"What are you?" Doni asked, dragging himself up against the cold metal wall while keeping Dona behind his back."I asked myself the same question three months ago," the duplicate replied, setting the handle of the wooden broom against the steel floor. His face was pale, his eyes ringed with heavy dark circles, but the golden light in his pupils stayed steady. "I am the man who used to own that shop in the southern district. The real one."Dona stepped around Doni's shoulder, her fists clenched, her eyes narrow and sharp. "That's impossible. Doni was at the shop this morning. He was at the library last night. I've known him for years!""You've known a copy, Dona," the duplicate said, his voice soft and raspy, like someone who hadn't used his vocal cords in years. "Three months ago, when the first system update hit the southern sector, the main terminal in the alley behind the shop needed a local human anchor. I walked into that back alley to throw out a bag of trash, stepped on a live

"Open the hatch!" Dona screamed, her bloody fingers clawing at the pod's manual emergency latch. "Kaelen, hit the lever! Open it!""The locking pins are bent!" Kaelen yelled back, his voice cracking as he slammed his shoulder into the heavy oval door. "Professor, help me with the pry bar!"Professor Miller jammed the iron tool into the door seam, gritting his teeth as he leaned all his weight against it. The metal groaned, popped twice, and the escape pod door swung open with a harsh hiss of pressurized air.Dona tumbled out of the pod before the door even hit the ground, landing knees-first in the cold harbor mud.She didn't care about the mud. She didn't care about the scrapes on her knees. She scrambled to her feet, her hands shaking as she turned her face toward the sky."Doni!" Dona shrieked into the night, her chest heaving, her voice tearing completely in her throat. "DONI!"High above the harbor, twelve hundred feet in the air, the massive triangular ship hung in total silence

"I do not accept either of your choices," Doni said, staring at the woman across the small wooden desk.The woman set her hands flat on the desk. "You do not have a third option, Doni. The black broadsword is falling right now. In less than two seconds, it will cut Dona in half. If you keep your human memories, your body lacks the core authority to stop the blade.""There is always another way," Doni said. He reached out and grabbed the silver key off the desk. The metal felt ice cold against his palm. "If I turn into the Abyssal God, I lose my memories of her. But if I do nothing, she dies. That is not a choice at all.""If you use the key, your mind will be wiped clean," the woman warned him. "You will not remember your mother. You will not remember your shop. You will not remember Dona's name or her face. You will become a blank slate piloting a body of pure destruction.""She told me outside that she would make me pay my rent," Doni said. A quiet, painful smile touched his lips. "

"Watch your footing!" Kaelen barked, his voice echoing off the damp, rust covered walls as he hit the bottom iron grating with a heavy metallic thud."Is everyone down?" Dona asked immediately, landing light on her feet right beside Doni. She kept one hand on her side, pressing against her cracked ribs, but her eyes never left Doni's face.Professor Miller dropped down next, stumbling forward into Kaelen's arms before he could fall face-first onto the wet steel floor. Elizabeth Vance came down last, landing quietly with a sharp hiss of pain as her injured leg gave out beneath her weight."We are three miles beneath the harbor basin," Elizabeth said, pulling herself up against a thick copper conduit pipe. "This pipe leads straight to the secondary core facility. Keep your voices down. The acoustics in these tunnels will carry sound for half a mile."Doni stood in the center of the dark tunnel, his right eye glowing with a calm gold light while his left eye remained solid pitch black. S