Chapter 44: Memory Fragments
The silence was deafening.
Ryo stood frozen at the edge of the shattered control chamber. The moment Rina Kazen's name had flashed across the corrupted interface, the world seemed to stop. Everything—the whirring consoles, the flickering lights, even his breath—felt suspended in time.
"Rina...?" he whispered, the name caught between disbelief and longing.
But the system offered no response. Only static flickered on the broken screens, the last traces of the Dead Zone's forbidden files fading into digital dust. The silence that followed gnawed at his resolve like a dull blade.
His heart pounded. Not with fear, but with something more dangerous.
Hope.
A brutal kind of hope—the kind that hurt more than despair.
I saw her die. I was there. I buried her.
He clenched his fists, the veins in his forearms pulsing beneath his skin. Rina Kazen had been declared dead over two years ago. Yet the memory fragment embedded in the Protocol's corrupted cache didn't just list her name. It displayed her designation: PROJECT EDEN - PRIME SUBJECT.
He wasn't hallucinating.
The fragment had been real.
Behind him, the rest of the Protocol Hunter Squad remained silent, exchanging uncertain glances.
"Kael," Yurei finally spoke, his voice low and guarded, "that file... it shouldn't exist. There was no record of a Prime Subject. Project Eden was supposed to be—"
"Shut down before it ever began," Kael cut him off. "I know."
But none of them dared to voice the real question.
If Rina Kazen was still alive... where had she been for the last two years?
Ryo stepped back from the ruined terminal, his thoughts spiraling. The truth was there, buried under layers of corrupted data and lies crafted by those who once controlled the Shadow Protocol. But he needed answers.
Now more than ever.
And the only place left to search... was his own mind.
They left the Dead Zone before nightfall.
Even the shadows in that cursed place seemed heavier, more watchful. Ryo didn't speak as they passed through the perimeter gates, barely acknowledging the guards or their salutes. His mind was elsewhere—locked behind the steel doors of memory.
He could barely sleep that night.
And when sleep did come, it was haunted.
The dream was fragmented, pixelated—like a corrupted video feed.
He stood in the rain, no older than twelve, clutching a red umbrella far too big for his hands. Across the street, behind a chain-link fence, stood a figure—small, frail, and trembling.
"Ryo," she called out.
It was Rina. Hair damp from the drizzle, eyes wide with fear.
Then she was gone.
Snatched by shadowy hands, vanishing into a black van that bore no emblem.
He screamed her name—ran after her—only to trip, fall, and shatter into data.
A scream escaped him as he awoke in a cold sweat.
It wasn't just a dream.
It was a repressed memory.
One the Shadow Protocol had hidden.
Kael met with the squad the next morning. But Ryo wasn't there.
He'd slipped away before dawn, his destination clear: a forbidden Archive buried beneath the outskirts of Old Sector Nine—a place where memories, both human and artificial, were stored.
It was called The Vault.
And it was heavily guarded.
But that didn't stop him.
Using his Shadow Merge and Data Refract abilities, Ryo slithered past biometric locks, turrets, and invisible sensors. He moved like a ghost—no longer a boy, but the shadow the world had forged him into.
Inside, the Vault was cold and vast. Rows of black pillars towered in eerie silence, each one storing thousands of memories. All encrypted. All classified.
Ryo reached the central hub and placed his hand against the interface. A ripple of cold energy passed through him as the system hesitated—then responded.
"Access granted: SHADOW PROTOCOL – TIER 7."
That rank wasn't supposed to exist.
But Ryo had unlocked it two chapters ago when he overrode the Protocol Glitch using the Phantom Key in Chapter 41.
Now, it opened doors no one else could even see.
He input Rina's name.
The system hesitated—flickered—then revealed a hidden directory marked: EDEN_ORIGIN/RINA_KAZEN/MEMCORE-A01.
There it was.
Trembling, he activated the file.
What followed was not a video or text file—but a simulated memory.
The room shimmered around him, pulling him into a perfectly reconstructed memory environment.
He was standing in a glass chamber.
Monitors lined the walls.
And in the center—hooked to wires, her body barely conscious—was Rina.
Smaller. Thinner. And not quite... human.
Her skin flickered with faint runes, ancient glyphs of the Shadow Protocol etched into her veins.
In the memory, a scientist's voice echoed: "Prime Subject is stable. Neural sync with Protocol Core at 67%. Emotional suppression active. Begin integration."
Ryo watched in horror as the scene played out. His little sister had been merged with a piece of the Shadow Protocol itself.
She wasn't just connected to it.
She was part of it.
The memory fragmented as the system began collapsing under the weight of the classified data breach. Sparks burst across the interface. Warning lights flared.
"Unauthorized Access Detected."
The Vault was purging itself.
Ryo grabbed what fragments he could, storing them deep within his own Protocol Core. He wouldn't lose this again.
Not this time.
He barely escaped the Vault before it collapsed, wiping out all traces of Project EDEN from public memory.
Back in his safe zone, Ryo stared into the dark, heart pounding.
His sister had never died.
She had been taken. Used. Experimented on.
And worse—if what he'd seen was true—then part of Rina's consciousness might still be alive... inside the Shadow Protocol itself.
Which meant every time he activated the Protocol…
He might be hearing echoes of her voice.
Every glitch.
Every whisper in the shadows.
Every moment where the Protocol acted without command.
It hadn't been random.
It had been her.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
END OF CHAPTER 44