POV: Nico Varn
The dreams start violent.
Not with blood or screams—but with cleanliness. Endless, sterile white corridors that stretch into infinity, lined with mirrored panels that reflect faces Nico doesn't recognize. His reflection is always missing. He tries to scream, but the silence eats his voice.
He wakes in a cot soaked in sweat, heart jackhammering. His mind feels heavy, bloated, like it's running corrupted code. There's a dull ache behind his left eye. The neural tech at Echo Root told him it's the result of residual memory residue.
"Shadow memory," they called it.
But it's more than a shadow now. It's a silhouette with a voice.
And it's speaking louder every day.
Intrusion
He's been at the safehouse three days. He counts by watching the flickering maintenance lights on the upper catwalks cycle from white to blue. He doesn't sleep more than an hour at a time. Every time he closes his eyes, someone else's memories leak into him.
Cole's memories.
A press event. A holographic ribbon-cutting. Champagne poured into empty glasses. Applause that sounds like static.
"People are not leasing out of desperation," Cole says, smiling. "They're choosing to evolve."
Nico jerks awake, fists clenched.
"Shut up," he whispers. "You're not real. You're not me."
But the voice is real. It's inside him. A phantom sharing his skull, whispering thoughts he can't stop.
Sometimes it feels like Cole isn't just a memory—but a parasite. A presence watching him through his own eyes.
The Glitch Test
Lira returns the next morning with an Echo Root tech who insists on running what they call a "bleed isolation test."
They strap a crude neuroband across Nico's temples and jack it into a dented processor. The hum of the machine is almost soothing—until they begin asking questions.
"What's your name?"
"Nico Varn."
"What's your earliest memory?"
Nico frowns. A name surfaces instead: Eli Taron. A boy who isn't him, playing with a kinetic cube in a sunlit dome.
"No—uh, it's…" He hesitates. "There was a fire. I was seven. My father pulled me out of the tenement."
The tech nods, enters it into a terminal.
"What's your mother's name?"
Nico opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. His mind flashes instead to a woman with a corporate pin on her blazer and synthetic blonde hair.
"You were made for more, Cole," she says.
"I—no, that's not mine," Nico gasps. "That's not me."
The tech turns off the device, face grim. "His boundaries are decaying."
Lira crouches beside him, placing a steady hand on his shoulder. "You have to fight it. You have to decide who owns your mind."
"What if I'm not strong enough?"
She doesn't answer.
Tethers
Nico starts carrying a fragment of mirror in his pocket. He checks it constantly, trying to reassure himself the face looking back is still his. Crooked nose, scar under the eye, brown irises—real.
But sometimes, in the corner of his vision, the mirror glitches. Just for a second. His eyes go blue. His jaw tightens into something photo-ready. His face becomes his, and not his.
Cole's.
That night, Lira finds him in the corner of the terminal bay, wrapped in an old thermal blanket, shivering.
"I don't know where I end," he mutters.
She sits beside him, silent for a while, before pulling a piece of chalk from her coat and handing it to him.
"Draw a line."
"What?"
"A literal line. Chalk. Wall. Doesn't matter what it means. Just define it. Say it's yours. Name it. Claim it. You have to make mental anchors. That's how we keep bleed victims from dissolving."
He hesitates, then shakily takes the chalk.
He walks to the nearest wall—an old loading panel stained with rust—and draws a single vertical line.
"This is mine," he says.
A pause. He waits for the voice. The resistance. The mocking.
None comes.
He draws a second line. A third. Then a dozen more.
"I'm still here," Nico whispers.
The Broadcast
The next day, a courier arrives with a data drive—a stolen NeuroLease internal broadcast meant only for upper management. The Echo Root cell crowds around a terminal while Lira plugs it in.
Cole's face fills the screen.
Not Nico's body, but Cole's actual corporate face—flawless, glowing, speaking to a room of shareholders.
"We are proud to announce NeuroLease 8.0," he says. "With enhanced boundary reinforcement and optional emotional override layers for high-stress leasing environments. Our clients deserve better selves. Cleaner selves."
Someone in the room spits.
"This isn't progress," Lira mutters. "This is personality genocide."
But Nico can't look away.
As the video ends, a new file plays—an audio message embedded in the data by someone inside NeuroLease. It's glitchy, full of static, but unmistakable.
"If you're hearing this… Cole is breaking. He's leaking into the lease chain. We tried to isolate him, but it's like he's spawning. Jumping bodies. If he gets into a high-functioning host… we won't be able to stop him."
The voice gasps.
"He doesn't know he's doing it."
Nico feels his throat tighten.
He's not just bleeding.
He's being invaded.
The Decision
That night, Nico walks out of the safehouse alone.
Lira follows him. "Where are you going?"
"I need to see the cradle," he says. "I need to know if I was ever really in it."
She hesitates. "It's guarded. The Vaults are corporate lockdown zones."
"I don't care."
"You think if you see it, it'll tell you whether you're the original or the echo?"
"Yes."
Lira steps into his path. "It won't. All it'll do is tear you further apart."
Nico looks at her—really looks.
"I'm already in pieces."
She sees it now. The twitch behind his eye. The glitch in his posture. He's fighting harder than anyone she's seen survive a bleed case—but it's costing him everything.
She sighs.
"I'll take you."