POV: Lira
Lira had seen fear in many forms. In the empty eyes of borrowers too far gone to reclaim themselves. In the silent horror of parents who leased out their children for corporate-sponsored "empathy scholarships." But nothing chilled her like the look Nico gave her that morning—hollow, trembling, as if some part of him had died in the night.
"We need to move," he said, stuffing supplies into a duffel. "Cole saw me. Through the mirror."
She froze. "Are you sure?"
"He called me Nico. Not just in the mirror—inside his head. He's slipping. The bleed's not one-way anymore."
That wasn't supposed to happen. Identity bleed was already a risk between high-frequency borrowers and hosts, but this... this was unprecedented.
They left the safehouse at dawn, weaving through the backstreets of Old Lyra, where crumbling infrastructure provided cover and the CoreMind network signal was weakest. Lira led them toward one of the last known Echo Root bunkers.
"You think they'll help us?" Nico asked.
"They don't trust you," Lira admitted. "But they'll trust me."
The Forgotten Bunker
Beneath a rusted industrial plant, the bunker's access panel recognized Lira's biosignature and hissed open. Armed sentries emerged, gaunt and weary-eyed. One of them, Commander Sorrell, approached.
"Didn't expect to see you alive," he said. His gaze flicked to Nico. "And what the hell is he doing here?"
"He's not Cole," Lira said.
"Could've fooled me."
"We need your archives," she continued, ignoring the tension. "Especially anything on Project Truthgate. NeuroLease is prepping something called VITRAE. If we don't stop them, no one's mind will be their own."
Sorrell scowled. "You don't just walk in after vanishing for months and ask for clearance."
Nico stepped forward. "I can prove I'm not him. Scan my neuroprint."
The Commander hesitated, then nodded to a tech. A thin neural wand passed over Nico's temple. Data flooded the screen.
"Fragmented cognition. Divergent memory splicing. Identity substrate mismatch," the tech read aloud. "He's not Cole. He's... a derivative."
Sorrell's face paled. "So it's true. Truthgate wasn't just theory."
Lira nodded. "He's the key to stopping VITRAE."
Fractures in Reality
Inside the archives, ancient servers hummed in shadows. Files flickered on dusty holo-panels, buried deep behind defunct access codes. They found the blueprint for VITRAE.
Lira read aloud: "Cognitive Consolidation Initiative—merge leased consciousnesses into a singular, controlled entity. Total integration of borrower and host."
Nico leaned closer. "They're going to eliminate individuality. Turn people into vessels for harvested minds."
"No," Lira whispered. "They're going to upload you. The fragments of Cole that survived in different bodies. They want to fuse you all back together."
"But I'm not him," Nico said. "I never was."
"They don't care. To them, you're a puzzle piece. And once they assemble you, they can create the perfect mind—loyal, brilliant, marketable."
Sorrell stepped into the room. "If they succeed, there won't be any resistance left. Just versions of Cole, stitched into every useful host."
Lira straightened. "Then we have to destroy the mainframe before integration completes."
Cole's Awakening
Back in the Skyspire, Cole sat in a sterile observation room. His wrists were cuffed to the chair.
"You've been compromised," Elara Voss said through the glass. "Until your neural integrity is verified, your clearance is suspended."
Cole stared at her. "I know what you did."
She offered a cold smile. "You are what we did."
"I'm not a copy."
"Of course not. You're the best copy."
Images surfaced in his mind: children in tanks, memory loops replayed until identity was a suggestion, not a truth.
"I saw him," he said. "The original."
Voss tilted her head. "Original? There's no such thing anymore."
She turned to leave.
Cole's eyes burned. "You think you can contain me. You think I'll obey because you shaped me. But I remember now. I remember the pain. The splitting. I remember wanting out."
Voss paused. "Then remember this, too. We own your thoughts. Every defiant neuron, every flicker of doubt—it's ours. So sit quietly, Cole. The world's about to change."
She left. The door sealed.
And still, the mirror across the room didn't show his reflection. It showed Nico's.
"I'm coming," Cole whispered.
Preparing the Assault
Back at the bunker, Lira and Nico coordinated with Echo Root's limited strike team. The mainframe was located in the subterranean Vault Theta—a facility once thought destroyed. It was guarded by CoreMind drones and neural dampeners designed to scramble unauthorized memories.
"We have a narrow window before VITRAE's test cycle begins," Lira said, projecting the schematics. "We can't destroy the system from the outside—it has to be a neural override from within."
"You want me to plug in," Nico said.
She hesitated. "It might kill you. Or worse—fuse you into the network."
Nico looked away. "Maybe that's what I deserve."
Lira grabbed his wrist. "Don't. You're not just some leftover piece of Cole. You're you. They failed to erase that, and that's what scares them."
A long silence passed between them.
"Then let's finish this," Nico said.