POV: Lira
Lira hadn't slept. Not really. Even in the brief moments when her body gave in, her mind raced through old neural schematics, encrypted transmissions, and the words Nico had whispered before falling into an uneasy rest: Truthgate isn't just a project. It's a person. Me.
It didn't make sense—yet somehow, it explained everything.
She sat at the edge of the rooftop hideout, staring at the fractured skyline. New Lyra looked peaceful from a distance. Like a glittering lie.
Below, Sura was repurposing scavenged tech into cloaking drones while Nico rested, sweat clinging to his skin. He hadn't spoken since their escape, except for one fragmented sentence: There's a vault in Echo Sector Nine.
A long-abandoned division of NeuroLease research. Sealed since the early cycles of the Mirrorwalk prototype.
Cole had buried something there.
The Road to Sector Nine
Sector Nine had once been the proving ground for NeuroLease's most invasive tech. Rumors said it housed raw consciousness experiments—failed leases, corrupted neural echoes. Most of it was scrubbed from the official records, but Lira had seen glimpses during her time on the inside.
The Echo Root team prepared quietly. They couldn't take the whole unit—just her, Nico, and a stealth rig to breach the perimeter.
Nico moved like someone older now. Not physically, but in how he held his silence. As if every breath was a negotiation with the voices in his head.
They took the south rail tunnel, long decommissioned. Halfway through, Nico broke the silence.
"He remembers the code," he said softly.
Lira glanced at him. "You mean you remember."
He hesitated. "No. It's not the same. I'm not Cole. But he's part of me now. And he remembers where the archive is buried."
Sector Nine Perimeter
They reached the border as night fell. Surveillance drones buzzed overhead, but the stealth rig masked their bio-signatures long enough to slip through a drainage conduit.
The research compound loomed ahead—an angular sprawl of forgotten ambition. The exterior was covered in moss and scorched metal, the ground littered with broken shell bots and cracked glass. A graveyard of science.
They found the sub-basement entrance beneath a half-collapsed observation wing. Nico knelt before the retinal scanner. His eyes flickered.
Cole, Lira thought.
The scanner blinked green. ACCESS GRANTED.
The Ghost Archive
Inside, the temperature dropped. Lights flickered to life as they stepped into a chamber lined with pod-like tanks and decaying neural interfaces. Each one had a nameplate. Each one bore the faint shadow of a consciousness long since disconnected.
Nico walked slowly, tracing his hand along the edge of one cracked pod. His breath hitched.
"This was me," he whispered.
Lira's pulse jumped. "What do you mean?"
"I was born here—not biologically. I mean my lease imprint. They built me out of Cole's neural scaffolding. A mirror-life. Truthgate wasn't just about mapping the human mind—it was about creating derivatives. Pattern-echo identities."
Lira felt the floor tilt beneath her.
"Clones?" she asked.
"No. Worse." He looked at her, eyes wide. "We're mirrorborn. Synth-personalities created to carry aspects of influential minds—portable legacies. I was never just a borrower. I was engineered to be the perfect replica of Cole Harker... minus the politics. I was supposed to live and die unnoticed."
"But something went wrong," she said.
He nodded. "I began remembering things I shouldn't. Cole's memories bled into mine faster than expected. I gained autonomy. Echo Root found me before NeuroLease wiped the slate."
Lira turned to the central console. It still ran on backup power. She activated it, pulling logs and encrypted files. Video feeds blinked open.
One showed Cole—years ago—standing before a tank. He placed his hand on the glass and whispered something.
The audio struggled, then kicked in: "If you're watching this... you're the only version of me that still has a chance. Don't become me. Don't build what I built."
Nico watched in silence.
Then another feed loaded—a boardroom meeting. Cole arguing with NeuroLease directors.
"We can't keep doing this," he said. "The mirrorborn are waking up. They're becoming real. We've crossed the line between innovation and identity theft."
A voice off-camera replied, cold and precise: "And that is exactly what we're investing in, Mr. Harker. A future where identity is no longer fixed. Where memory is the only currency that matters."
Truth Hurts
Lira sat on the floor, stunned. "So you were their proof of concept. And when you started thinking for yourself, you became a threat."
Nico exhaled. "And Cole… he tried to shut it down. He changed. He broke."
"But they wouldn't let him," Lira finished.
He nodded. "They fractured his mind. Buried his memories. Made him forget he'd ever tried to resist."
Lira's stomach turned. "So the version we see now—the charming spokesperson? That's the shell they rebuilt. The man who tried to dismantle the system was erased."
Nico pulled a final file from the archive. One word stood out: VITRAE.
"What's VITRAE?" she asked.
He read aloud. "Vault Interface for Temporal Reality and Echo Assimilation. It's the next step. They're building a neural nexus. No more leases. Just streamed consciousness. Live inside someone else permanently."
"They're going to erase the concept of 'self.'"
"Yes," Nico said. "Unless we stop them."