Smoke rose from the shattered vent shaft like a dying signal flare, swallowed by the hungry dark of the city's underbelly. Shane staggered beneath the weight of it all, glitching optics, pain in places he no longer remembered having, and Aegix's low growl vibrating through the silence like a warning long past due.
He wasn't sure if the next blink would bring consciousness or blackout.
"Keep moving", Caelia urged, barely audible above the distant rumble of shifting supports and the soft, electronic hiss that had followed them since Sector 9. "We don't have much time."
Aegix's tail swept protectively behind Shane, eyes glowing faintly blue, scanning. But something was off. Too quiet. Not the usual ambient hum of a city asleep, but an intentional absence. Like the world had leaned in to listen.
[A presence...]
[Unknown signal. Adaptive encryption.][Tracking sub-layer initiated.]
Aegix's processor spike flickered across Shane's HUD, but he couldn't focus, his right arm spasmed, fingers locking into a partial claw. His breath hitched.
He reached out, metal scraping against rusted pipe, to steady himself. The hum of synthetic nerves trying to sync with shredded human ones nearly drove him to his knees.
Caelia glanced back. "They're flushing us. Someone's hijacked the perimeter grid. They're funneling us toward something."
"Trap?" Shane croaked.
"Or misdirection", she said. "Either way, they know you're not stable."
She didn't say it with malice. Just fact. Like a soldier reading battlefield conditions.
A sudden flicker of motion, no more than a shimmer, passed in the upper corner of Shane's vision. He froze.
"Spectra-Protocol: Reflex Suppression Mode", he murmured.
[Override: Spectra Protocol blocked. Manual control only.]
Blocked. Again. Someone had looped his own system, overwritten a piece of the code. Either Parallax… or worse, Rift.
The tunnels grew narrower, walls pulsing faintly with red circuitry, an old neural transport line long since repurposed by ghosts of the Resistance. Every step here was a memory Shane didn't own.
"This is the Murmur Corridor", Caelia said, tapping an interface plate embedded in the wall. Her hand trembled just slightly. "No sound travels clean through. It messes with neural relays. You'll start hearing things that aren't there."
"You're calm about that."
"I've walked it before."
He narrowed his eyes. "Alone?"
She didn't answer.
Somewhere between step twenty and step fifty, the hallucinations began.
Footsteps echoed ahead, his own, but delayed. Or someone else's wearing his gait.
A soft voice whispered, "Shane… did you forget me again?"
He turned. No one.
The corridor shimmered, lights pulsing erratically, and a half-seen silhouette appeared behind Caelia. It had his shape. His suit. His glowing eye.
A twisted mirror of Spectra Nova, but corrupted. Its right hand ended in a long tendril of plasma steel, writhing like a living blade.
He blinked. Gone.
"Caelia", he said. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"A copy of me. But wrong. Broken."
She stopped moving. "Then they're using Vantid Echoes. Projecting fragments. Psychological wear-down."
"Fun".
"One more reason not to stay long".
The corridor opened suddenly into a chamber, a circular node room filled with dormant transmitter pylons, each humming faintly with residual energy. The resonance of ancient signal wars hung thick in the air.
Aegix stepped forward, tail stiff. Then stopped.
Its glowing eyes flared red for the first time.
[Caution: Friend-Foe parameters in flux. Visual confirmation required.]
[Identity overlay... unknown.]
From the shadows behind a broken console stepped a figure.
Clad in partial Nova-tech armor. Black-veined. Fragmented. Scorched at the edges.
Its face flickered, a human face one second, digital static the next. A distorted echo of Shane.
"Spectra Nova?" it asked, voice mangled. "Or the thing pretending to be him?"
Shane's body locked up. "What the hell am I looking at?"
The echo tilted its head. "A backup. A failsafe. Or a ghost. Depends on who asks."
"Rift sent you?"
The copy laughed. No joy or humor, just code and contempt. "Rift is me. Or rather, I was the shard they carved out when your mind collapsed the first time. You remember nothing of the first cycle, do you?" It took a step forward. "You're not the original. You're what's left."
Caelia drew her weapon. "It's a projection. Don't engage it."
But it didn't stay still. The echo moved, not like a program, but like a predator.
Aegix pounced, and passed through the figure.
For a moment, all three of them stood in overlapping light. The echo. Shane. The machine.
Then the echo whispered, "We'll finish this where it began. Sector Zero. You'll come. Or she dies screaming."
Caelia gasped, her HUD blinked red. Neural breach detected.
Shane lunged toward her.
The echo vanished in a pulse of violet static.
As Caelia sank to her knees, gripping her head, Shane pulled her close.
"She's still in there", Aegix said. "But they seeded her link with false input loops. She'll be seeing things now. Things meant to shatter trust."
"Can you filter it?"
A pause.
"Not without breaking what's left of her core relay. Risk: irreversible memory loss."
Shane clenched his jaw. The echo's voice still rang in his skull. You're what's left.
Maybe it was true.
He looked at his hand, the one that wouldn't stop shaking, and knew what had to be done.
"Prep her for stasis lockdown", he said. "I'm going to Sector Zero."