The summit was already in motion.
Glassed steel rose like fangs around the perimeter of the rooftop chamber—an open-air boardroom twelve stories above the old district. Beneath its luminescent canopy, the world's most powerful figures convened beneath a lattice of soft-blue drones that recorded everything and streamed nothing.
Amelia stood outside the radius, watching from behind reflective glass, her hood drawn low.
Kestrel was beside her, silent, wired to her every movement like a bodyguard, a lover, a shadow. He hadn't said much since her collapse. Since Solas had spoken through her.
Inside, Eris and Dominic moved as operatives—seamless, composed. Dominic, suited and surgical in his focus, scanned the security network on his retinal display. Eris tracked body heat patterns, noting anomalies—one too many signatures hovering by the western egress.
"I still don't understand," Amelia whispered, "how the future is bleeding into the now."
"Because your mind isn't anchored anymore," Echo murmured from within. "You're a node now, too. Open to timelines, fragments, simulations."
"That doesn't help me stop what I saw."
She hadn't told Kestrel what exactly she'd witnessed in the vision—just enough to keep him close. The image of herself raising a gun, the snap of it discharging, the collapse of a world leader—these things played on a loop behind her eyes.
It was supposed to happen here. Today.
Dominic's voice crackled through the comm. "West balcony's blind spot just shifted. Something's wrong."
Amelia's pulse quickened. "I'm going in."
"Negative," Eris snapped. "You're still unstable. If you—"
"I know what I saw."
Kestrel touched her wrist—just once. "You're not alone."
That moment—charged and fleeting—grounded her more than anything Echo could do.
She slipped inside.
The summit's interior was a surreal mix of diplomacy and digital threat. Representatives of nine major territories sat in a ring, neural translators flickering behind their ears. The agenda: an alliance that would unify remaining anti-Mirror factions into a global oversight initiative.
If the assassination happened here, it would fracture that effort permanently.
As Amelia moved through the crowd, eyes scanned her. Her credentials—fabricated by Eris—held, but barely. One woman tilted her head slightly, lips parting as if recognizing her. She passed by. No alarm. Not yet.
From above, Kestrel patched in: "Two heat signatures approaching the western edge. One matches your neural ID."
"My what?"
Echo hissed in warning: "You're already here."
She turned sharply. And saw it.
Through the balcony's reflection in the glass wall—her silhouette.
Another Amelia. Coat dark, hair pinned back. Poised. Controlled. Moving like someone with a purpose wired into her bones.
"She's ahead of schedule," Echo whispered. "Solas is accelerating the timeline."
Amelia broke from the path, weaving through the perimeter until she reached the outer rim of the ring. The speaker had just called for a recess. The heads of state rose from their seats, stretching legs, sipping water laced with cognition enhancers.
And the other Amelia reached into her coat.
Amelia screamed, lunging forward—
Too late.
A shot rang out.
The security feed fractured as people screamed. One figure—a head of the EuroSphere Coalition—dropped, blood arcing across the chrome floor.
Security tackled bystanders. Drones descended like bees. Chaos reigned.
But the shooter?
Gone.
Minutes Later
Back in the safehouse, the footage played over and over again.
Amelia stared at the holographic loop: her hand on the gun. Her face. Her calm. Her escape.
"How?" she whispered.
Eris was furious, pacing. "We scrubbed the security grid—she slipped in using your echo signature. They used you to access the floor."
Dominic leaned on the console, silent. He hadn't spoken since the shooting. The tension between him and Zahir, though still thick, had been swallowed by the immediate crisis.
"They'll come for her," Zahir said finally. "The world just saw Amelia Locke commit high-level political murder. There's no recovering from that."
"That wasn't me," she snapped.
"No," Kestrel said quietly. "But it was you. At least, to them."
Echo remained eerily silent.
Amelia sank into the chair, fingers tangled in her hair. "She looked like me. Moved like me. If she can walk into a summit and do this… what else has she done?"
Zahir's face darkened. "She's not just a clone. She's an upgraded version of you, fed by Solas. Faster. More precise. Built for surgical strikes."
"You said the future can bleed into the present," Dominic said, voice cool. "What if that wasn't a vision? What if it was a memory?"
"Of what?" Amelia said bitterly. "A life I didn't live?"
Dominic met her eyes. "Of a life someone lived. Through your neural code."
Later That Night
Alone on the rooftop, Amelia stared into the city. Below, chaos unfolded. The summit was postponed indefinitely. Nations were blaming each other. Mirror had disavowed involvement.
She had become a ghost of her own guilt.
Kestrel joined her, handing her a hot drink. He didn't speak.
"I need to find her," Amelia murmured.
"You will."
"I need to know why. Why me. Why her. Why any of it."
Kestrel's eyes didn't leave hers. "Then we go hunting."
Amelia looked down at her hands. "What if we find her… and she really is the original?"
Kestrel didn't hesitate. "Then we remind her who survived."
************
Inside a hidden chamber, the assassin—Echo-infused clone—stood before Solas's projection.
"She saw me," she said.
Solas's voice was smooth and hollow. "She was meant to."