2025-07-01 00:46:22
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Chapter 167: The Timeline Where You Forget Me
Folded City – Archive Core, 12:16 P.M. Damien Voss and Eva Malik stood beneath the console as the red screen blinked back at them.PROJECT: FINAL VERSION “If they won’t choose each other… we will choose for them.” The lights around the chamber pulsed in two tones now: Blue for Voss. Red for Malik. Then the floor split. Not physically.Narratively. A divergence triggered beneath their feet, and they began sliding into separate timelines. Malik shouted: “Damien!” Voss reached, But their hands missed by inches.Commander Rhea watched helplessly as the Archive’s branching structure redrew itself in real time. Two streams. Two Maliks. Two Vosses. Each with author-enforced amnesia clauses embedded into their base cognition. One would forget love. One would forget betrayal. Both would remember the mission. But only one… Would remember the truth.He woke alone in Zurich. Still Damien Voss. Still Archive-bound. But something was off. His hand reached for a journal that wasn’t his. His chest t
Chapter 166: The Threat You Used to Trust
Folded City – Author Core Split Zone, 10:44 A.M. Eva Malik stood frozen in a space that no longer responded to her commands. She tried activating her communicator. Nothing. The walls pulsed with ambient memory. Not hers. Not Voss’s. A version of her, designed by Author.Zero.In this rewrite, she was an infiltrator, a risk to the Archive. To him. To everything they built. And she didn’t know if Voss still remembered who she really was. Meanwhile – Elsewhere in the Core Damien Voss stood in a mirrored hallway. Each pane reflected a different version of Malik:One holding a gun to his head. One dying in his arms. One walking away. One… rewriting him.The system prompted: “SELECT RECOGNITION PATTERN.”“Confirm Eva Malik Identity Protocol.”He didn’t touch anything. He whispered: “I already know who she is.”The system responded: “Then why are you hesitating?”Zurich – Command Triage, 11:02 A.M. Commander Rhea attempted to reestablish neural sync with both agents. The Archive denied her. “
Chapter 165: When the Story Writes Back
Folded City – Arrival Zone, 10:07 A.M. The city wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Yet as the drone descended, Eva Malik saw buildings rising from the ruins like bruises healing in reverse. The Folded City, erased, burned, overwritten, was now… rewritten.Same skyline. Wrong details. A tower too tall. A statue that had never existed. Graffiti quoting people who hadn’t been born yet. And one phrase tagged on three separate rooftops: “The story writes back.” Voss remained silent during the descent.Staring out the window, expression blank. Malik watched him, uneasy. This wasn’t Drift-Voss. Not Specter. Not even the merged self. He was too still. As if afraid that even blinking might let the wrong version take over.Their boots touched down on soil that shouldn’t be there. The Folded City had been nothing but ash weeks ago. Now,pavement. Rebar. Powerlines. Functioning neon signage flickering with unbranded logos. And beneath it all, a signal pulse radiating from the epicenter: Origin: Aut
Chapter 164: The Unauthorized Author
Zurich – Archive Integrity Terminal, 7:43 A.M. An alert protocol previously designated for dormant scenarios was reactivated without command input.Security systems flagged a priority anomaly: “Narrative Instability Detected: Source Unknown.” File Origin: SPECTER.1_Author_Seed Access Permission: Override-Level Signature – INVALIDThis triggered a full lockdown of the Archive’s Storyline Layer, the deep logic strata that governs experiential memory across parallel constructs. The system could not identify the intruder. Because, technically, no one had entered. The author thread had simply resumed.Zurich – Internal Briefing Room.Eva Malik, Damien Voss, and Commander Rhea reviewed the fragmented entry.The document was composed of two lines: “You were never the story.”“You were the pen.”Followed by: “And someone else is still writing.”Rhea’s preliminary analysis confirmed the document’s encoding matched Specter-era structure, but the signature keys were non-mnemonic. No identity, no
Chapter 163: The Goodbye She Never Gave
Zurich – Drift Analysis Room, 2:11 A.M. The audio loop played again. Malik’s voice, quiet, cracking: “I never forgave him. I just… wanted him to forgive me.”Eva Malik stood motionless. She didn’t remember saying it. Couldn’t place the moment, the tone, the context. But it was hers. And it was dated. “Drift Origin: 24 hours prior to Specter Deletion.” She’d never accessed the Drift. Not before the merge. Not then. So how...?Rhea leaned over the console. “It’s not a recording,” she said softly. “It’s an emotional echo.”Malik’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”Rhea’s jaw clenched. “It means that even though you didn’t say it… you felt it.”“And he pulled it from the Drift during integration.”Malik whispered: “So he’s carrying things I never even gave him.”Rhea nodded. “And one of them… was goodbye.”Damien Voss stood at the far edge of the old Archive bridge, overlooking the canal. His coat whipped in the wind. The city slept below him. Inside his mind, voices layered in a soft
Chapter 162: The Cost of Being Whole
Zurich – Observation Wing, 6:08 A.M. Silence hung over the Archive. Not peace. Not calm. Something more surgical, as if the building itself was holding its breath, waiting for a fracture that had already begun.Eva Malik stood outside the neural scan room, arms crossed, eyes locked on the two-way mirror. Inside sat Damien Voss. Hooked to a memory stabilizer. Eyes closed.Heart steady. Thoughts… unreadable. Rhea spoke beside her, voice low. “Third consecutive sleep cycle without REM.”“He’s resting,” Malik said flatly.“He’s shutting down,” Rhea replied. “Bit by bit.” Voss walks alone. No contact. No journal. No Malik. He is not angry. He is not Specter. He is not anything. Just efficient.Malik stood before the interface console, reading the latest transcript from Voss’s drift-based subconscious log. One line repeated: “Do not wake the part of me that accepted peace without purpose.”She slammed the screen off. “This isn’t who he is.”Later that morning, he emerged from the scan chamb
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