"You're too late," Cole said, stepping back from the console, his voice heavy with resignation. His eyes flicked toward the vast wall-sized screen that pulsed with cold blue light—an eerie digital graveyard.
Lira's voice was sharp and immediate. "What's already underway?"
Cole didn't answer right away. Instead, the massive screen behind him burst to life, flooding the room with stark, relentless images. Row after row of faces appeared—real people, not just data points. Borrowers. Each face framed by a name, a date of birth, and the timestamp of their last lease.
The faces blinked in and out, like ghosts condemned to vanish. Below the endless columns, a chilling message glared in harsh red letters:
Neural Cleanse Initiated
Memory Scrub Active
Lease Imprints Will Be Terminated
Maren's breath hitched, a curse falling from her lips. "They're wiping everyone. Every single leased body. The memories they lived, the lives they touched—it's all being deleted."
Nico's heart pounded fiercely in his chest. "Why? Why now?"
Cole's nod was slow, hollow. "Because this isn't about connection anymore. It's about control—and profit. I thought I was saving them. That if I just played along, reached the top, I could rewrite the rules from inside. But there are no rules. There's only a ledger of loss."
Lira's eyes blazed with fury. "Then help us stop it."
Cole looked at them, haunted, the voices inside his mind growing louder, more desperate—snippets of lives colliding and clashing, screaming to be heard.
"Do you even know who I am?" he asked bitterly.
Nico's voice was steady, unwavering. "You're Cole Harker. And every life you lived—every fragment—matters. That's why they scream."
Maren's fingers flew over her wristpad, searching through lines of encrypted code. "There's something," she said suddenly, voice tight with hope and urgency. "A vulnerability buried deep in the NeuroLease protocol. An exploit that could reverse the cleanse—bring the memories back."
Lira's eyes snapped to Maren. "Then why aren't we doing it?"
Maren swallowed hard. "The system requires a live neural tether. A biometric confirmation linked directly to a mind that's actively connected. Someone has to stay behind and maintain the override—sacrifice their own safety, their own mind."
Silence filled the room like a heavy fog.
"I'll do it," Cole said immediately, his voice firm and resolute.
"No," Lira snapped, stepping forward with fierce intensity. "You don't get to play martyr now. You want redemption? Help us survive this. Help us rebuild. We need you—whole."
But Cole shook his head, the weight of countless borrowed memories pulling him down. "It's the only thing I can do that's real anymore. The only truth left inside me."
Nico closed the distance between them, reaching out as if to hold on to something slipping away. "You could live, Cole. We still need you. Not as a weapon. Not as a prototype. As yourself."
Cole's smile was soft, touched with sadness. "You don't need a broken echo. You need a future."
Without another word, he moved toward the neural cradle in the center of the room—the same sleek, high-tech cradle where he had once been tethered to endless leases and endless false lives. Now, it would become his tomb.
The cradle recognized his biosignature instantly.
The console flashed: Neural Override Engaged.
Maren and Lira moved quickly to deploy the reversal protocol, fingers flying over their devices, weaving through the labyrinth of NeuroLease's defenses. Their eyes flicked between the cascading lines of code and the slowly stabilizing network connections as the purge began to slow.
Nico stayed by Cole's side, watching as his eyes rolled back, veins pulsing with the neural tether's consuming power. The man who had once ruled the system was now a prisoner of it, willing to sacrifice himself so that others might live.
Outside the tower, the neural cleanse began to falter.
Systems blinked, hesitated—and then, with a shuddering gasp, began to reverse.
Borrowers across New Lyra collapsed, bodies going limp as their leased identities crashed.
And then, awakening.
Gasping for breath, eyes wide with disbelief, the leased returned to themselves. Memories flooded back like tidal waves—forgotten faces, stolen moments, pain, joy, the threads of their fractured lives knitting slowly back together.
The city beneath the tower roared with life and confusion—a rebirth born from the brink of oblivion.
But inside the cradle, Cole's mind unraveled.
He felt the borrowed identities slip away, like threads pulled gently yet irrevocably from a tattered tapestry. The fragments of other lives that had kept him whole were peeling off, leaving him bare and raw.
His vision flickered, the voices inside quieting to a whisper.
He smiled as the last thread slipped away.
In that moment, alone in the cradle, Cole found a strange peace.
He was no longer the weapon NeuroLease had forged. No longer the fractured echoes of a thousand lives.
For the first time, he was simply Cole.
Outside, the tower's holographic displays flickered and dimmed.
The public message board blinked with a new broadcast—a leak from Maren's rebellion:
NeuroLease Protocol Breached. Neural Cleanse Halted. System Reset Imminent.
The city trembled, its perfect veneer cracking.
Lira turned to Nico. "It's not over, but it's a start."
Nico nodded, eyes distant but fierce. "Cole's sacrifice bought us time. Now we take back our lives."
The elevator chimed again, empty this time.
Inside the neural cradle, Cole's eyes opened—clear, focused, and free.
The prototype was no more.
A man reborn.