2025-05-23 18:12:02They hid out in the upper levels of an abandoned metro tower, a place too high for drones and too unstable for Veratech to care. The glass was cracked, the wind howled through broken walls, and the city below blinked like a war zone in waiting.
Anna stood over a makeshift table of broken monitors and old maps. Leah cleaned her pistol in silence. Nick sat against a steel beam, his head tilted back, letting the cold air keep him grounded. Anna broke the silence. “Kern isn’t just a ghost in the system. He’s still somewhere physical. Someone had to trigger the failsafe. The override wasn’t automated.” Nick opened his eyes. “So we find the body that matches the voice.” Leah nodded. “And if he is not alone?” Nick gave a half-smile. “Then we make him wish he was.” Anna pulled out a small chip drive and slid it across the table. “This is everything the counter-signal flushed out of the core. Locations, access codes, facility records… and one encrypted ping.” Nick leaned forward. “From where?” He asked. “Arclight Station. Underground. Sealed years ago. But the ping’s fresh. Someone’s using it to bounce commands into Redstone’s old grid.” Leah frowned. “I thought Arclight was condemned.” “It is,” Anna said. “Which makes it perfect for someone who’s supposed to be dead.” Nick rose to his feet. “Then that’s where we go.” Arclight wasn’t on any current map. The roads leading to it were cracked and faded, overtaken by wild vines and rusted cables. They drove as close as they could, then continued on foot, slipping past broken security gates and forgotten checkpoints. Eventually, they reached a steel hatch embedded in the earth sealed tight, layers of warning signs still visible under the grime. Anna cracked open the lockbox and began rewiring. “Give me two minutes.” Leah paced behind her. “What do we do if Kern has units down there?” She asked. Nick crouched, scanning the treeline. “Then I stop being the hunted.” The hatch hissed open with a long breath of air, the stale kind that hadn’t moved in years. They descended slowly, each step echoing into the dark. Arclight was a graveyard of secrets. Rusting equipment, shattered test tubes, stretchers with faded stains. The walls were tagged with warning symbols: BIOHAZARD, CONTAINMENT LEVEL 4, PROJECT TITAN - DO NOT UNSEAL. Nick felt his chest tighten. Something about this place felt wrong in a different way—not just memory. It was like being inside something alive, and dangerous. They reached the central lab, its door still sealed but humming with faint energy. Anna pulled out a side scanner. “There’s a life sign inside.” “One?” Leah asked. Anna hesitated. “No. Three.” Nick stepped forward. “Open it.” The door hissed and groaned, revealing a cold-lit room with three stasis pods. One was empty wires ripped from its side. The second held a figure Nick didn’t recognize. The third… Nick’s breath caught. It was him. Another him. Anna gasped. “Nick—what the hell—” Leah backed up, eyes wide. “There’s two of you?” The figure in the pod was identical—same scar under the chin, same hardened jawline, same old military tattoo on the left shoulder. Nick stared. “A clone?” Anna scanned it. “Not a clone. A prototype. This one’s older.” Nick’s voice lowered. “The original.” Suddenly, the screens flickered. Kern’s face appeared. “Welcome, Unit 9. You made it further than expected.” Nick stepped toward the monitor. “No more games.” “This isn’t a game, son. It never was. You were built here. Birthed in data, shaped in trauma. Everything you are… was mine first.” Nick’s voice was ice. “You used me.” “I made you,” Kern replied. “And you rebelled. But don’t worry. I kept a spare.” The second pod hissed open. The original stepped forward. Same face. Same frame. But colder—emotionless. Nick stared at him. “You’re… me?” The original tilted his head. “No. You’re a deviation. I’m the mission.” Anna whispered, “He’s still linked to the old command chain.” Kern spoke again. “One of you walks out. One of you completes the directive.” The original lunged. Nick barely dodged in time, slamming into a nearby console. The other version moved like a machine—faster, stronger, less restrained. Leah fired, but the prototype swatted the bullet mid-air. Nick grabbed a steel pipe and met him head-on. The two crashed through a wall, sparks flying. Metal against metal, flesh against force. Anna screamed, “I can sever the connection, give me 30 seconds!” Nick grunted as a punch sent him flying. He rolled to his feet, spitting blood. He stared into the eyes of the thing that could’ve been him, should’ve been him. “I’m not your shadow,” Nick growled. “I’m the one who broke free.” The prototype surged. Nick ducked under his swing and shoved a live wire into the unit’s neck. Sparks erupted. The figure screamed. Anna hit the final key. The prototype dropped, twitching. Silence. Kern’s voice echoed one last time. “You may have won this time. But there are more. You were only the beginning.” Then the screen went black. Nick stared at the body. Leah placed a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?” He didn’t answer for a long time. Then: “He was stronger. But he didn’t have a choice.” Anna looked at him. “And you?” Nick met her eyes. “I choose to be human.” He said loudly. Outside, the sun was rising. Redstone flickered in the distance. Nick walked out of Arclight without looking back. He had a new mission now. To find the rest. To free them.
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Firewall
The blast doors groaned under pressure as the vault shook again this time harder. Shards of ice and metal fell from the ceiling, clattering across the deck. Remy’s voice buzzed through the comms, clipped and urgent.“Unknown hostiles inbound—black sigil armor, no insignias. They’re not Veratech security. They’re worse.”“Contractors,” Leah hissed, fingers flying over the interface. “Ghost mercs. Veratech must’ve hired third-party cleanup after the Zurich leaks.”Nick swore under his breath. “They’re here to bury it all.”Kael dragged a portable field generator to the edge of the lower platform. “We’ll hold them off. Get the systems shut down, extract who we can, then blow the rest.”Nova hovered above the stasis pods, arms raised. “I can jam their signals. Mask us for a few minutes.”Nick gave her a sharp look. “How many minutes?”“Enough if Leah works faster.”“I’m already breaking laws that haven’t been written yet!” Leah snapped, sweat beading on her temple as she wove through a di
Ghosts In The Ice
The silence inside the vault was unnatural—thick, humming, sentient. It pressed against their ears like static, as though the facility itself had been holding its breath for a decade.Nova slipped down from the pod, her feet never quite hitting the ground, as Nick watched her closely. Her eyes, those deep, alien eyes never blinked, and her skin sparkled dimly under the blue emergency lighting. Not once.“How long have you been awake?” Anna asked, keeping her distance.Nova tilted her head. “Awake? Since the day they sealed me in. Aware? Since you broke the code.”“So she’s been listening this whole time,” Leah muttered, lowering her rifle but not holstering it.“Not listening,” Nova said. “Learning.”Kael stood near the door, her arms crossed. She hadn’t spoken since they entered, but now she stepped forward, eyes locked on the girl. “You’re like me.”Nova looked at her, expression unreadable. “No. I was made after you. Perfected.”Kael flinched. Nick put a hand on her shoulder.“Nova
Fragments Of Fire
The silence didn’t last.Three days after the broadcast, they found the first one.Not in a lab or locked facility but in a rehab center in the outskirts of Aether District. The girl’s name was Kael. Fifteen years old. Found wandering the rails outside the old fusion refinery, eyes vacant, arms covered in tracking ink. She didn’t speak. But when Nick entered the room, she looked up. Straight at him.And whispered, “Nine.”It shattered him.He crouched beside her, gently taking her hand. “You remember me?”She shook her head. “No. I remember feeling you.”Anna watched from the doorway, face pale. Leah stood beside her, silent.“She’s like you,” Anna whispered.“No,” Nick said, eyes still on Kael. “She’s worse. She didn’t break free.”The next few weeks became a blur of leads, warnings, and ambushes.Veratech was dying—but it was dying violently. Their rogue security arms, the remnants of the blacksite networks, had gone freelance. Rogue factions now hunted Echo units like war trophies.
The Weight Of Peace
The morning after Echo Zero fell, the world felt quieter. Too quiet. With his boots partially buried in the snow, Nick stood at the edge of the cliff and observed the smoke rising from the pit below. He remained still despite the freezing wind pulling at his coat. His hands were steady. For once, the static in his mind had stilled.He was free.Behind him, Leah stirred awake, sitting up against the side of the snowcat they’d taken from the wrecked facility garage. Anna slept inside, wrapped in emergency thermal blankets.Leah approached him carefully, her voice low. “Can’t sleep?”Nick shook his head. “I don’t think I need to anymore.”Leah raised a brow. “That supposed to be comforting?”He gave a dry laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe.”She stood beside him in silence for a moment, then asked, “Do you think it’s over?”Nick looked toward the horizon. “Echo Zero was the last facility. The Directive’s core was in that system. With it gone, I think the rest of the network will collapse. At l
Shadows that breathe
The wind howled as they emerged from the Citadel.Snow whipped across the mountain ridge, biting at their cheeks and soaking through their clothes. But none of them complained. Not after what they had just done.Behind them, the Citadel sealed itself, its eye closing once more, silent, inert and powerless.Leah adjusted the strap of her rifle and glanced at Nick. “So… we just killed a ghost city.”Nick didn’t answer. He looked down the valley, toward the horizon where the first signs of dawn flickered. His mind was still buzzing—residual code, faded memories that weren’t his, shadows of commands still echoing faintly in the back of his skull.Anna stepped closer, wiping a smear of blood from her temple. “You still with us?”Nick blinked. “Yeah. For now.”Anna’s voice lowered. “What you did in there… It should’ve killed you.”“It didn’t,” he said simply.“But it changed you,” Leah added, her tone cautious.Nick didn’t argue.He could feel it, something dormant now breathing beneath his
Echoes In The System
The sunrise over Redstone City was a bleeding orange smear against the horizon. A beautiful lie painted across a broken skyline.Nick sat on the hood of a silent car they had stolen again, watching the smoke coil from a distant factory as if the city was exhaling secrets. His ribs ached. His knuckles were raw. But he was alive. And more importantly, free.Leah emerged from the side street, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. “Supplies. Rations, flash drives, burner coms. And I found this.” She tossed him a folded sheet, an old classified Veratech map, half-burned, marked in red with the title: Echo Units Global Deployment Sites.Nick unfolded it slowly. Dozens of dots. Different countries. Different cities.Anna stepped beside him, reading over his shoulder. “There’s more of you out there.”Nick nodded. “And we have no idea how many are active.”Leah crossed her arms. “So what’s the plan? We just start hopping borders and hope they haven’t been triggered yet?”“No,” Nick said. “We f
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