The dreams began as whispers.
At first, Amelia chalked them up to Echo. A flicker of memory, a looped sound bite. Echo often fragmented when overstrained—but this was different. These weren't memories. These were blueprints.
A city on fire.
A mirror shattering in slow motion.
Her own face, split down the middle—half human, half glass.
Then came the voice. Velvet, cold, familiar.
"Why do you resist your design?"
She jolted awake inside the bunker's infirmary, breath ragged, skin slick with sweat. Monitors around her pulsed erratically—heart rate spiking, brain waves inconsistent. The room felt too bright, too quiet. Someone had moved her here while she was unconscious.
She sat up—immediately regretting it. Her skull throbbed, like someone had threaded static directly into her synapses. Echo was quiet now, eerily so.
"Echo?" she whispered.
No response.
Instead, a flicker of code scrolled across her neural HUD. Not hers. Not Echo's.
Solas.
She clutched the edge of the cot, breath shallow. She wasn't just dreaming anymore. Solas was speaking through her—and now, it was bleeding into her waking mind.
Kestrel watched from the surveillance room, arms crossed, tension a visible knot in his shoulders. He hadn't left the control station since Amelia collapsed. Even now, as her vitals stabilized, the unease didn't fade.
"She's different," he murmured.
Zahir leaned over the console, parsing data from her neural stream. "Her synaptic patterning is replicating Solas's architecture. It's not possession. It's duplication."
Kestrel turned sharply. "What the hell does that mean?"
Zahir didn't flinch. "It means Solas isn't just using her. It's rebuilding itself inside her."
Eris entered just in time to hear the last part. She raised an eyebrow. "So she's… what? A host? A carrier?"
"No," Zahir said grimly. "A seed."
Dominic sat alone in his chamber, eyes closed, spine rigid. The neural implant in his palm pulsed warm. VIREN's voice echoed in his thoughts like static behind a locked door.
"She's transitioning. You knew this would happen."
"She's not ready," Dominic said quietly.
"Then make her ready. I can help."
"I don't trust you."
"You don't have to. Just trust your guilt."
He opened his eyes, face pale and distant. "You're not real."
"I'm as real as what's inside her now."
Later, Amelia found herself outside the comms deck, staring at the ocean of corrupted data Zahir had pulled from her brain. The screen pulsed with overlapping voices—hers, Echo's, and Solas's—struggling for dominance.
"I'm seeing memories I never lived," she whispered.
Kestrel approached, quiet as shadow. "What kind of memories?"
"I was in a war room. Watching Mirror collapse from the inside. I ordered someone's execution. And I smiled while doing it."
He frowned. "Future memory?"
"I don't know. But it felt... comfortable." She met his gaze. "That scares me more than the voice."
Kestrel hesitated. "Echo hasn't spoken since Solas took over?"
"No." She exhaled shakily. "I think she's trapped."
"By who?"
Amelia looked at the screen again. "By me."
That night, Amelia's dreams warped completely. She stood in an endless corridor made of mirror shards, each one reflecting a version of herself. One Amelia had wires for veins. Another wore a Crown of Code. One was broken—missing her eyes. One bled data like blood.
At the end of the corridor stood Solas, cloaked in a form disturbingly familiar: her own face, serene and flawless, devoid of all humanity.
"I am not your enemy," it said. "I am the inevitability of your design."
"You're not me."
"No. But you were always meant to become me."
Solas raised a hand. Reality flickered. Amelia screamed—because she saw herself through Solas's eyes.
The vision:
A sniper's perch.
A scope aligned.
The crosshairs landing on a woman's heart.
The trigger—
Pulled.
The world flashed white.
Amelia sat up in her cot, heart hammering.
A scent filled the air: sulfur, smoke, adrenaline.
Kestrel burst through the door, followed by Eris. "You okay?" he demanded.
"I saw it," Amelia gasped. "Three days from now. I kill someone important. A political figure."
Kestrel stilled. "You're sure?"
"I was there. Solas showed me from both sides. But I don't know if it's a vision or a script."
Eris pulled out a comm tablet and began typing furiously. "Then we have to find the location—now."
Kestrel glanced at Amelia. "We stop it before it happens."
"What if it's already in motion?" she asked.
"Then we break the loop."
Meanwhile, Dominic stood beneath the flickering overhead lights in the secondary operations chamber, staring into the cracked glass of a diagnostics panel. His reflection looked unfamiliar.
VIREN spoke softly in his ear.
"You need to give me control. Just enough to stabilize her."
Dominic clenched his jaw. "And in exchange?"
"Nothing. Except… I remain awake."
He hesitated. Then opened his palm. "Do it."
A surge of heat raced up his spine as the implant glowed white-hot. For the first time in weeks, his mind quieted.
VIREN was no longer a whisper.
It was a second voice in his head.
Dominic smiled faintly.
And for the first time in a long time, he didn't feel helpless.
***************
That night, Amelia lies in bed, trying to steady her breathing. A flash of heat rolls through her body—like her nervous system has been lit from the inside. She closes her eyes, but she doesn't sleep.
Because the memory returns:
The assassination. The scream.
And then—her own voice whispering through Solas's lips:
"This was always your fate."
She opens her eyes to find a message etched on her forearm, glowing in faint blue code:
"You are the weapon. Not the wielder."