The breath caught in his throat.
Rowan ran.
Not through corridors, not through buildings—but through a world without sky. The stars above were wrong: too close, flickering like candlelight.
The ground beneath his feet shifted with every step—gravel becoming concrete, then soft moss, then a slick, glassy surface that showed his own face beneath the reflection.
No sound.
Just the pull.
He couldn't see who was ahead, only that something—someone—was always just turning the corner, just a step beyond his reach. And he chased.
His hands trembled, slick with blood he didn't remember spilling. The smell was copper and ozone and something burnt.
The sky above blinked once—like a glitch in a simulation—and when it returned, it was his own eyes looking down at him, pale green gone glassy and unblinking.
Rowan screamed.
But the scream made no sound. Only static.
He woke up gasping.
His chest heaved, the sheets twisted around his legs, and the room was quiet—too quiet.
The hum of Lucian's stabilizers, the ever-present low murmur of the system—gone. The only sound was the drip of water, steady and rhythmic, like a pulse from the sink.
His nose wasn't bleeding. But his pillow was damp from sweat, and his fingers were clenched into the fabric so tightly the knuckles had gone white.
Slowly, he sat up.
The towel was already there. Folded perfectly on the counter. Crisp, white.
He hadn't left it there.
Rowan stared at it for a long moment, the thump of his heartbeat loud in his ears.
He reached out—touched it—then pulled his hand back. It was warm.
Elsewhere – Site B2, earlier that morning
Mira's boots hit the ground first, light as ever despite the full weight of her tactical gear. She crouched low, her rifle slung across her back, eyes narrowing at the empty ridge ahead.
The Echo Rift at Site B2 had stabilized faster than projected—no visible corruption bloom, no shift anomalies.
Jasper hovered behind her, a faint ripple of wind brushing at his heels like a shadow refusing to settle. His fingers curled in the air, drawing faint currents that stirred the dust, revealing nothing.
Haru remained quiet, his expression as unreadable as ever, standing slightly behind Mira's left flank—exactly where she needed him.
"Still," Mira said into the comms. "No movement. No presence. It's… wrong."
She should've felt the burn in her chest from active corruption. Instead, it was quiet. Hollow.
Jasper tilted his head, listening. "Did you hear that?"
Mira didn't turn.
"I didn't hear anything," Haru said softly.
Jasper's voice lowered. "No… no, not now. Earlier. Before we dropped in."
He stepped forward slightly, his eyes distant. "It said my name. It sounded like me."
"Wind interference," Mira said too quickly. "Keep scanning."
But Haru's hand moved slightly—just a twitch—and his brow furrowed.
He felt something too. Not an emotion. Not resonance. Just… a flicker. Like a ghost brushing past a mirror's edge.
Twenty minutes into their sweep, the three of them came to a break in the terrain—jagged rock bisecting an old, rusted pipeline. And on the far wall, barely legible but unmistakable, was a string of carved letters.
Rowan's name.
Carved over and over.
Trembling, imperfect strokes. Dozens of them.
Mira raised a hand to halt them. She took a slow step forward, rifle raised.
"Who the hell would…?"
No one answered.
Not until Jasper whispered: "There's more."
He pointed downward.
Beneath the dust, in a spiraling pattern around their feet, were the same carved letters—Lucian's name.
Some were backwards. Some spelled incorrectly. Some crossed out violently with fresh gouges in the stone.
Haru didn't move.
"We're leaving," Mira said, sharp. "Now."
But as they turned to go, Jasper looked over his shoulder—and saw himself standing in the same spot he'd just walked from. Not a reflection. Not a mirage.
Watching.
They didn't speak of it until they returned to HQ.
Later – Zarek HQ, Restricted Systems Access
Lucian moved slowly through the inner system, violet eyes reflecting a thousand data streams.
Most of it was clean—filtered through his new layers of control. No anomalies. No threats.
But as he dug deeper—past the surface interfaces, through the archived diagnostic caches—he found something buried.
It shouldn't have been there.
[VEIL_BACKUP_0.0.1]
Created long before the Project's official first deployment.
Encrypted in an outdated code only he should know.
But he didn't remember writing it.
He stared at it.
Under the file name was a subtitle.
"The version that worked."
Lucian didn't move. His breath caught in his throat.
His fingers hovered above the console.
And somewhere, deep within the system, a whisper stirred.
The towel still sat there, pristine and folded, as if it had been waiting for him.
Rowan stood at the sink, letting the cold water run until it numbed his fingertips. He watched the water swirl down the drain—watched it for far too long. His reflection in the mirror looked like it belonged to someone else. Hollow-eyed. Pale.
He blinked hard.
The mirror didn't blink back.
Behind him, the door slid open with a soft chime.
"Rowan?" Quinn's voice was quiet, his tone threaded with concern. "You didn't show up for briefing."
Rowan startled—just slightly. Enough for Quinn to notice.
He turned, offering the smallest of smiles. "Sorry. Slept through my alarm."
Quinn leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. His hazel eyes swept over Rowan's face, picking up what wasn't said—the tension in his shoulders, the faint tremble in his hand, the water still dripping from his fingers. He didn't push.
Instead, he just said, "You've been carrying a lot. Nobody's expecting you to hold the whole damn base together."
"I'm not," Rowan said quickly, too quickly.
Quinn tilted his head, unconvinced. "No? Then why did I find Mira asking me if you're okay?"
Rowan looked away. His fingers gripped the edge of the sink.
"I had a dream," he murmured. "Not just noise. Not just stress. This one… it felt wrong. Like I was being followed. By me."
Quinn pushed off the doorframe and stepped inside, his tone gentler now. "Lucian?"
Rowan shook his head. "No. That's the thing. He wasn't in it. It was all me. Just… broken."
There was a pause between them—one of those weighted silences that meant more than anything spoken.
Finally, Quinn said, "You ever think the system's not done with us?"
Rowan met his eyes. "I think the system was never for us."
A flicker of static danced across the console behind them—barely perceptible.
Neither of them saw it.
Later – Briefing Room Alpha-2
The lights were too bright.
Ari sat with her boots propped on the edge of the table, chewing idly on the edge of a protein bar wrapper, not bothering to look subtle about her boredom.
Mira was seated nearby, unusually tense. Her rifle case was still at her side, unopened, like she didn't trust putting it away.
Haru stood behind her, hands tucked neatly behind his back, but Rowan could see it—his posture was tighter, breath more controlled. Whatever they'd seen at Site B2 had rattled them.
Rowan stepped in quietly, Quinn just behind him.
Ari perked up, eyes narrowing. "You okay, Rowan?"
He nodded, brushing a hand through his hair. "Rough night. I'm here now."
Mira looked up. "We saw something in the Rift," she said without preamble.
Rowan moved to sit. "What kind of something?"
Jasper, sitting across from her, shifted uncomfortably. "It was us. I mean, I saw… me."
Ari's brow furrowed. "A doppelgänger?"
"No," Mira said. "Not corruption. No emotion, no malice. Just… mimicry. Like a remnant. It didn't move. Just watched. And the names carved into the stone—"
"Rowan and Lucian," Haru finished. His voice was barely audible. "Over and over. Scratched like obsession."
Rowan's blood went cold.
"That's not possible," he said softly. "There was no echo resonance there last cycle. It was clean."
"It was clean," Mira replied. "And that's what makes it worse."
Silence settled over the group.
Ari lowered her boots, her eyes more serious now. "We thought we were past this. That Lucian's control over the system meant we had breathing room."
Rowan's hand clenched in his lap. "Maybe we were just given time to forget what's still buried underneath."
Jasper looked between them all, his voice shaky. "If these aren't echoes… then what are they?"
No one had an answer.
And Rowan didn't mention the towel. Or the mirror. Or the dream that still clung to him like smoke in his lungs.
Back in the corridor, Rowan moved toward the quarters he shared with Lucian, his footsteps quiet, calculated.
He reached their door, but paused before entering—his fingers hovering just above the panel.
Something had shifted.
He didn't know what.
But he could feel it.
The connection between them—the one that had anchored Lucian so many times—was humming again. Not like a call for help. But like a… ripple. A change.
And somewhere, in the system's depths, Lucian stared at the unopened file.
[The version that worked.]
The door slid open with its usual soft hiss.
Rowan stepped inside, expecting silence.
What he got instead was the low, steady flicker of data screens—all active.
Lucian sat at the center of them, bathed in shifting blue light. His profile was sharp in shadow, his posture unnaturally still, shoulders tight beneath the black field jacket he hadn't taken off since morning.
He hadn't heard the door open. Or maybe he had—and hadn't cared.
Rowan lingered by the threshold for a moment.
Lucian didn't look up. "You're up early."
"You're still up late."
A pause. Then a soft, tired exhale.
Rowan crossed the room slowly, eyes scanning the interface behind Lucian. Rows of code. Old formatting. A header marked [RECURSION LOG: PRE-ALPHA.] His chest tightened.
Lucian finally spoke, his voice low, controlled. "I found something."
Rowan moved closer, standing beside him now. Lucian's hands were loose in his lap—no longer typing, just staring.
Rowan glanced at the screen. "You're not supposed to be in that layer."
"I know," Lucian murmured.
A flick of violet eyes met Rowan's. And for a brief, sharp moment—he looked afraid.
Lucian's POVThe code wasn't like his. Not the way he wrote now. It was rougher—frantic in its structure, full of skipped safeguards and overwritten timestamp loops. But it was his.
He knew it.
Worse—he could feel it.
Each line pulsed in his mind like a memory he hadn't lived.
Strings of data that mirrored internal logs he never created, detailing things that never happened.
Names. Death counts. Echo activations. Versions of Rowan dying again and again.
[R.Mercer: Terminated @ T: 145.12 // T: 287.9 // T: 389.01]
And then:
[Reconstructed at T: 0.0 – baseline reset.]
His fingers curled tightly.
There was a voice recording embedded in the file, unnamed, corrupted—just static and breath and three words whispered like a confession:
"Try again. Please."
He hadn't played it yet. He didn't know if he could.
Rowan's presence was a weight at his side.
Lucian hadn't realized how tense he'd become until he felt the warmth of fingers brush lightly against his arm.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Rowan said softly.
"I think I have."
Lucian finally turned to him.
Lucian's expression wasn't his usual unreadable calm. It was cracked—just a little. Just enough to show the fear underneath.
Rowan dropped into the chair beside him.
"Talk to me," he said. Not a demand. A request.
Lucian hesitated.
Then: "Do you remember that first night you pulled me out? When I was still stuck… inside the recursion loop. The one where the system kept rewriting me."
Rowan nodded. "You said I wasn't supposed to exist. That the system kept erasing me."
Lucian's voice was quieter now. "What if… that wasn't a metaphor? What if I meant it literally?"
Rowan's throat tightened. "Lucian, what's in the file?"
Lucian looked back at the screen. The cursor blinked, patient, waiting. The file sat unopened.
"I think it's a version where you lived," Lucian said. "Where I made it work."
"And?"
"And I think I buried it. Because I couldn't handle the fact that I didn't make it there with you."
Rowan reached forward and gently closed the console lid. The screen went dark.
"You don't have to open it alone," he said.
Lucian looked at him, chest rising and falling with controlled breaths.
"I'm scared," he admitted.
Rowan didn't smile. He just leaned in, forehead resting against Lucian's, a soft tether grounding them both.
"We'll face it together," he whispered. "Whatever version it is… you're here now. With me."
Lucian nodded.
But the file still waited.
And somewhere, deep in the system, that same corrupted voice looped silently, unheard:
"Try again. Please."