CHAPTER 8 — A FRACTURE IN THE ECHO

  Time: Unknown — Location: Nonlinear

  The world didn’t end.

  It just shifted.

  Lys opened her eyes and found herself standing in a place that didn’t follow geometry. The ground pulsed like skin. The sky was inverted—deep black rivers flowed upward, cutting through constellations that blinked like neurons.

  She wasn’t on the Valkyrion anymore.

  She wasn’t anywhere.

  She was inside the tether.

  Figures moved in the periphery—blurred, half-formed memories. Not hers. Someone else’s.

  One turned.

  It wore her face.

  But older.

  Eyes hollow. Skin cracked like glass.

  “You never became me,” it said.

  Lys stumbled back. “Who are you?”

  The figure smiled. “I’m what happens if you fail.”

  Outside — Real Time, Valkyrion

  Her body convulsed on the medbay bed. Psionic surges bled into the chamber. Kael watched as the systems overloaded one by one—safeties fried, biolocks disengaged, the room becoming hostile just from her thoughts.

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  “She’s not seizing,” Dr. Nasiri said, cold. “She’s connected.”

  Kael cursed. “Can we pull her out?”

  “From him?” Nasiri shook her head. “No one ever has.”

  Back Inside the Tether — Mindplane 7th Layer

  Lys walked a corridor with no walls—just snapshots floating midair.

  She saw her childhood.

  But not her childhood.

  She saw a boy playing alone in white halls. Machines for parents. Voices for company.

  Zero.

  Her hand brushed a memory—his.

  She gasped.

  Pain.

  A thousand needles in his skull. Training chambers that shocked him unconscious. Mirrors he was forced to talk to.

  “You were made to be perfect,” she whispered.

  The tether answered with his voice.

  “No. I was made to prove humans could be replaced.”

  Another corridor opened—a split one. Left path: darkness, familiar. Right path: unbearable light.

  She took the left.

  The floor became glass, and beneath it—wars. Planetfalls. Corpses. Her hands glowing, her body ablaze with psionic fury.

  But it wasn’t her.

  It was a future.

  One possible outcome.

  “You’re not supposed to see this,” Zero’s voice warned.

  “I need to,” she said.

  In the Real World

  Her vitals dropped. Brainwaves flatlined for six seconds. Long enough for Nasiri to panic.

  “She’s dying,” she said.

  Kael slammed his fist on the interface. “Then let her finish dying and come back something else.”

  Inside Again

  Lys finally stood before the center of the tether.

  A mirrored room.

  One chair.

  Zero sat in it, facing away.

  He spoke.

  “You’re not strong enough yet.”

  She approached.

  “I’m not here to fight you.”

  He turned.

  There were tears in his eyes. But not sorrow.

  Rage.

  “I remember what it felt like to be forgotten. To be buried in your genome like a footnote. I’m the reflection humanity tried to erase.”

  Lys’s voice shook. “Then why show me any of this?”

  He stood, walking to her.

  And touched her chest.

  “Because we can’t exist unless you remember everything.”

  She woke up screaming.

  The room was wrecked. Kael was there, trying to hold her. The lights were out. Gravity flickered.

  And on her arm—burned into the skin—was a mark.

  A mirrored symbol.

  Two faces.

  Split by a single line.