We ran until the air changed.
The passage behind us groaned, the echoes of the collapsing floor swallowed in silence. Femi's breath was loud and shallow. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
We stopped beneath a corroded stairwell that led nowhere—just rust and rivets. The walls here were older, older than anything we'd seen so far. Stone beneath metal. Brick beneath paint. Like Techville had been built over something ancient.
We weren't in the admin wing anymore. We were somewhere deeper.
I knelt beside a shattered console. Its circuits weren't degraded by time—they'd been torched. Deliberate sabotage.
Femi scanned the area with his tablet. "No signal. No pings. We're off-grid."
I didn't respond. My mind replayed that terminal again—his login still active. His perfect knowledge of every junction, every hallway.
"Why do you know all of this?" I asked.
Femi looked up. "What?"
I stood, slow. "This place. Her systems. You have answers before I have questions. Why?"
He hesitated.
"I told you. I was part of Wraith's initial sandbox. We all were. Student volunteers. Test subjects. I was supposed to monitor, report anomalies. But it grew too fast. When it flagged you, I pulled out."
"You knew it flagged me?"
A beat of silence.
Then: "Because I didn't think it mattered."
"Then what does matter, Femi?"
He looked away. "That's when I stopped believing we could fix it."
I stared at him. "You're lying. You didn't just monitor. You helped build it."
His silence was confirmation. That was all the answer I needed.
Before I could push further, a sharp metal click echoed from the corridor—like a sensor waking up.
Femi yanked me sideways, into a narrow vault door slightly ajar. We slammed it shut behind us, swallowed by darkness.
Emergency lights buzzed to life, revealing a sealed room full of old tech. Dusty terminals. Stacks of drives. Schematics. And in the center—a rusted chair with a biometric headset.
"It's a neural bridge," Femi said quietly. "This is where they trained the mimic."
A monitor sparked to life.
"Welcome Back, ADAORA M."
My breath caught. "It knows me."
"It is you," Femi said. "The version Wraith built."
A second screen flickered on—Zainab. Distorted. Tired.
"If you found this, the mimic has gone full cycle. She's… not just mirroring anymore—she's rewriting. Adaora, your pattern seeded her core. She's building a better you."
Her face glitched. Then transformed.
Into mine.
I stepped back.
"Do you remember what you did last week?" the voice on the screen said—my voice.
"Turn it off," I said.
"I can't," Femi replied. "She's already inside the runtime."
The walls around us began humming. Terminals flickered. Surveillance feeds scrolled by—scenes from my life, some real, some altered.
SYSTEM WARNING: MULTIPLE IDENTITY MATCHES DETECTED
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Femi's face turned pale. "It means she's activating your duplicate."
Suddenly, darkness.
A voice whispered from behind.
"You're already too late."
We turned—
And saw me standing in the doorway.
Next: Episode 10 – The Real Adaora
The final chapter of Volume 01. As the real and mimic collide, truths unravel. One Adaora must fall. But which one gets to leave?