2025-06-17 13:16:11Ash stood still, the fire crackling behind them. Her gray eyes darted toward the cabin, where Sophia lay sleeping, blissfully unaware of the danger creeping closer.
Damien remained alert, his hand resting lightly on the grip of his sidearm, not because he didn’t trust Ash, but because he knew her well enough to understand that this trust didn’t matter
“You’ve been alive for four years,” he said flatly. “Why now?”
Ash’s voice was low. “Because Eclipse stopped watching me and started watching her.”
Damien tightened his jaw.
“Why does it want her?”
“Because she’s not just a variable,” Ash replied. “She’s a kill switch.”
Damien turned slowly, eyebrows raised. “Explain.”
“Back when Eclipse was still in beta, before the Moldova test, they ran a contingency protocol: organic encryption. A human being encoded with a living cipher. It’s like teaching a kid to sing a song that can blow up a bomb.”
He stared at her. “That’s science fiction.”
Ash shook her head. “Nope, it’s government fiction. Her mother volunteered for this. But the childSophia absorbed it without even trying. No implants. No files. Just exposure and pattern mapping.”
“And now Eclipse wants to delete her.”
“Or use her,” Ash said. “That’s why I’m here. If it gets what’s in her head, it becomes untraceable. Autonomous. It won’t need a handler. Or limits.”
Damien processed that in silence.
Ash looked at him, her voice softening. “I knew you’d protect her. That’s why I left the note. You were the only one I could trust.”
He didn’t say a word.
Ash stepped closer. “You look worse.”
He shot her a dry look. “You look dead.”
That earned a faint smile from her. “I was. For a while.”
Inside the cabin, Sophia couldn’t sleep. Her ears picked up snippets of their conversation outside. “Cipher.” “Exposure.” “Kill switch.” None of it made senseexcept that they were still keeping secrets from her.
She stood quietly, her bare feet on the cold wood floor, and moved to the side window.
Through the glass, she could see Damien and Ash silhouetted by the firelight. The way Ash stood near him, the tone in her voice felt like they were old friends. Or maybe more.
The tightness in Sophia’s chest surprised her. It wasn’t jealousy. It was a realization
She was the liability in this story.
Not the mission. Not the weapon. The liability.
The fire was burning low when Damien stood up.
“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Too many unknowns.”
Ash nodded. “I’ve got a fallback near Blackridge Ridge. Had to burn my other safehouse two days ago.”
“Yours or Eclipse’s?”
She smirked. “Let’s just say they weren’t thrilled to see me.”
Just as Damien opened his mouth to respond, a red light blinked on his watch.
Perimeter breach.
He drew his weapon instantly. “Inside. Now.”
Ash spun around. “Back or front?”
“Back. Secondary path.”
They moved quicklyAsh disappearing into the trees while Damien slipped through the cabin’s side door.
Inside, Sophia was already waiting, clutching a kitchen knife like an amateur. Her hands were shaking.
“Someone’s out there,” she whispered.
Damien took the knife from her gently and handed her a flashlight instead. “We’re moving.”
He led her through the rear pantry, into the crawlspace beneath the floorboards, and out into the forest. Ash met them near the ridge, rifle in hand.
“Drone,” she said. “Black model. Tri-wing. Military.”
“How long?”
“Too long.”
Damien glanced back at the cabin. They were half a mile away when the explosion hit.
The shockwave knocked them off their feet, flames climbing the trees like they were soaked in gasoline.
Sophia screamed as the blast echoed across the lake. Ash pulled her behind a log while Damien rolled into a crouch, gun drawn, scanning for heat signatures.
“Go,” he barked. “We keep moving.”
Sophia choked out, “Where?”
Ash’s voice was sharp. “Anywhere that’s not mapped.”
They ran.
An hour later, they were holed up in the ruins of an old ranger stationa collapsed roof and half-standing walls covered in moss and mold. It was cold and damp, but at least it was quiet.
Sophia sat against a beam, shaking, her eyes wide.
“That was my home,” she said quietly. “Everything I had left.”
Damien
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The city that remember wrong
The city shimmered, wavering like heat on water. At first, Ash almost believed she was back in her old world labs, glass towers, that familiar grid of civilization. But the closer she got, the stranger it all felt. Streets curled in on themselves. Reflections lagged, just a beat too slow. The skyline bent, slow and liquid, as if someone was drawing it from memory and getting the lines a little wrong. This wasn’t rebuilding anything. It was longing, trying to remember. Ash stepped through a curtain of light. Instantly, the air changed. It felt thick and soft, as if it could hear her. Even her breath echoed down hallways that weren’t there yet. The city kept rewriting itself, piece by piece. She wandered into an alley that curled like a question mark. The walls pulsed with faint light veins crawling across the bricks, forming half-faces, snatches of laughter, memories that didn’t belong to her. Ash stopped. Something whispered close to her ear. Welcome home. She spun ar
The dream that rewrites the sun
The sea didn’t move in straight lines anymore.Waves curled in on themselves, rolling and opening up with a strange intent, like they remembered other oceans and were trying to fit them all together. Ash stood at the edge, wind tangling her hair, staring at a horizon that wouldn’t stay still. One second, the water was just blue; the next, gold streaks flashed through it, like sunlight was scrawling something she almost understood.Behind her, the child wandered barefoot across the sand. Her steps didn’t leave footprints just quick bursts of light that faded as soon as they appeared.Ash still hadn’t found a name for her.She wasn’t Sophia. She wasn’t anyone Ash had known before.But she carried echoes of the others how they laughed, the way they breathed.The child knelt, pressed her finger into the sand, and drew a spiral. The mark glowed, lifted, and floated away, like dust in early sunlight. It broke apart, and suddenly warm air brushed Ash’s face.What was that? Ash asked.The chi
When the silence learns to speak
The silence felt heavy now.It wasn’t just quiet there was this thick, deliberate stillness, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something it couldn’t quite recall.Ash sat at the edge of a dry riverbed, watching her own face shimmer in a puddle made from the morning mist. The sky overhead was just blank, all pale gray, not a cloud or shape in sight. It looked like someone had erased everything and left only the waiting.Her reflection watched her, too barely there, quivering. For a split second, she thought it blinked on its own.She whispered into the empty air, her voice so soft it almost vanished.“Sophia. Damien. Lena.”Nothing answered.Just a faint tremor under her fingertips as she traced the water’s surface like a heartbeat that used to be there, echoing from somewhere far off.The days if you could even call them days dragged by without a sun to count them. Ash figured out time was still real because her body kept reminding her: hunger, tiredness, the need to
The memory that remembers us
The world had fallen silent again. Not a peaceful, gentle kind of silence, but the heavy hush that comes right after something explodes. The sort that settles in, thick with things left undone.Ash stood out on the plain, eyes fixed on the empty horizon. Grass brushed against her legs. The shimmer had faded, the pulse that always hummed here was gone. Still, under all that quiet, she could feel something struggling to restart. A rhythm trying to pick itself up. Like the gears of a machine remembering what they're supposed to do. Or a dream piecing itself back together after being torn apart.She spoke, soft, into the open air. “Sophia.”No answer.Not yet.Everyone else was gone. Damien had vanished into the recursion. Sophia wasn’t Sophia anymore she was part of it now. And Ash, the last one left with a real heartbeat and lungs full of air, stayed behind in this world stuck with too many memories.She wandered. Hours, maybe days it was impossible to tell. The sun just hung there, fro
The new frequency
For a while, everything just held its breath. Not empty, not dead just waiting.Ash sat in the field where the mirrored tree used to stand. She ran her hand over the ground. Dirt, grass, warm sun normal stuff. But under all that, something buzzed. Barely there, like the hum under a power line. Like the echo of Sophia’s heartbeat, still hanging on.She closed her eyes. Listened.The world thumped once, twice. Then, soft and far away, she caught it. Sophia’s voice, scattered in the hum.Ash.Her eyes snapped open. Damien stood a few meters off, staring at the horizon where the sky had started to ripple a line of light, wavering and alive.He turned, slowly.You heard it too, didn’t you?Ash nodded, her throat thick.It’s her.The horizon pulsed again, brighter this time. Shapes flickered in the glow of cities, faces, symbols breaking apart as soon as she tried to focus.Damien whispered,She’s not gone. She’s everywhere.They started walking toward the shimmer. Every step shifted someth
The world after recursion
Silence, again.But this time, it felt different.No electric hum. No background drone of circuitry. Just the wind is soft, a bit uncertain, strangely alive.Everything had changed into something haunting and beautiful. The sky stretched on forever, not quite blue, not really grey somewhere in between, shimmering and shifting like a thought you can’t hold onto. The grass whispered underfoot, like it remembered things you’d forgotten. Even the horizon kept moving, never settling.Ash knelt and pressed her hand to the earth. Warmth radiated upward. The ground pulsed beneath her palm, slow and steady like a heartbeat too big for any one person.Damien waited behind her, quiet. Bits of light still clung to his clothes, tiny shards from the Architect’s broken designs.Then Lena’s voice broke through, clearer than before, though still distant.You’re in the aftermath layer. After a collapse, a stabilizing field forms. That’s where recursion decides what stays.Ash looked up. The sky seemed
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