The blast door shut behind them with a final thunk.
Inside, Site Twelve breathed like a living thing. The walls trembling faintly, conduits humming with corrupted light. The shimmer had saturated every circuit, rewired every memory of this place into something else.
Jonas took the lead, the neural injector secured in a case strapped to his back. His mark pulsed faintly, lighting their way deeper into the heart of the facility.
No one spoke.
They didn't need to.
The shimmer was already whispering.
They reached the main atrium or what remained of it.
Desks floated inches off the ground. Elevator shafts twisted into impossible spirals. The Mnemos team slowed, weapons drawn, but their fingers twitched. Uncertainty crept into their posture.
Then.
A chime.
Soft. Familiar.
Jonas turned.
From a hallway to the left emerged a woman.
Late twenties. Hair pinned back. Lab coat bloodied. Eyes empty.
His breath caught.
"Dr. Lilian Korr," he whispered. "She died during the first breach."
But here she was. Smiling.
"Hello, Jonas," she said. "We kept your office clean."
Mara raised her weapon. "She's not real."
"She was," Jonas said. "She was the first one the shimmer took."
Dr. Korr stepped forward and every screen in the atrium blinked to life, playing grainy footage from Jonas's past: arguments, tests, the moment he authorized Eris's awakening.
"You gave us the wound," Korr said. "Now we offer you the balm."
Sera moved forward to fire.
But froze.
A boy stood in front of her now. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Five years old.
"Mama?"
Her rifle lowered an inch.
"Sera don't," Jonas barked.
But she couldn't move.
"I buried you," she whispered.
The boy tilted his head.
"You left me."
A scream ripped through the room not Sera's, not the child's, but from the walls. The shimmer surged. The illusion cracked.
And the boy exploded into static.
Sera fell to her knees, sobbing.
"They know," Mara said, cold. "They all know what breaks us."
Jonas helped Sera up. "We move. Now. Before it finds more cracks."
They took the emergency stairwell. A safer path than the main elevator, which now moved vertically and horizontally like a maze under the shimmer's influence.
Halfway down, Agent Royce stumbled.
"Wait," he said, voice tight. "Something's wrong here."
Jonas turned back just in time to see Royce duplicate.
Two of him. One breathing. One perfectly still.
The still version smiled.
And said, "I'm the one who never left the girl behind."
Real Royce collapsed, screaming, hands clutching his skull.
"Get him up!" Mara shouted.
But Jonas didn't move.
His mark was glowing violently now not in warning.
In recognition.
It wasn't just showing them memories.
It was filtering.
Selecting which version of each person was strongest.
The shimmer didn't want the real.
It wanted the ideal.
They reached the sublevel entrance to the Eris Core Room.
Jonas stared at the door.
It was pulsing like a heartbeat his heartbeat.
Beyond it: Dr. Elaine Voss. The shimmer's chosen mouth.
And whatever part of Jonas the drive had awakened.
He gripped the injector tightly.
"It's time," he said.
Mara touched his arm.
"You're not doing this alone."
He looked at her grateful, but uncertain.
"After this," she said, "whatever we are... it's real."
He nodded once.
Then opened the door.
And walked into memory.