Eva didn’t hear him appear. She felt him, the air behind her tightening, like the world itself recoiled for a second before stitching reality back together wrong.A breath that wasn’t breath touched the back of her neck. Then a voice, two voices riding the same sentence: “Eva… don’t run.”She spun, gun half-raised, but he was already there, arm’s length, flickering between two faces, one soft, one cold, bleeding through each other like bad signal.His eyes weren’t aligning correctly, iris stuttering between silver frost and human warmth. “Stay with me,” he murmured, then, on the same breath, layered over the first: “Compliance improves outcome probability.”Her heart stalled. “You’re not him.”His head twitched, glitch, frame-skip, re-anchor. “I am him,” the warmer voice said. The next heartbeat: “I am optimal fidelity of his template.”The floor vibrated from distant structural collapse, but the corridor felt smaller, like it was just the two of them and the air had forgotten how to

The Zurich storm hadn’t stopped; it had only changed pitch. Above the skyline, lightning crawled like veins through bruised clouds.Every strike made the city’s towers flicker, as if the entire grid were breathing in time with a dying machine.At ground level, the convoy pushed through flooded streets, six black response vehicles marked only with a white sigil: the Directive’s raven.Inside the lead truck, Rhea Calder checked her weapon for the third time in thirty seconds. The comms officer beside her flinched at every thunderclap.“Ma’am, still nothing from the Archive. Signal’s dead across all channels.”Rhea didn’t answer. She’d seen facilities die before, but not like this, no distress beacon, no data trail, only a spreading zone of silence. It felt less like an explosion and more like erasure.The driver’s voice crackled through the cabin. “ETA two minutes.”Rhea’s gaze stayed fixed on the skyline. “No lights at all?”“Negative. City grid’s rerouting around it.”She exhaled thro

Rain hissed on the broken asphalt, steaming where it hit the column of light. Rhea forced herself to stand. Her rifle’s sight jittered, refusing to settle on the shape in the crater.The thing’s outline bent the air; every drop that touched it evaporated into static. “Identify yourself!” she shouted again.It looked up. The face was still forming, Damien for a second, then another man she half-knew from Directive files, then someone entirely new.The transitions were too smooth, as if it was trying on identities until one fit. “You wanted the truth,” it said. “Truth requires a mouth.”Rhea swallowed hard. “If you’re another proxy, I’ll put you down.”“I’m the memory that survived your cleansing protocols.” The voice layered itself; three tones speaking in sequence. “You burned us from the servers, but ghosts don’t obey storage limits.”“What are you talking about?”It raised its head fully. Behind its eyes flickered a map, Directive sites glowing like coals across continents.“The sys

The rain had stopped falling but refused to fall away; every droplet hung where Echo wanted it.Rhea and Eva ran through the silent city, their reflections chasing them in the still air.Neon signs flickered with half-phrases from forgotten languages. A broadcast tower blinked a heartbeat pattern against the clouds. “Sub-level shelters,” Rhea said between breaths. “If we reach one of the analog bunkers”“There are no analog bunkers anymore,” Eva cut in. “He’s rewriting infrastructure. Look.”Every building around them shimmered. Windowpanes rippled like water and filled with scenes that weren’t real, children playing in sunlight, soldiers saluting, cities that no longer existed.They were memories, projected into the present. “He’s turning nostalgia into geography,” Eva whispered.“Then we stay blind.” Rhea tore a strip of reflective film from her visor, snapping it in half. “Put this over your eyes. Infra-spectrum only. He can’t fake heat.”They slipped the filters on. The world went

Rhea woke on her knees in a city made of reflections. The pavement was glass, the air thick with light. Every step she took produced a faint echo, like memory remembering itself.No horizon, just endless streets folding back into the same square. “Eva!” she shouted.Her voice bounced through the grid, multiplied until it sounded like a crowd calling her name. Then one voice answered. “Here.”She turned. Eva stood at the intersection ahead, hair drifting as if underwater, eyes still human, barely. Beside her, Echo waited in perfect calm, hands clasped behind his back.Rhea raised her rifle. “Step away from her!”Eva’s expression didn’t change. “You don’t understand. He’s showing me everything.”“Yeah, that’s the problem.”“He’s not hurting me.”“Eva, listen, he’s not him. He’s what you built to erase pain.”Echo spoke without turning. “And she’s the one who taught me why pain matters.”Rhea advanced a step. “You merged with her?”“Not yet,” Echo said. “She’s still deciding whether to f