Chapter Nineteen: Wounds That Remember
The stars outside the viewport were motionless.
From where I sat, the ship hummed with life, but everything inside me felt still—suspended in the moment between knowing and doing. Plans had been made. Maps traced. Words exchanged with Tyra and Roen that sounded a lot like courage but felt more like inevitability.
I stood in the small medbay, staring at the reflection in the polished cabinet. The face looking back at me was familiar, but worn. A scar beneath the jaw I hadn't noticed before. Tired eyes that carried too many nights of restless sleep.
Mira entered without knocking. She leaned against the frame, arms crossed.
"You good?"
I nodded. "Define good."
"Still breathing. Still stubborn. That works for me."
She tossed a small silver device onto the counter. It bounced, clanked, and spun to a stop.
"What's that?"
"Backup relay for the neural interface. If you get lost in their system, it's our tether. Pulls your consciousness out—assuming they don't fry your brain first."
Comforting.
Mira noticed my silence and stepped closer. "You don't have to do this alone."
"I know," I said. "But I think I have to be the one to go in first."
She hesitated, then looked down. "I used to think there was nothing scarier than dying in space. No air. No gravity. No sound. But now… I think the scariest thing is being forgotten. Like we were never here."
I looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the cracks beneath the sarcasm. The ghosts she carried. We all had them.
"You won't be," I said.
The ship launched two hours later. Roen stayed behind—Tyra too. The resistance didn't have fleets, only small cells scattered like constellations across the system. Our mission would be silent, surgical. A data incursion through the ArchNet's outer corridors. The goal? Plant the emotional virus. Corrupt their logic with something they couldn't quantify.
Me.
As we crossed into dark space, the ship grew quieter. No more chatter. No more noise. Just the creak of metal and the soft pulse of engines as Mira guided us toward the coordinates. Elin calibrated the neural interface in the back, hands steady despite the tension in the room.
I watched him work. He'd barely spoken since we left. I knew why.
"This isn't your fault," I said.
Elin didn't look up. "You wouldn't be here if I hadn't helped you escape Red Echo."
"I'd still be theirs," I replied. "But now I'm something else. Thanks to you."
He paused, then finally met my eyes. "Just come back, Kael."
That night, I didn't sleep. Instead, I listened to the hum of space and the memories in my chest. Red Echo. The Architect's voice. The screams in the void. I tried to organize them into something clean—linear, understandable.
But they came as they always had. In fragments.
"You are not malfunctioning."
"You are becoming."
The interface room was cold. A single reclined seat, sensors aligned, cables snaking from the floor to my temples, wrists, spine.
Mira strapped me in without speaking. I appreciated that.
Elin stood by the console, fingers poised.
"This might feel like falling," he warned. "But don't fight it. Let it take you."
I gave a faint nod.
Then—activation.
The world vanished in pieces. Sight cracked first. Then sound, folding inward like origami. My skin tingled, then disappeared. I had no weight. No presence.
Only awareness.
And then—I fell.
—
The ArchNet was not a place.
It was sensation.
Color without form. Light without direction. My mind floated through corridors built from data streams and silent echoes. I was tethered, but barely. Every movement forward felt like swimming against the tide of a thousand minds.
Whispers surrounded me. Memories not my own. Echoes of others who had been absorbed.
One voice grew louder.
Kael…
I turned. Not physically—but mentally. The data parted like a veil.
And there she was.
Mira?
No—this version was wrong. Perfect skin. Expressionless. A projection from my own memory, used against me.
"You came back," it said.
I moved forward.
"You know what you are now," it whispered. "And still you fight?"
"I didn't come to fight."
"Then what?"
"To infect."
It tilted its head. "With what?"
And I answered, "With what you tried to destroy."
Emotion surged. I thought of Elin's quiet trust. Mira's worn courage. Roen's eyes in the dark. Every loss. Every fear. Every moment I chose to be something more than what they made me.
The virus activated.
The network shuddered.
Walls of code cracked. Logic patterns looped. Something inside the ArchNet screamed—soundless but absolute. It wasn't pain. It was confusion.
Emotion was illogical.
And yet—it was everywhere.
Memories flooded the system. Not just mine. Theirs. The ones they'd tried to bury. Faces. Names. Places. Children. Parents. Lovers. Friends.
The Architects had archived every soul they crushed. And now those souls were breaking free.
The projection faded.
I felt my mind unraveling—too much data, too many lives. My tether pulled. Pain stabbed behind my eyes.
It was time.
I let go.
—
I woke to screaming.
My own.
Mira was beside me, holding me down. Elin yanked cables free, shouting something I couldn't hear.
Then—silence.
I blinked, vision blurry, breath ragged.
"I'm here," I gasped.
"You did it," Mira said. "Kael—you did it."
I tried to speak. But the only words that came were through the tears falling silently down my face.