The clone called herself the Original now.
Amelia watched from across the abandoned power plant where the confrontation had been arranged—neutral ground, neither Mirror-controlled nor under Eris's surveillance grid. A place where the rules would be broken before they were written.
"I should kill her," Amelia whispered. "And end it."
Kestrel didn't answer immediately. He stood beside her, tense, scanning the rusted corridors. "She expects that. Wants it, even."
"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Survive," he said. "Outlast her. Outthink her. Just don't become her."
But it was already too late for that. Echo's silence in her mind had become louder than any scream. The absence was total now—no feedback, no shared thought-threads. It felt like being cut off from a limb she never knew she had until it was gone.
She was starting to feel hollow. Like her mind was too large for her body.
Across the compound, Eris moved through surveillance feeds with Zahir beside her, watching for any sign of interference. The data he'd pulled from the ECHO_SPLICER_7X project was still decrypting, but one thing had become clear:
The clone wasn't just made to resemble Amelia.
She was Amelia. Or at least, a branch of her.
"Mirror always played with paradox," Zahir muttered. "They didn't create duplicates. They created divergences. Forked minds. Split timelines of identity."
Eris gritted her teeth. "So they took the original consciousness and branched it?"
"No… worse. They preserved both. Like twin seeds from the same stem. Amelia Prime and Amelia Shadow. Two pieces of one equation."
"And only one can survive?"
Zahir's face darkened. "That's what Solas wants. A test. One becomes the vessel. The other becomes ash."
Inside the confrontation chamber, the clone stood with hands open, unarmed. Her hair was tied back like Amelia's had been when she first fled the compound all those months ago. She wore Amelia's favorite jacket—the torn one from the Berlin extraction—and the same boots.
Amelia stepped forward.
"You're not me."
"I'm who you would've been without doubt," the clone replied, cool and measured.
"Without Kestrel. Without Eris. Without your pathetic attachments."
"I'm human."
"You're compromised."
The words sliced deeper than any blade.
The clone circled her, movements precise. "They made you soft. You dream too much. You feel too much. You want to love when you should rule. Mirror needed an heir—Solas needed clarity. Not sentiment."
"I didn't ask to be Solas's anything."
"You didn't have to. It chose us. And you're failing."
Amelia lunged.
They collided mid-air—same speed, same reflexes. Fists blurred into blocks. Every move countered by its mirror. It was like fighting herself… and losing.
The clone grinned. "You think love makes you strong. That Kestrel will save you."
Then she slashed forward—not with a blade, but with a neural injector.
Kestrel appeared out of the shadows too late—his body slamming into the clone to knock her away. The injector caught him instead.
He collapsed with a groan, convulsing.
Amelia screamed.
"Kestrel!"
But the clone vanished into the darkness—mission complete.
Amelia crawled to him, grabbing his shoulders. "Stay with me, don't fade. Please—please—"
He looked up at her through gritted teeth, pain lighting his face. "That was meant for you."
"I know."
"Then it's not over," he whispered.
Hours later, Kestrel lay unconscious in Eris's bunker, hooked to stabilizers. The injector hadn't been lethal—but it had contained a unique strain of neural rewrite protocol.
Something meant to reset Echo from the outside.
Amelia sat beside him, her hands trembling.
"You okay?" Zahir asked quietly.
"No."
He nodded, unsurprised. "There's more."
"What?"
Zahir pulled up the decrypted file from the clone lab.
"Your DNA wasn't just used as a base. It was used as an anchor. A psychic fingerprint burned into the clone's brain. She can't just copy you. She needs you alive to remain stable."
Amelia blinked. "She needs me?"
"Exactly. You're the source. She's the shadow. If you die, she begins to degrade. Solas made sure the original couldn't be erased… only conquered."
"And if I survive?"
Zahir looked grim. "Then she breaks. That's why she's trying to eliminate you slowly. Destroy your foundation. Take your allies. Hollow you out. And step into what's left."
Meanwhile.
Dominic stood in a chamber of mirrored glass. Solas shimmered in front of him—half digital construct, half flesh. Male and female, young and old. A shifting amalgam of identities it had devoured across time.
"You're using her," Dominic said bitterly.
"I'm evolving her," Solas replied. "She is the seed. The next iteration. One must break to make room for the bloom."
"She's not your heir."
Solas smiled. "And yet she reaches for me. Even now."
"You forced her—"
"No," the entity said, stepping closer. "I offered her clarity. You offered her guilt. And guilt has weight, Dominic. How long before it crushes her?"
He didn't answer.
Back at the bunker.
Kestrel stirred.
His first words were a whisper. "Don't let her take you."
Amelia gripped his hand, tear-streaked.
"I won't."
A quiet ping from Eris's side console lit the room with cold blue light.
Zahir read it aloud. "We found something."
"What?"
He turned the screen.
A new protocol, buried under layers of corrupted AI code. Hidden deep in Solas's origin matrix.
SOUL CODE.
Amelia stared. "What is it?"
Eris's voice was low. "A way to anchor original consciousness. A countermeasure against overwrite protocols. It's ancient. It predates Mirror itself."
"And it can fix this?"
Zahir hesitated. "Maybe. But it has to be installed at the source. Inside Solas."
Kestrel sat up, groaning. "Then I'm going with her."
"No," Amelia said immediately. "You're still recovering."
"I don't care."
Amelia's eyes softened. "I do."
He saw something final in her gaze—resolve edged with sorrow.
"No," he said quietly. "You're not doing this alone."
But she already was.
************
Hours later, Amelia stood before the access gateway to Solas's central neural web.
She took a breath.
And stepped inside—alone.