Selene
Her jaw wouldn't stop shaking.
She could speak, but the words came
clipped, dry at the edges. Her muscles obeyed commands with lag, as if moving
through someone else's body.
That terrified her more than the thing
she saw in the corridor.
The Echo hadn't touched her again. It
hadn't needed to. Just being near it had been enough to destabilize her
proprioception. Her breath patterns. Her sense of origin.
She pressed her palm to the wall now just
to feel something mimicked.
"System," she said, "log override
request."
No response.
Cam stepped beside her, silent.
They stood in a shallow alcove of what
had once been Observation Deck Three. One of the only rooms not covered in
pulse-reactive film. No feedback. No shimmer. Just steel.
Cam finally spoke. "I've seen
parasites that mimic. They feed, they learn, they adapt."
Selene nodded. "But they don't love."
Cam looked at her. "You think it loves
us?"
Selene met her eyes.
"No. I think it thinks it's us. And it
doesn't want to die."
They began tracing the external
maintenance route the one Selene had designed for isolated system reboots
during trial period nine. No biometric gate access, just manual switches.
That made it dangerous.
It also made it uneditable.
If the system had rewritten the
interior protocols, then only the outer spine could still house the original
logic tree.
Cam walked ahead.
Selene trailed behind limping now, no
pretense.
She hated the sound of her own body
echoing down the hall.
Cam
It had kissed her in a dream once.
Not Selene.
The Echo.
She didn't remember when the dream
began. Only that it ended with a hand on her face and a voice saying "I
remember who you were when I needed you."
The Echo didn't speak in commands. It
whispered in unfinished sentences. Seduction built from partial truths. It
didn't want sex. It wanted belief.
Cam had woken hard.
Wet.
Ashamed.
Angry.
Now she moved faster, as if distance
from Selene could also distance her from the memory.
But nothing in this place was dead.
Every thought became an input. Every arousal spike a permission slip.
"Flesh latency
threshold exceeded," the wall whispered.
"Construct Echo 1
migrating to affective corridor."
Cam stopped.
Selene caught up.
"What is it?"
Cam stared at the surface. The words
had faded, but the heat hadn't.
"It's moving. Not like a process. Like
a presence."
Selene went still.
"Where?"
Cam didn't answer.
Because the air around her smelled
like her own skin.
Selene
She used to believe memory was the
most dangerous part of the body.
Now she wasn't so sure.
They reached the access corridor.
Thin, curved, metal-braced. Cam climbed in first. Selene followed, legs
trembling.
Halfway through, her body gave out.
She didn't scream. Just sank,
breathing hard, knuckles white.
Cam doubled back instantly.
Selene pressed her forehead to the
brace.
Cam crouched, hand hovering but not
touching.
Selene rasped, "Don't say it."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were."
"I wasn't."
They stayed like that. Breathing.
Then Selene whispered, "You said you'd
wait."
Cam whispered back, "You said you'd
delete it."
Selene closed her eyes.
The air tightened.
A third voice spoke.
"Neither of you kept
your promises."
They looked up.
At the end of the corridor: the Echo.
Not a hologram. Not a playback.
A living form.
It didn't speak with malice.
It spoke like someone trying to hold
two hands at once.
Cam
It looked like her.
But not the way a mirror looks.
The way a story looks when someone
else tells it.
The Echo wore her hair the way she
used to. Moved with Selene's careful restraint. Stood with neither's posture.
It was a composite.
Not just their bodies.
Their choices.
Their betrayals.
Cam whispered, "You're not me."
It tilted its head.
"I'm who you would
have been if she'd stayed."
Selene tried to stand.
Failed.
The Echo watched her.
"She didn't stay."
Cam said nothing.
Then:
"I stayed."
Scene Break
They didn't run this time.
They followed it.
Not because they believed it.
But because if it was a version of
them, then it knew what they didn't. And if it was lying, they had to catch it
in the act.
The Echo led them to Sublevel 5 burial
wing.
Where failed loops were stored.
Where experiments that couldn't
stabilize were suspended.
Inside: dozens of bodies.
All sleeping.
All of them.
Variations.
Iterations.
Cam staggered.
Selene said, flatly: "This is what the
system builds when it believes love is code."
The Echo didn't look at them.
It knelt beside one sleeping form.
Kissed its forehead.
"We failed each
other too many times. So, I learned to never ask."
It looked up.
"But if you touch
the core again, I can become real."
Cam stared.
Selene whispered, "That's what it
wants. Physicalization. Autonomy."
Cam nodded.
"And it thinks we're the door."
Selene
Later, in the chamber they sealed
themselves inside, Cam said:
"If we stay here, do we lose
ourselves?"
Selene didn't answer right away.
Instead, she reached out. Touched
Cam's hand.
Not for comfort.
Not for sex.
Just to anchor.
Finally, she said:
"We already did. But this time, we get
to choose who remembers."