Echo New York – 9:00 A.M. Local Variant Time The skyline was a paradox.Midtown’s steel towers shimmered next to crumbling brownstones from the 1800s. Taxi cabs honked beside horse-drawn carriages. Hover-drones zipped between neon-lit signs in Mandarin, while ticker tape from the 1920s fluttered along the curb.This wasn’t New York. This was a scar in the timestream, an overlay of timelines too stubborn to die. And into that scar dropped Damien Voss, he landed hard on a rooftop in SoHo that flickered between concrete and cobblestone. Pain ricocheted through his spine. He exhaled hard, clutching the device the girl had given him.LOCATION: ECHO NEW YORK THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED: SPECTER.003 SYNC VARIANCE: 91%Voss stood slowly, eyes scanning the skyline. Everything looked… off. Like it was built from memory, not blueprint.Across the City – Grand Central Terminal Specter.003 moved through the crowd like a ripple. He wore a black suit stitched with fabric that shimmered w

Grand Central – Ghostline CoreMirrors rippled with every breath. The air was dense with memory static, a hum of lives lived and un-lived vibrating through the walls.Damien Voss stood at the edge of the Ghostline core, hands clenched, heart thundering. Across from him, Specter.003 moved like time incarnate, graceful, patient, inevitable. “You’re lying,” Voss said.Specter tilted his head. “I haven’t lied once. You just haven’t listened.”The chamber pulsed with pale light.Flashback – Mnemosyne Log Archive: PHASE 0SUBJECT: PROTOTYPE ONETYPE: SPECTERFUNCTION: LOOP CORRECTION AGENTNOTES: Too efficient. No empathy protocol. Unfit for anchor role.STATUS: CONVERTED TO CONTROLVoss staggered back, breath catching. “You were supposed to be the anchor.”Specter smiled. “I was supposed to be you. But they wanted a conscience. I wanted results.”He circled the Ghostline cylinder like a shark. “When Mnemosyne failed the first loop, I was the patch. When I stopped fixing and started control

Somewhere – 17 Days After Phase EightIt started with the clocks, They stopped ticking, Then came the names, missing from documents, gravestones, databases. People remembered moments, but not who they’d shared them with.And in the middle of it all stood Damien Voss, not as a savior, not as a soldier, just a man trying to hold a broken world together with memory alone.Echo New York – Recovery Zone DeltaThe city was rebuilding. Kind of. Refugee centers lined Central Park. Portable memory sync stations buzzed on every corner. Tactical psychologists worked overtime reestablishing anchor points in citizens. It was a fragile calm like the silence after a brain injury, Eva Malik walked through a tent ward, reading neural stabilization reports.“80% retention in Prime Layer. 62% in Fragment Overlaps.”“Ghostline residue: suppressed.”“Specter variance: inactive.” She didn’t believe that last one, Because something was missing, Someone.Zurich – Atlas RoomJulien Rehn was reviewing a securi

Geneva – The Babel Dome, 11:03 P.M.The wind outside screamed like a warning. But inside, the Babel Dome was silent, too silent for a place stitched together from layers of lost timelines. Its central corridor pulsed with spectral light, casting shifting reflections of people who weren’t there… anymore.And then, two footsteps echoed in unison, One man. Two lives, Damien Voss stepped through the main arch, weapon lowered, eyes hard, Across the chamber, his reflection walked forward The Mirror. No gun. No expression. Just the unbearable weight of belief.“You know why I’m here,” Voss said.The Mirror nodded. “To silence your shadow.”“No,” Voss replied. “To end the lie that you were ever real.”The Mirror smiled faintly. “And yet… here I am.”Zurich – Atlas RoomRehn’s screen split in two. Camera feeds from the Babel Dome showed both Vosses, identical in form, inverse in energy. Malik hovered over the control panel. “There’s no backup plan for this, is there?” she asked.Rehn shook his

Rio de Janeiro – 3:12 A.M. Local TimeA storm crawled over the city like a dark beast. Lightning forked across the sky above the Santa Marta Heights, revealing the outline of a long-abandoned medical facility, one that didn’t exist on any current map. Damien Voss climbed the moss-covered stairs alone, the beacon pulsing in his hand.ECHO NODE CONFIRMEDSTATUS: DORMANTDESIGNATION: MERCY PROTOCOLACCESS LEVEL: MNEMOSYNE.PRIMEHe stopped at the door. It opened without resistance. Inside – Mercy Complex: Echo Node RIO-9 The facility smelled of wet stone and disinfectant, Every step echoed against marble and metal, past shattered memory tanks and dormant containment chambers. Notes on the wall were written in looping cursive. Latin. Portuguese. Some in old NATO code.But one phrase kept repeating, scratched into every surface: “FORGETTING IS A KINDNESS.”Zurich – Atlas RoomMalik slammed a file onto Rehn’s desk. “I found what they buried.”Rehn glanced at the heading: OPERATION: MERCY Yea