breath after decades of stillness.

Behind her, something mechanical clicked.

A failsafe waking up.

Something older than the Archive’s current firewalls.

Her hand moved without consent.

Back toward the pod.

Touching the surface felt like pressing against breath itself—warm, pliant, subtly aware.

Then—

A flash.

A crack of white.

She stood on a blasted plain.

Ash fell in sheets.

Skies roared above, not with clouds, but with raw, flickering static. Like a living transmission had burst across the atmosphere.

Ruins stretched to the horizon—spires melted into bone. Machines overgrown with crystal and root. The remnants of a world that had tried to remember too much.

A voice echoed:

"This was the first."

Ava turned.

There, in the center of the wasteland, sat a cradle.

It was not forged. Not constructed.

It had grown.

A ribcage of alloy and sinew, wrapped in nerve-like thread, curled around a seed of light—fetal, luminous, undefined.

"A memory isn’t knowledge.""It’s shape.""And once shaped... it endures."

Ava staggered.

Reality cracked. The vision burned away—

And the pod was there again.

In front of her.

But something had latched on.

A filament—thin and black—had burrowed into her wrist. Veins beneath her skin throbbed with faint blue pulses. Her fingers spasmed.

She screamed and yanked her arm back.

The thread tore free with a wet snap.

No blood.

But the burn felt deep. Biological.

Sirens wailed.

Not Archive alarms.

Older. Buried.

Internal Theta-9 lockdown had begun.

Bulkheads started to close. Ava rushed to the exit, slapped the manual override.

Nothing.

Her code meant nothing here.

The screen blinked red.

She turned back to the pod.

Its surface was still again.

But the voice hadn’t stopped.

"Solaris built the pod to bury me.""But blood undoes design.""And your blood is not just his."

Ava collapsed to her knees.

Her spine arched forward.

Images slammed into her:

Solaris standing exactly where she now knelt, his hands pressed to the pod, whispering:

"Araven."

The name echoed in her marrow.

Not fear.

Reverence.

He hadn’t sealed the pod to contain danger.

He’d sealed it to protect her.

Because the thing inside—

Was part of her.

A blueprint written not in files, but in flesh.

A map etched into her from the moment of conception.

And then the voice again.

No longer distant.

Now right behind her ear, warm and impossible.

"You are the last key.""And you have always been mine."

Echo — Med-Bay | Simultaneously

White light.

Ceiling too high. Floor not solid. Sound vibrating inside her teeth.

Beside her—

A child.

Ava. But younger. Pale feet. Silent eyes.

They stood in glass.

Behind it: Solaris.

Older. Shoulders low. Guilt written into every line of his face.

"Only one of them can carry it."

Another voice. Colder.

"Then let the other forget."

Ava looked down at her hands.

Echo tried to speak.

She couldn’t.

She wasn’t dreaming.

She was remembering.

But the memory didn’t belong to her.

The world stuttered.

Glass dissolved. Light flickered.

Then—

Fire.

Not heat. Not flame.

Internal combustion.

Echo’s implants overloaded. Her heart raced, then paused. Her chest throbbed with light.

Her pulse reversed.

And then another rhythm joined hers.

Not foreign.

Ava’s.

Their heartbeats aligned like matched frequencies.

She heard voices—Aya screaming. Machines blaring.

She tried to speak.

But her mouth was a locked gate.

Her hands twitched.

And suddenly, she saw—

A chamber.

Underground.

Black threads twitching.

A pod pulsing.

Ava standing in front of it, hand outstretched. Veins glowing. A thread burrowing into her skin.

The voice whispered through both of them.

"You are the last key.""And you have always been mine."

Echo tried to scream.

Inside, she did.

Her body seized. Aya grabbed her, calling her name.

Monitors lit up.

Two data streams appeared side by side.

Echo’s vitals.

And Ava’s.

Identical.

Aya blinked, stunned.

They weren’t synced.

They were mirrored.

Echo’s implants sparked again.

One by one, they ejected, clattering to the floor, smoking at the edges.

Underneath—

Blue lines.

Not wires.

Not scars.

Memory veins.

Growing. Curling. Blooming beneath her skin.

Not synthetic.

Inherent.

She collapsed into another memory.

Not hers. Ava’s.

Standing over the pod.

Looking at her own hands.

Hearing Solaris whisper:

"Don’t forget her.""They’re both incomplete without each other."

Her eyes flew open.

Light. Noise. Flesh.

Aya barked orders.

Restraint drones floated closer.

Echo didn’t move.

They stopped. Hesitated.

And backed away.

Recognizing her.

Or obeying something she no longer understood.

She sat up.

Breathing shallow.

Eyes glowing faintly.

"She’s unlocking it," Echo said.

Aya stepped back. "Unlocking what?"

"Stop her..."

Echo turned.

And in that moment—

Ava’s face flickered over her own.

"...before we become the same person."

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