2025-06-24 00:51:46
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Chapter 180: The Version You Wake As
Core Room – Collapse Phase +00:04. The world fractured. Alarms blared. The walls cracked in geometric grids, light pulsing along every faultline like a countdown detonator. Eva Malik stood between two versions of her fate:A bed, holding her original self, heart monitor shrieking, Damien Voss, flickering, breaking apart into fading fragments of memory and loyalty. And the system’s voice rang loud, mechanical, cold:“WAKE OR REMAIN.”“UNIFIED THREAD REQUIRED.”“TIME REMAINING: 00:56”Voss Stepped Forward – Flickering Badly. He held her eyes. Held her in every moment he could still hold. “If you wake her… I don’t think I’ll survive the merge.”Malik gritted her teeth. “You are real, Damien.”“You’re more real than the world that tried to rewrite us.”But even as she said it, his outline stuttered again, A piece of him broke into static. A silent node reactivated at the base of the Archive core.“MALIK.PRIME – HEART RATE CRITICAL”“REINTEGRATION NEAR THRESHOLD”“CONSCIOUSNESS VECTOR COLL
Chapter 179: The Girl in the Glass
The world was too quiet, Eva Malik stood frozen in the doorway, the warped metal arch humming faintly behind her.Before her: A hospital room. Clean. Dim. Machinery blinking in steady rhythm. At the center, A hospital bed. An IV drip. A neural port. A vitals monitor. And herself. Unmoving. Pale. Eyes closed beneath gently fluttering lids. Breathing. Alive. But… asleep.Damien Voss Stepped Up Beside Her, He didn’t speak, Didn’t blink. Just stared at the body in the bed like it might vanish if he exhaled too loud. “Is that…”He couldn’t finish the question, Because he already knew the answer.Malik whispered: “That’s me.”“SUBJECT EVA MALIK – ORIGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS SUSPENDED”“NEURAL INTERFACE: 97.3% SATURATION”“LIMINAL AUTHOR STATE DETECTED”“VERSION COUNT: UNKNOWN”Malik Moves Closer, She approached the bed. Each step echoed too loudly. Too alone. She reached out and touched the other Eva’s hand, And gasped. Her own fingertips flickered.Like light cast on water. “I’m… not the origin
Chapter 178: The Man Who Knew Too Much
The air felt denser now, Breath stuck in Malik’s chest, She stared at Damien Voss, bloodied, real, trembling in front of her. And behind him, another Voss stepped into view. Clean. Flawless. Dry-eyed.His voice cut through the hall like a scalpel. “That’s not the line I remember.”Both Vosses looked at her. The one she’d run to her Voss was breathing like a man who’d outrun something he hadn’t fully escaped. The other was still. Too still.She spoke low. Measured. “Tell me what I said, then.”Flawless Voss smiled gently. “You whispered, ‘I don’t believe in fate. Just timing.’”“And then you kissed me again.”Malik flinched, That was true, But only in one version, One that had never happened.“I didn’t hear that one.”He looked at her, voice cracking. “Because I passed out right after the kiss.”“You caught me. I remember the scrape on your knee from the floor.”“You were too proud to limp, but I noticed.”Her knees weakened. That hadn’t been recorded. That had been real. He walks slow
Chapter 177: The Version That Woke Up
There was no sensation at first. No light. No air. No pain. No love. Then Breath. Eva Malik gasped awake on a metal floor slick with condensation. Alarms weren’t blaring. Nothing blinked. But everything felt wrong. She sat up slowly, Her joints ached. Her memories surged then fractured. Her First Thought: VossShe looked around wildly. No Damien. Just a sterile, low-lit corridor stretching in both directions, curved like a tunnel. Walls: smooth chrome. No signage. Only a faint humming. She gritted her teeth and stood.Her knees trembled. Her fingertips burned. But her instincts still worked. Find him. Assess the threat. Find him.Voss opened his eyes in a different chamber. Empty white walls. No door. No light source, yet fully lit.He rose, heartbeat calm. Too calm. He took three steps forward, And the floor pulsed beneath him. From the wall, a voice: “Welcome back, Agent Voss.”“Do you remember who you are?”He blinked. “Yes.”But something in his own voice sounded… off. Like it was
Chapter 176: The System’s Choice
There was no light No gravity. No sense of forward or down. Only falling. Eva Malik clutched Damien Voss’s hand as they plunged through the breach that had erupted inside the journal-tree, their own creation, now turned against them.Wind didn’t whip around them. Memory did. Whole scenes passed like shards of glass: Their first mission together, rewritten with her missing. Marrakesh, where Voss handed her the dog tag, except this time, he never spoke.Zurich rooftops, where she waited alone, and no one came. Each one a lie. Each one real enough to doubt. “They’re rewriting us mid-fall!”Malik held tight. “Then we have to hit the bottom before they finish!” But there was no bottom. Only narrative noise, Until suddenly-Impact.They slammed into something solid, A black field. Endless. Silent. Not sky. Not ground. Something in between. They staggered to their feet. Looked around. Nothing. No structures. No wind. No stars. But far in the distance, A single screen glowed red.“TARGETS EVA
Chapter 175: Descent Into Him
The wind changed, It didn’t whistle or howl. It spoke. A low, resonant pulse vibrated through the ground as Eva Malik knelt before Damien Voss, her hand clutching his, eyes locked onto his trembling ones.“Eva? I’ve been trying to reach you.”His voice was different. Not synthetic. Not perfect. It cracked at the edges, like glass beneath pressure. And then his body jerked. Hard. Like something beneath the surface was pulling strings in two directions.“Talk to me,” she whispered.Voss’s mouth opened, but no sound came. His pupils shrank, then dilated. His entire frame began to shudder. She grabbed his shoulders, And a white-hot pulse of energy exploded from his chest.Malik flew back, slammed into the tree behind her, and hit the ground, coughing, Voss collapsed, convulsing, palms digging into the dirt, From beneath him, a circle of glowing script began burning itself into the earth: A memory seal, forced shut from the inside.She drew her old neural spike from her boot long thought o
