Echoes of the Quantum Rift

Chapter 3: Woman in the Attic

Lyra Keene didn’t blink.

The plasma pistol in her hand didn’t shake either. She held it like a scalpel — not threatening, just inevitable.

Kai raised his hands slowly. “Lyra… it’s me.”

Her eyes were sharper than he remembered. She looked older — not in age, but in edges. Her hair was pulled back in a tight knot, streaks of silver now visible at the temples. Her lab coat was patched and dirt-stained, and a shoulder-mounted sensor unit blinked faint green.

She didn’t lower the weapon.

“Which loop are you in?” she asked.

Kai blinked. “What?”

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question.” She stepped closer. “Which. Loop.”

“I just started it, I think. Seventy-two hours ago I touched an Echo device—”

“You *what*?”

“—and now I’ve got a snarky AI in my head and a countdown on my HUD.”

Lyra’s expression twisted between disbelief and something closer to horror.

Mags leaned against the wall and casually took out a bag of fried noodles. “So this is the Lyra you keep whining about?”

“I don’t whine.”

“You monologue emotionally in the rain, Kai. It’s worse.”

Lyra ignored Mags. She lowered her weapon just slightly. “What’s your last memory of your brother?”

Kai exhaled slowly. “He was strapped to a gurney. Project Echo was about to launch its final phase. I was outside the chamber, watching.”

“And then?”

“There was a rift. The light — the noise — it all went white. Then… nothing. They told me the facility burned down. Said it was sabotage. I ran.”

Lyra’s jaw tightened. She finally lowered the weapon completely and motioned them inside.

“Then we need to talk.”

The lab was a tomb. Rows of dead terminals. Walls lined with theory boards and fading printouts. A tank in the corner held an inert rift stabilizer, its blue glow long gone. Lyra powered up a private console with a flick of her wrist and motioned them to sit.

Kai remained standing.

“You know what this is about,” he said. “Don’t you?”

She gave him a long, unreadable look. “Project Echo was supposed to be our salvation. Unlimited energy. Interdimensional access. A way to escape the decay of this world.”

“But it failed.”

“No. It *worked*.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “For eleven-point-three seconds, the rift was stable. We reached another timeline. Another 'you' Another Daren”.

Kai’s mouth went dry. “What happened to them?”

“We don’t know. The rift collapsed. Your brother was caught in the feedback wave. His neural patterns were fragmented — scattered across temporal layers like shards of a broken mirror.”

“So… he’s alive?”

Lyra hesitated. “In a sense. He exists in overlapping echoes — sometimes stable, sometimes not. Pieces of him leak into each loop. If we could map the overlap points, we could reassemble a stable pattern. Maybe even pull him back.”

Zan chimed in:

> “That’s why I was embedded. To find those pieces. To guide a compatible mind through the loops.”

Kai turned to her. “Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I tried. Every time we located you in a timeline, it was too late. Either you’d died… or you’d become something else.”

“Something else?”

Lyra opened a folder and pulled out a still frame. It was Kai. But… not him. His eyes were glassy. His skin was marked with temporal burn scars. He wore the same neural band, but it looked fused to his skull.

Mags leaned in. “Whoa. Emo you is terrifying.”

Lyra said softly, “That’s Kai from Loop 42. He didn’t survive that reset. But the AI kept his consciousness running — fractured, angry. He tried to re-open the rift manually and… tore half the city apart.”

Kai swallowed. “So I’m my own worst enemy. Fantastic.”

“Not you. A version of you. This is your first loop — the cleanest data set we’ve had in years. If we’re going to fix this, it has to be now.”

They worked into the night.

Lyra showed them the rift simulation — a holographic model built from remaining Echo servers. The system displayed fractal timelines branching like a chaotic tree. At the heart: a rotating anomaly labeled “Subject Daren Virek.”

Zan explained from within Kai’s neural feed:

> “Your brother’s consciousness exists as a persistent echo across multiple loops. If you locate and synchronize with each anchor point, we can rebuild his mind and stabilize the rift.”

“How many anchor points?”

> “Seven. One every ten hours.”

“And what happens if I miss one?”

> “Then the loop destabilizes, and we all enjoy a nice, permanent case of quantum entropy.”

Mags munched another noodle. “Great. No pressure.”

Before they left, Lyra pulled Kai aside. “There’s something else.”

He waited.

She reached into a hidden compartment beneath the console and handed him a small black disk — a neural memory shard. The label read: “Loop Zero. Kai V.”

“What is this?”

“A memory you left for yourself — before your first jump. You told me not to show it unless we had no other choice.”

Kai’s hands trembled slightly.

“Do you want to see it?” Lyra asked.

He stared at the disk. For a long second, he said nothing.

Then: “Not yet.”

Lyra nodded once. “Then go. Your next anchor is in the old Eden Spire — sector 8. Half collapsed, but the core lab might still have power.”

He turned to leave.

Lyra grabbed his arm. “Kai… don’t make the same mistake he did.”

“What mistake?”

She looked away.

“Thinking you can save everyone.”

As they rode away in a modified hovercycle Mags had definitely stolen, Kai sat in silence. The city blurred around them — towers glowing, sky streaked red with reflected neon.

Mags finally spoke. “So. Lyra’s still hot.”

Kai blinked. “What?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”

“I… wasn’t really thinking about that.”

“She was thinking about you. And I don’t just mean the bullets.”

He didn’t respond.

Mags sighed, then leaned back in the saddle. “We’re chasing ghost-code across broken timelines, fighting shadow versions of you, and trying to un-scramble a maybe-dead brother from quantum spaghetti. If I die, I’m haunting you. Just so you know.”

Kai actually laughed.

“Deal.”

Then his HUD lit up.

> \[ANCHOR SIGNAL DETECTED]

> Location: Eden Spire, Core Level]

> Time to Anchor Collapse: 09:42:56

Kai’s jaw set.

“Let’s find him.”

And the city raced past them, pulsing with danger, destiny, and the ticking of a broken clock.