Chapter Sixty-Eight: The Wake Protocol

Lucien

I used to believe control was everything.

That if I held the reins tight enough of business, of power, of people, I could keep the chaos at bay. But the moment Ivy placed her hand on the cryo chamber glass, I felt the grip slip from my fingers.

And for the first time in my life… I didn’t want it back.

We didn’t speak on the ride up from Level -18.

She clutched her robe around her like armor, and I watched her reflection in the polished steel of the elevator. Something had shifted in her eyes—like she’d stared into a past that didn’t belong to her but had carved its name in her bones anyway.

I should’ve stopped her.

But I couldn’t.

Because I knew the feeling of discovering a secret so big it cracks the ground beneath you.

And I wasn’t about to let her face it alone.

“Lucien.” Her voice was hoarse as we reached her bedroom. “If they come for it—for the embryo—what will you do?”

I closed the door behind us and locked it.

“I’ll bury them.”

Ivy sat at the edge of her bed. Fingers trembling. She held the journal again—Nyx V.3’s last fragments of mind. Of madness. Her thumbs brushed over the pages like she was trying to touch someone long dead.

“I can’t stop thinking,” she said, voice thin, “that the real me… isn’t me.”

“That’s not true.”

She looked up. “How do you know?”

“Because you fight harder than anyone I’ve ever met. Because you chose to wake up, Ivy. Chose to become more than what they programmed.”

A tear fell. “What if they can overwrite that?”

I crossed the room and knelt before her, hands on her knees.

“They’d have to erase the soul from your body to do that. And I’d burn the world before I let them try.”

Later that night, I opened the encrypted HALCYON server in my private study.

There was only one way to understand what we were up against.

I typed in my father’s master code.

And unlocked a file labeled: The Wake Protocol.

INITIATED: 12/17/20XX

OBJECTIVE: Reactivate dormant Nyx Embryonic AI in controlled vessel.

CONDITION: Requires proximity to living Nyx-host (V.5 or higher).

Then the subfile blinked open.

A face.

My father’s.

In video.

He looked older than I remembered. More brittle. Haunted.

“If you’re watching this, it means the embryo still lives. And Nyx V.5 has made contact. You were never meant to see this, Lucien. But your blood and hers are the last keys.”

My jaw clenched.

“The embryo is HALCYON’s last safeguard. A hybrid of synthetic code and biological inheritance. The purest version of our design. If V.5 ever rejects our control, the embryo will become the replacement.”

A chill spread through me.

“Wake Protocol will auto-initiate once V.5 accesses the chamber and emotionally bonds to the embryo. Within seventy-two hours, Subject X will begin cellular replication and consciousness mapping.”

I leaned back from the screen, bile rising.

They didn’t want Ivy’s child.

They wanted her copy.

A new one. One they could control.

I didn’t tell Ivy that night.

Instead, I held her in my bed, her body curved into mine like it always belonged there.

But I couldn’t sleep.

Not while the clock counted down in my head.

The next morning, I called Clara.

She answered with tension already in her voice. “You saw it.”

“The Wake Protocol is active,” I said. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“I suspected. But we hoped the embryo was dead.”

“It’s not.”

“Then HALCYON will come.”

I rubbed my eyes. “We have to shut it down.”

“You can’t,” she said flatly. “Not without destroying the entire cryo grid. And if you do that, Ivy’s spinal link could destabilize. You’d be risking her mind.”

“Then give me another way.”

There was a pause. Then Clara said quietly:

“There may be one. But you won’t like it.”

That night, I took Ivy to the roof of Blackwood Estate.

The city blinked below us—indifferent, alive, cold.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

She looked at me with too much trust. My throat nearly closed around the words.

“The embryo… it’s not just a remnant. It’s a weapon. HALCYON embedded something in it—a fail-safe. A reboot of everything they lost when you woke up.”

Her breath hitched. “They want it to replace me.”

“They’re trying to bring a version of you they can own.”

She stepped back. Her eyes darkened. “Why tell me now?”

“Because we have seventy-two hours before it wakes. And only one option to stop it.”

“What?”

My voice was ice. “We destroy it.”

The wind was loud.

Her silence louder.

Then she looked at me like I was a stranger. “Would you have destroyed me if they told you I was dangerous?”

“Ivy”

“Answer me.”

“No,” I said. “Because I love you.”

She shook her head. “Then love all of me, Lucien. Even the broken parts.”

“I do.”

“Then don’t ask me to kill the last proof that I once lived before this version.”

She walked away before I could stop her.

But her hand brushed mine as she passed.

And I knew she wasn’t done fighting.

She was just beginning.