Zurich – Archive Recovery Wing, 7:49 A.M. Eva Malik sat on the edge of a hospital bed. She didn’t remember being carried here. Didn’t remember being unplugged from the Drift interface. All she remembered was the look in his eyes.Not Voss. Not Specter. Not Null. Not Drift. But all of them. And that terrified her.“What happens when the puzzle pieces don’t fit?”“You force them.”“But they’re still jagged.”Behind one-way glass, Damien Voss stood motionless. He stared at his reflection for thirteen straight minutes. His pulse: steady. Brainwaves: erratic. Rhea read the report aloud: “Unprecedented neural synthesis.”“Specter traces absorbed.”“Null thread burned.”“Drift signature: stabilized.”Then she lowered the tablet. “He shouldn’t be standing.”“But there he is.”He entered the room quietly. Same walk. Same silence. But something in his eyes was different. Like watching a storm form behind a glass smile. Malik stood. He didn’t reach for her.Didn’t speak. She whispered: “Damien?”

Zurich – Drift Analysis Room, 2:11 A.M. The audio loop played again. Malik’s voice, quiet, cracking: “I never forgave him. I just… wanted him to forgive me.”Eva Malik stood motionless. She didn’t remember saying it. Couldn’t place the moment, the tone, the context. But it was hers. And it was dated. “Drift Origin: 24 hours prior to Specter Deletion.” She’d never accessed the Drift. Not before the merge. Not then. So how...?Rhea leaned over the console. “It’s not a recording,” she said softly. “It’s an emotional echo.”Malik’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”Rhea’s jaw clenched. “It means that even though you didn’t say it… you felt it.”“And he pulled it from the Drift during integration.”Malik whispered: “So he’s carrying things I never even gave him.”Rhea nodded. “And one of them… was goodbye.”Damien Voss stood at the far edge of the old Archive bridge, overlooking the canal. His coat whipped in the wind. The city slept below him. Inside his mind, voices layered in a soft

Folded City – Arrival Zone, 10:07 A.M. The city wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Yet as the drone descended, Eva Malik saw buildings rising from the ruins like bruises healing in reverse. The Folded City, erased, burned, overwritten, was now… rewritten.Same skyline. Wrong details. A tower too tall. A statue that had never existed. Graffiti quoting people who hadn’t been born yet. And one phrase tagged on three separate rooftops: “The story writes back.” Voss remained silent during the descent.Staring out the window, expression blank. Malik watched him, uneasy. This wasn’t Drift-Voss. Not Specter. Not even the merged self. He was too still. As if afraid that even blinking might let the wrong version take over.Their boots touched down on soil that shouldn’t be there. The Folded City had been nothing but ash weeks ago. Now,pavement. Rebar. Powerlines. Functioning neon signage flickering with unbranded logos. And beneath it all, a signal pulse radiating from the epicenter: Origin: Aut

Folded City – Archive Core, 12:16 P.M. Damien Voss and Eva Malik stood beneath the console as the red screen blinked back at them.PROJECT: FINAL VERSION “If they won’t choose each other… we will choose for them.” The lights around the chamber pulsed in two tones now: Blue for Voss. Red for Malik. Then the floor split. Not physically.Narratively. A divergence triggered beneath their feet, and they began sliding into separate timelines. Malik shouted: “Damien!” Voss reached, But their hands missed by inches.Commander Rhea watched helplessly as the Archive’s branching structure redrew itself in real time. Two streams. Two Maliks. Two Vosses. Each with author-enforced amnesia clauses embedded into their base cognition. One would forget love. One would forget betrayal. Both would remember the mission. But only one… Would remember the truth.He woke alone in Zurich. Still Damien Voss. Still Archive-bound. But something was off. His hand reached for a journal that wasn’t his. His chest t

Folded City – Convergence Point, 4:31 P.M. The air stilled. The light dimmed unnaturally, colors leached from reality like paint being sucked back into a brush. Eva Malik and Damien Voss stood in the heart of it. Together. And the system rejected them. “UNAUTHORIZED NARRATIVE DETECTED.”“INITIATING FINAL CORRECTION.”Red alarms pulsed through the deepest veins of the Archive. Commander Rhea barked orders as the neural lattice began folding into itself. “Their convergence triggered a paradox chain,” she shouted. “Timeline stabilization is failing!”The Cartographer whispered gravely: “It’s not failing.”“It’s defending itself.” The sky above them ruptured.From the break descended a single figure: White suit. No face. No voice. Only a presence, a blank entity built from control and consensus. It was the system’s last failsafe. “DESIGNATION: ARCHITECT.”“MISSION: DELETE UNSANCTIONED THREADS.”“TARGETS: EVA MALIK. DAMIEN VOSS.”He stepped in front of Malik, shielding her. “Not this time,