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/-\
District Seven's lower quadrant had a smell—part oil, part algae bloom, part burnt plastic. Drey hated it. Not because it was toxic (he'd installed double filters weeks ago), but because it reminded him too much of his old job.
He leaned back in his rolling chair, eyes flicking across ten different screens. One showed Zone Null's recent movement logs. Another ran heat-sigs through proprietary filters. One of them was supposed to be playing lo-fi beats. Instead, it looped static over an image of a static crow.
"Not again," he muttered, spinning to face the wall-mounted drive array. He popped open a panel and yanked the crow drive. It hissed softly as it disconnected.
Behind him, the door chime went off.
He didn't answer.
It chimed again—same tone, but faster this time. Annoying, needy.
"Okay, okay, okay," Drey grumbled, shuffling over and slapping the panel.
The door slid open with a hydraulic sigh, revealing Kiera in a half-scuffed jacket, a bandage wrapped around her wrist, and a box of something steaming under her arm. She stepped in like she owned the place, which she arguably did—on weekends, anyway.
"Good news," she said, plopping the box on his cluttered desk. "I brought noodles. Also, someone tried to remotely hijack my eyeballs this morning. That's probably the more interesting headline, but the noodles are still hot."
Drey stared at her. Then at the food. Then at the smudge of ash on her collar.
He sighed. "You're going to get us all killed."
"I didn't say it worked," she said cheerfully, kicking a stack of microdrives out of the way to find a seat. "Also, you got any of that orange spice oil left? The one that makes my nose burn like a righteous war crime?"
Drey wordlessly slid open a drawer and handed it to her.
Kiera dug into the noodles, half-laughing to herself between bites.
He waited until she looked like she might actually sit still for two seconds before asking, "So what did you find?"
She gestured with chopsticks. "A ruin full of radioactive ghost-vibes and a metal sphere that might be a bomb or a voice recorder. Aiden pocketed it. Didn't say much."
Drey didn't blink. "He never says much."
"This was different," she said, swallowing. "He froze up. Like—like it spoke to him or something. Not literally. Well, maybe literally. He didn't explain. You know how he is."
Drey leaned back in his chair again, pushing off the floor until he was rocking. "So you brought back a Uchiha with possible psychic contamination and you left him alone?"
"Well, yeah. He said he was fine."
"He always says he's fine."
"You worry too much."
"You don't worry enough."
Kiera grinned. "That's why we make such a good team."
Drey threw a stress ball at her. It bounced off her head and hit the noodle box.
They both stared at the spill.
"You're cleaning that," he said flatly.
"Obviously not," she replied, with her usual bulletproof smirk.
Two blocks away, Aiden was sitting on a rooftop.
The city spread below in fractured colors—plasma lights, refinery flares, digital ads flickering over broken walls. From here, you could almost believe the world hadn't cracked under its own weight. That the reactors in Zone Nine hadn't gone dark last year. That the sky hadn't needed repair crews.
He had the sphere out again. Just sitting in his palm.
Still warm.
Still quiet.
But not...silent.
He pressed two fingers to it. Not with chakra. Just with awareness. The kind a shinobi had to master when everything depended on instinct, not sensors.
Something inside pulsed.
Not electrical.
Not chakra either.
But close.
He didn't move. Not for minutes.
Then something shifted in his peripheral vision.
He turned—eyes calm, unafraid—and spotted a shape on the far rooftop. Small. A kid. Watching him from behind a broken HVAC unit.
The boy couldn't have been older than twelve. Wide eyes, bare feet, a ripped satchel slung across one shoulder. No threat.
But Aiden didn't look away.
The boy waved.
Then turned and disappeared over the edge.
Aiden stared after him.
The Sharingan flickered to life—briefly—just to make sure he hadn't imagined it.
He hadn't.
There was no chakra signature. But the rooftop tiles where the boy had stood were warm.
Too warm.
At ground level, a woman in a patchwork trench coat was selling secondhand tech under a tarp near the closed mag-rail. She hummed as she worked, piecing together a cracked Stark lens with a lens from an old Oscorp optic rig.
Customers came and went—quiet, efficient.
But when Aiden passed, she stopped humming.
He didn't speak to her. Didn't even slow down.
She smiled anyway.
"He's awake," she whispered after he'd gone. "Didn't think he'd start here."
Behind her, a cluster of pigeons shifted all at once—then froze, mid-flap, as if time had glitched. Then moved again, like nothing had happened.
Back at Drey's lab, the room had dimmed.
They'd kicked the noodle box aside. Now Kiera was sprawled on the floor, using a toolkit case as a pillow, flipping through a report Drey had pulled from the SHIELD blackbox net.
"This can't be right," she murmured.
Drey glanced up from his terminal. "Which part?"
"The part where Zone Null wasn't marked as a quarantine site until after that compound was already constructed. Which means—"
"Someone built it before the fire. And didn't report it."
"Or scrubbed the record after," she said.
Drey spun in his chair. "You want me to run the vault schematics through the Ancient Artifact Index?"
"I thought that was locked."
"It was." He cracked his knuckles. "But you brought me noodles."
"You're such a romantic."
He didn't smile, but his typing picked up speed.
Somewhere deep in the data banks, a set of old coordinates blinked.
Aiden returned long after midnight.
The lab was dim. Quiet.
Kiera was half-asleep on the couch. Drey was slumped over his keyboard, still scrolling code.
Aiden sat down across from them and pulled the sphere from his pocket.
"I need a scan," he said softly.
Drey stirred. "Yeah, okay. Later."
"No. Now."
Kiera's eyes opened. She saw the way his hand was clenched around the object.
She sat up, brushing hair from her eyes. "What happened?"
Aiden stared at the sphere.
"I saw someone."
"Someone...?"
He didn't answer.
The silence drew out. Then:
"It said 'brother.'"
Kiera's smirk faded.
Even Drey sat up straighter.
The scanner chirped to life. Lights flickered over the sphere.
The readout came back blank.
Not zero.
Blank.
No material. No energy signature. No weight, no structure.
It shouldn't exist.
But it did.
/-\
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.