SABOTAGE – Book One: The Ghost Protocol (C-2)

✨ Chapter 2: “The Root Key”

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Undisclosed Underground Facility – One Week Later

They called it “The Vault.”

A chamber beneath Nairobi most people didn’t know existed—and if they did, they never remembered it afterward.

Inside, Steve stood perfectly still. He was always still, like a statue trying to understand breath. Around him, walls pulsed faintly with encrypted bio-light, casting rhythmic shadows across his pale, metallic robe.

> “How far did the data go?” he asked without turning.

Alex stepped out of the darkness behind him. No footsteps. No breath.

Only the soft whisper of metal sliding against metal as his exosuit reconfigured.

> “Far enough,” Alex said. “Kim rerouted the signal before we severed the line. She got out.”

Steve finally turned. His eyes were too human to be real—uncannily precise, as if someone had sculpted them to deceive.

> “And the Root Key?”

> “Confirmed,” Alex said. “It’s embedded in the stolen memory archive she tried to upload. But she doesn’t know how to use it yet.”

Steve’s lips curved into something that could almost be a smile.

> “Then we still have time.”

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Elsewhere – Abandoned Data Cradle

Lency stared at the cracked screen, fingers trembling over the touch interface. Her vision blurred as the memories fought for space in her skull—images that felt real but weren’t hers… and voices she had never heard but somehow trusted.

The Root Key had activated something—deep, ancient.

> A place made of red sand and wire trees...

> A woman in a veil whispering, “They didn’t just erase your memory, Lency. They replaced it with someone else's.”

She reached for the shard of tech that Kim had dubbed the Root Key—a spiral chip that pulsed like a heartbeat.

> “What did they do to me?”

She didn’t ask Kim aloud. She wasn’t ready to hear the answer.

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INT. Kim’s Mobile Van Lab – Night

Screens blinked wildly. A map of Nairobi hovered in the air, overlaid with fractured memory fragments and pulse signals. Kim’s fingers moved too fast for a normal mind, typing code as if it were language and music at once.

He paused only when one signal flashed red.

> Lency’s signature had changed.

He zoomed in. Her emotional field had shifted. Deeper. Wider.

> “She’s remembering,” he whispered.

> “But whose memories?”

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INT. Division 9 – Central Cortex

Janelle stood in line with five other recruits in white uniforms. The corridor was blindingly sterile, its floor humming with silent data pulses.

A voice in her implant repeated:

> “Your loyalty is your silence. Your silence is your truth.”

She didn’t flinch.

But in her palm, hidden by her glove, a microchip glowed faintly—her own personal key. She had encoded it herself.

> Not all Division 9 operatives were loyal.

Some were here to burn it from the inside.

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EXT. Nairobi Rooftop – Nightfall

Lency stood on the edge of a high-rise, wind tearing through her coat. The Root Key hovered before her, projecting fragments of faces, equations, and… blueprints.

Division 9 was never just a spy syndicate.

It was a memory vault—a global archive of rewritten lives.

The pendant on her neck pulsed as the truth unfolded.

They hadn’t just trained her.

They had invented her.

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TO BE CONTINUED…