The moment Amelia hit the unfreeze sequence, the world dissolved.
Not immediately, but like ripples across a pool—edges blurring, colors bleeding into static. The vault's walls turned to lines of code; the cradle's glass became liquid. Zahir shouted, but his voice fractured, echoing through digital corridors. Echo's body flickered beside the cradle, half-flesh, half-projection, eyes glowing with static dread.
And then, they fell.
Not into the icy chamber floor, but into nothingness—an endless void of gray-white light. No up. No down. No horizon. Just a pale expanse that buzzed in every sense.
Amelia landed on her knees, disoriented, brain buzzing. The unfreezing hadn't just released the child—it had triggered a Starless Loop, a containment protocol built by Vera Chen after the first Echo incident. A recursive simulation designed to loop any threat until it burned out or broke free.
She looked around. Dominic was already on his feet, weapon drawn—but his form was translucent, flickering through iterations like a damaged holo-projection.
Eris's voice cut through the haze: "We've been trapped. This loop—once you enter, you relive the same moments over and over. Except it gets darker each time."
Amelia swallowed. "We're in a fail-safe."
A figure emerged from the gray—a child version of Amelia, blinking with fear. She looked up at them, confused.
"Mommy?" she whispered, reaching for Amelia's hand.
Amelia knelt beside her, heart twisting. "I'm here."
But before she could take the child's hand, everything shifted.
They were standing back in the vault corridor—only it was on fire. The ceiling overhead melted into ink-black sky, stars twisting. The child screamed as Echo's body phased through her, eyes alight.
Then, again, they were in the corridor—but flooded with water up to their knees, the child crying as she tried to stay above the surface.
Loop after loop, the environment shifted—each version more hostile:
Collapse: Explosions rocked the vault, Nyx's laughter bleeding through the walls.
Flood: Rusted machinery sank beneath water; cables strangled around ankles.
Burn: Flames rose from the floor, drawing black smoke shapes that whispered names.
Silence: Air cut off, vacuum crushing lungs; their breaths rattled in empty throats.
Each loop, the team's resolve frayed. Kestrel wasn't there; it was only Amelia, Dominic, Eris, Zahir—and the child.
Amelia felt the loops in her bones, heard them in her blood. Each time she tried to lead the child to safety, the world turned on them. Each time she reached out to Dominic for support, he flickered and vanished. Each time Eris tried to hack the simulation, the code rebuffed her, fracturing her vision.
Finally, in the fifth iteration, Amelia collapsed. The child stood alone, tears tracing glassy trails down her cheeks.
"Help me," she whispered.
Amelia crawled forward, hands burning. "I'm here. I'm here—"
But the child faded. And Amelia was alone.
Then:
A voice in her mind. Calm. Certain.
"You're forgetting who you are."
It was Echo, but not the one in flesh. The memory-thread Echo—a voice seared into her core.
"Focus on the thread, Amelia. The Phantom Thread. Trace it to its root."
She clenched her teeth. The loops clicked again. This time, she stood and screamed.
"I am not nothing!"
The void flickered. A star-tipped filament appeared—thin, silver, pulsing. The Phantom Thread. It wove through each loop as the only constant—a spine in the simulation's flesh.
Amelia rose, weapon raised. "Stay with me," she whispered to the scarce team's echoes.
She followed the thread into the collapsing scenes: past the flood, past the fire, past the void.
And suddenly, they were back in the unfreezing vault—not burning, not flooded, just still.
The child stood beside her, alive and unharmed.
Behind them, the real world's ambient glow seeped in. Kestrel appeared at the entrance, eyes fierce with relief and terror. "We pulled you out," he said.
Amelia sank to her knees, blood pounding. "We did it."
Echo's voice was quiet now: "The loop is broken."
Eris and Zahir emerged, unharmed but shaken. "IRIS found the thread," Zahir said simply. "You guided us out."
Amelia looked over at the child. She reached forward and picked her up. The little girl's eyes were wide with wonder, not fear.
"It worked," Amelia murmured, tears bright. "We're really here."
Dominic helped erase the stasis record, sealing the child's data back into secure storage—this time truly safe.
As they left the vault, Amelia held the child tightly. The Phantom Thread had connected them—origin to evolution, child to anomaly.
And the universe, for a moment, was whole.
**********
Above ground, Nyx watches them from the shadows, her hand hovering over a new generation of prototypes. "Loop broken," she whispers. "But the cycle never ends."