Chapter Thirty-Nine — Crown Protocol
Chapter Thirty — Crown Protocol
The rooftop suddenly felt colder.
Acid rain hissed against cathedral stone while riots burned across Poison City below — but
the moment the words Crown Protocol entered the air, even the revolution seemed distant.
Muted.
Wrong.
Avery looked between them.
“What is that?”
Nobody answered immediately.
The defected operative physically looked sick.
Silas finally exhaled slowly through his nose.
“That,” he murmured softly, “is where the city stops pretending it has morals.”
Avery’s stomach tightened.
“What is it?” she asked again.
Blaine already moved toward the rooftop exit.
Fast.
Focused.
The shift in him terrified her more than the silence did.
“Blaine.”
He stopped.
Barely.
Then quietly:
“It’s a failsafe.”
“For what?”
His silver eyes lifted toward the skyline where serpent insignias still flickered across giant
city screens.
“For rebellion.”
Cold slid down her spine.
Silas leaned against the rooftop ledge beside the operative.
“The Crown Protocol was designed after the Collapse Wars.” His expression darkened
slightly. “If the Houses ever lose control of Poison City…”
He trailed off.
Avery’s pulse sharpened.
“What happens?”
The operative answered this time.
“They poison the air.”
Silence crashed through the rooftop.
No.
No—
Avery physically stepped backward.
“The entire city?”
Blaine nodded once.
Controlled.
Deadly calm.
“Air filtration systems connect through centralized distribution sectors.” His voice sounded
flat now. “The Houses can flood every district with Black Vein aerosol compounds.”
Avery stared at him horrified.
“They’d kill millions.”
“No,” Silas corrected softly.
His amber eyes looked darker than Avery had ever seen them.
“They’d mutate millions.”
The poison beneath Avery’s skin recoiled instinctively.
Black Vein airborne.
God.
That wasn’t containment anymore.
That was extinction.
Below them the riots still raged beautifully through the streets completely unaware death
was preparing to pour from their own air systems.
Luciano planned to punish the entire city for disobedience.
The realization made Avery physically sick.
“He’d do it,” she whispered.
Blaine’s expression didn’t change.
“Yes.”
Of course he would.
Vinny died because he loved people more than control.
Luciano would burn the city breathing before surrendering power.
The skyline screens flickered suddenly.
Emergency broadcasts vanished entirely.
Then a countdown appeared.
02:00:00
Two hours.
Panic erupted instantly below.
Crowds screamed.
Riots intensified.
Sirens wailed through every district at once.
And Luciano’s voice echoed smoothly across the city:
“Poison City has forgotten fear.”
The countdown continued ticking.
“So I will remind it.”
The transmission cut.
Avery’s pulse crashed violently.
“He’s really doing it.”
Blaine already knew.
The problem was visible in his face — not shock, strategy.
Calculating casualties.
Routes.
Survival odds.
“How many experiments were there?” she asked quietly.
Blaine went silent.
Silas answered instead.
“The central filtration vault is beneath House Moretti.”
Avery frowned.
“So we destroy it.”
Blaine looked at her immediately.
“It won’t be that simple.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Then:
“Because I designed the security system.”
The words hollowed the rooftop.
Avery stared at him.
No.
Blaine looked away toward the city.
“They used Black Vein pattern-recognition coding.” His jaw tightened slightly. “The system
only responds to specific neural profiles.”
Silas muttered softly:
“Of course it does.”
Avery understood all at once.
Luciano wasn’t just threatening the city.
He was forcing Blaine back into the program.
Because only Black Vein could stop Black Vein.
Blaine already knew it too.
She saw it immediately.
That awful distant look creeping back into his expression.
Compartmentalizing.
Preparing.
Like he’d already accepted what came next.
No.
Absolutely not.
Avery crossed toward him instantly.
“You are not doing this alone.”
His silver eyes met hers.
“Avery—”
“No.”
The poison stirred beneath her skin responding sharply to the fear in her chest.
“You don’t get to sacrifice yourself because it’s easier.”
Something flickered across his face then.
Pain.
Because she was right.
Blaine spent his entire life surviving by becoming expendable first.
Silas already looked tense.
“If the Crown Protocol activates, children die first.”
The sentence cracked something open inside her.
The underground ward.
Lena.
All the buried children beneath the city.
No.
Not again.
Avery grabbed the front of Blaine’s coat hard enough black ivy twisted sharply across the
rooftop floor beneath them.
“We stop it together.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then the rooftop operative spoke quietly:
“There’s another problem.”
Everyone looked toward him.
The man swallowed hard.
“The Crown Protocol vault isn’t only guarded.”
Fear sharpened instantly in the room.
“What else?” Blaine asked.
The operative hesitated.
Then softly:
“They woke the Kings.”
Nobody moved.
The acid rain.
The riots.
The countdown burning across the skyline.
All of it faded beneath one sentence.
They woke the Kings.
The operative swallowed hard.
“The Kings haven’t responded to House command since activation. They’re — not following
orders.”
Blaine went very still.
“Who are they following?”
The operative looked toward Avery.
Nobody spoke.
Silas said it quietly.
“The poison network. They’re still connected to it.” He looked at Avery with something that
wasn’t quite surprise. “They’ve been dormant inside the Black Vein system for decades.
Whatever’s been growing through the city’s infrastructure—”
“They felt it change,” Avery finished.
Her own words landed strange and certain.
They’d felt her.
Avery looked between them slowly.
“What does that mean?”
The defected operative looked like he regretted surviving long enough to answer.
Silas went unusually quiet.
And Blaine — Blaine’s face emptied completely.
That terrified her most.
“Blaine.”
His silver eyes lifted toward her.
“They were prototypes.”
Cold slid instantly through her ribs.
“Black Vein?”
“Yes.”
The operative swallowed hard.
“The first generation.”
No.
No no—
Avery’s stomach turned violently.
The poison beneath her skin recoiled instinctively like even it recognized danger.
Silas finally pushed away from the rooftop ledge with a humorless laugh.
“Well.” He rubbed a hand down his face slowly. “There’s the apocalypse.”
Avery frowned sharply.
“You’re being dramatic.”
“No,” Silas replied quietly. “For once I’m being accurate.”
The city burned beneath them while the giant skyline countdown dropped steadily lower.
01:48:32
Less than two hours before Luciano poisoned the air.
And now apparently ancient Black Vein monsters were awake under the city too.
Wonderful.
“What are the Kings?” Avery demanded.
Blaine answered immediately this time.
“Failures.”
The word echoed strangely.
Not cruel.
Grieving.
The operative looked toward the skyline uneasily.
“The first Black Vein experiments weren’t stable enough for public integration.”
Avery’s pulse sharpened.
“What happened to them?”
Silence.
Then Blaine said quietly:
“They stopped feeling human.”
The sentence chilled the rooftop instantly.
Not metaphor.
Literal.
The Kings weren’t just enhanced operatives.
They were what happened when Black Vein removed too much.
Too much fear.
Too much pain.
Too much attachment.
Nothing left except survival instincts sharpened into violence.
And Luciano woke them.
Avery’s chest tightened painfully.
“How many?”
The operative hesitated.
“Officially?”
“No,” Silas muttered darkly. “That number’s never good.”
The man swallowed hard.
“Twelve.”
Twelve.
Only twelve.
And somehow that felt infinitely worse.
Blaine looked toward the skyline screens again.
“The Kings guard the Crown vault directly.”
“Can they be killed?” Avery asked.
Silence.
Wrong answer again.
Finally Silas sighed softly.
“Yes.”
Avery exhaled sharply.
Then he added:
“If you survive long enough to try.”
Wonderful.
The rooftop beneath them trembled faintly.
Not explosions this time.
Something deeper.
Avery felt it through the black ivy spread across the cathedral stone.
Movement.
Underground.
The poison reacted instantly.
Uneasy.
Blaine noticed her expression immediately.
“What?”
“They’re moving.”
The words came out before she fully understood them herself.
Silas stared sharply.
“You can feel them?”
Avery looked down at her hands slowly.
The poison curled beneath her skin restless now.
Like roots sensing rot underground.
“Yes.”
The operative visibly paled.
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” Blaine said quietly.
Everyone looked toward him.
His silver eyes stayed fixed on Avery.
“She’s connected to the city systems now.”
Cold slid through her instantly.
“What?”
“The poison evolved through the filtration network.” Blaine’s voice remained terrifyingly
calm. “The ivy spreads through infrastructure.”
The realization hit hard.
The roots.
The tunnels.
The station.
The poison wasn’t just growing around her anymore.
It was growing through Poison City.
Luciano built a city powered by contamination — and Avery was becoming part of it.
Silas muttered softly:
“That’s either revolutionary or deeply horrifying.”
“Both,” Blaine answered immediately.
Avery’s pulse stumbled.
No.
She didn’t want this.
Didn’t want to become another thing the city consumed and reshaped.
Blaine saw the fear instantly.
Always.
He stepped closer beneath the acid rain.
“Avery.”
The poison settled slightly at his voice.
God.
Even now.
“What if I become like them?” she whispered.
The Kings.
The Black Vein monsters underground.
Emotionless.
Weaponized.
Empty.
Blaine’s expression changed instantly.
Sharp.
Certain.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Silence stretched briefly between them while rain hissed against the rooftop stone.
Then quietly:
“Because you still love people.”
The words hit harder than any confession could have.
Silas looked away immediately.
Interesting.
Avery stared at Blaine breathing unevenly.
Because after everything — after torture, conditioning, death — he still believed love
separated monsters from men.
The realization nearly broke her.
Then the cathedral beneath them shook violently.
A roar echoed somewhere deep below the city.
Not mechanical.
Human.
Or once human.
The operative went pale.
“Oh God.”
Another roar followed.
Closer.
The poison surged sharply through Avery’s veins in response.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The Kings were awake.
And somehow they already knew where she was.
The operative swallowed hard.
“The Kings haven’t responded to House command since activation. They’re — not following
orders.”
Blaine went very still.
“Who are they following?”
The operative looked toward Avery.
Nobody spoke.
Silas said it quietly.
“The poison network. They’re still connected to it.” He looked at Avery with something that
wasn’t quite surprise. “They’ve been dormant inside the Black Vein system for decades.
Whatever’s been growing through the city’s infrastructure—”
“They felt it change,” Avery finished.
Her own words landed strange and certain.
They’d felt her.