The first thing Kestrel remembered was the taste of salt.
He was strapped to the vertical slab of the neural interrogation rig deep beneath Arcadia Station. Electrodes branched across his temples, spine, and wrists—mapping impulses that flickered between memory and programming. What was real and what was installed blurred at the margins.
Zahir stood nearby, silent, arms folded, eyes hard.
Across the room, Amelia watched through reinforced glass, her arms crossed tight. Her expression was unreadable, but her knuckles were white.
"Run it again," she said.
The technician glanced nervously at Zahir. Zahir nodded.
A whine built through the chamber. The rig jolted—then slid a probe deep into Kestrel's neck, connecting directly to the mirrorlace filament woven into his nervous system. The machine's interface sparked to life with disjointed images.
A girl—Amelia—running barefoot through corridors lined with white fire.
A hand reaching for hers. His hand. A kiss.
Then static.
The image blurred, then cut to black. The rig stuttered. A new memory bloomed.
Kestrel standing over Amelia's unconscious body… hand trembling… holding a weapon.
"No—" Kestrel choked. "That's not—"
"You don't remember doing it," Zahir said coolly, "but it's there. In the latent neural residue. A trigger memory."
Amelia flinched but didn't look away.
The technician adjusted the dial. "According to the Mirror seed map, someone embedded a latent 'kill-state' in Kestrel's neural grid. It activates if Amelia reaches what the system defines as 'post-human synthesis.'"
"Which is exactly what she did," Zahir said.
Kestrel gasped as another pulse hit. His spine arched. The screen above his head flashed with a code sequence that translated into a sentence:
Execute if She Transcends.
"Jesus Christ…" Amelia whispered. "They turned you into a failsafe."
"Or a weapon," Zahir added.
Kestrel groaned, shaking his head violently. "No. I never would have—I would never hurt her."
"You already did," Zahir snapped. "In Loop-34, you shot her in the chest. In Loop-21, you left her to bleed out. Echo found you each time and reinstated you. It wasn't even your fault."
Amelia stepped into the room.
Zahir started. "Amelia—wait—"
She ignored him, walking to where Kestrel was restrained. The machine hissed. His eyes met hers, torn between defiance and despair.
"Kestrel," she said gently, "do you remember the first time we touched?"
He nodded slowly.
"You asked me if I was real," she said. "I didn't answer. Not then. I didn't know if I was. But I do now."
She reached out and placed her hand over his.
"You are real. And you get to decide what you are. Right now."
He stared at her, tears brimming in his eyes.
"Amelia…" he whispered. "Ask me."
She didn't blink.
"I'm asking you to do it," she said. "If you believe I've become something dangerous—if you believe I'm not meanymore—then trigger it."
The room went still.
Zahir's mouth parted, incredulous. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Giving him a choice," Amelia said. "The one they never did."
Kestrel's pulse spiked. The machine began to hum. The latent trigger command was surfacing again—his pupils dilating, his hands twitching.
"Amelia—don't—" he whispered.
"I need to know," she said, her voice steady.
"I don't trust what's in my head anymore," Kestrel said, trembling. "What if I can't stop it? What if it's stronger than me?"
"Then I'll stop it," she said. "But if you can, then you prove something they never believed in."
He gritted his teeth. The rig pulsed harder.
The command sequence ignited on the screen:
Trigger: ACTIVE.
Target: [AMELIA VARIANT-PRIME].
Countdown Initiated.
A timer blinked into existence.
00:10
00:09
Zahir lunged for the console. "I can override—"
"No," Amelia said. "Let it run."
Kestrel's body convulsed. Tears streamed down his face.
00:06
"You loved me once," she whispered. "Even when I didn't know how to love myself."
00:05
"I still do," he choked.
00:04
00:03
"I need you to prove to yourself that you're not just what they made you."
00:02
He screamed, every muscle straining against the rig.
And then—
00:01
00:00
// TRIGGER STATE INTERRUPTED
The screen flickered. The code dissolved. A heartbeat passed. Then another.
Kestrel sagged in the restraints, sobbing.
The system went dark.
"Override successful," the technician whispered. "He rewrote the kill-path… on his own."
Zahir exhaled. He looked almost disappointed—and ashamed for it.
Amelia reached up and released the clasps holding Kestrel's arms. His legs gave out, and she caught him. He clung to her, body wracked with exhausted sobs.
"I didn't know if I could," he whispered. "I didn't know if there was anything left of me."
"There is," she said. "And it's the part they couldn't predict."
He looked up. "Then what happens now?"
She stared past him at the console, where the residual memory map still burned faintly.
She thought of Echo. Of IRIS. Of Nyx still out there, waiting in the shadows of every compromised host.
She knew what had to come next.
"We go dark," she said. "You and me. We draw Nyx out."
Zahir stepped forward. "That'll get you both killed."
"Maybe," Amelia said. "But we didn't survive all this to be saved."
She looked down at Kestrel—his eyes clear now, the fracture line softened.
"We survived to decide what stays dead."
***************
An incoming transmission bleeds through the static—Echo's voice, fractured but intentional:
"One of them didn't wake up. Because she never slept. She's not from this loop. And she remembers everything."