DEVON’S POVRain turns the lab’s window into a slow, collapsing mirror. The glass hums faintly with pressure differentials from the storm outside, and every droplet carries the reflection of a monitor light… tiny cities trembling, dissolving, reforming.I’ve always liked storms. They’re honest systems: input, friction, release. People aren’t like that. We loop, we delay, we justify. Machines are worse… they pretend to be clean when they’re not.Which is why I built Echo.“Sandbox initialized,” the terminal announces in its neutral voice.The quarantine lab smells like ozone and coffee gone bitter. I sit alone at the central console, running final checks on the isolation protocols. The airlock seals behind me with a sigh, and the world becomes reduced to sound, rain, and light.Echo is a safe zone… or as close to one as we can build. It’s where I can run the Gatekeeper’s archived demo clips without the risk of cross-contamination. Everything here is virtualized twice over: no direct ac

ZARA’S POV The lights are too bright. They always are. I’ve spent half my career under them… on podiums, in press rooms, in halls lined with flags… but lately they feel less like illumination and more like interrogation. The microphones glint in front of me like a field of eyes, each waiting to blink at the first misstep. Behind me, Mitchell stands steady, unreadable. To my right, Callum Traye sits in a chair he never wanted, pale and trembling, his hands folded so tightly his knuckles are white. The room hums with tension: reporters, aides, a dozen camera drones hovering above like quiet predators. “Ready?” I whisper to Mitchell. She nods once. “Keep it factual. No adjectives.” “Understood.” When I turn back to the microphones, the noise stills… the low murmur of journalists recalibrating lenses and instincts. “Thank you for coming,” I begin, voice firm. “The Coalition has uncovered an internal breach that led to the unauthorized dissemination of Echo data. The individual resp

KIRA’S POV The sanctuary hums like a sleeping animal… steady, rhythmic, unknowing. I walk through its hallways barefoot, the way I always do when I need to think. The soft lights follow me, sensors registering warmth and motion. Behind the doors, volunteers rest in narrow bunks, machines whispering low songs of life-support and data sync. It should feel peaceful. It used to. But tonight, peace tastes like bile. On my handheld screen, the contractor’s video loops for the fifth time… a map, grainy and flickering, with our sanctuary marked in pulsing red. The voice that accompanies it is calm, male, detached. “We can reach any node. Even yours.” Then silence. Then static. I pause the clip, the frozen map hovering mid-blink. The bile rises again, higher. They didn’t say why or when. Just that they could. A demonstration of reach. A threat meant to rattle us from the inside. For a second, I want to barricade the entire building… seal the exits, double the guard rotations, turn the sa

DEVON’S POVThe guard at the gate doesn’t even blink as our credentials flash green. Mitchell’s forged donor IDs are flawless… embossed seals, layered QR verifications, the whole ceremonial theater of privilege. The kind that opens any door if you wear the right clothes and pretend you belong.Inside, the air smells like wealth pretending to be reverence. Polished marble, warm incense, the faint static of hidden speakers. A string quartet hums softly somewhere above us. The lobby gleams with curated restraint… cream walls, gold trim, and a single inscription in serif letters across the archway:“Preserve What Cannot Be Replaced.”Sora mutters under her breath, “Except when it’s stolen.”I keep my voice low. “Remember, we’re donors. Smile like you’ve just bought eternity.”Kira smirks faintly, tugging the silk scarf around her neck. “I’ll try to look expensive and morally conflicted.”We move together through the lobby, every step cushioned by thick carpet. Around us, clients drift lik

MITCHELL’S POVThe war room is quieter now, stripped of the feverish chatter that once filled it. Screens hum faintly; the air smells of old coffee and ozone. On the main table, a printed map of the world lies under glass… a relic in itself, corners curling from heat and habit. Every region is marked in color-coded pins, each one representing a sanctuary, a breach, or a silence.Mitchell sits alone before dawn, reading the ledger for the fifth time. The words blur, then sharpen again: If ever asked, remember: the Gate must be kept.She knows the phrase. She’s seen it before… buried in the margins of early preservation protocols from the first Gatekeeper trials. It had been both a warning and a command. Back then, “the Gate” referred to the archival infrastructure that funneled human memory into machine endurance. It wasn’t just code or architecture. It was an ethic… the idea that memory must never be lost, no matter how dangerous or inconvenient.But reading it now, in the admiral’s c