The signal blinked again. One sharp pulse on the Pandora drive's decrypted interface, bouncing off a relay tower two blocks from them.
"Fracture Level 4 Active Signal Verified: NYPD Terminal 23rd Precinct"
Argus stared at the map glowing on the screen. A live Theta fragment had entered a secure NYPD building.
Not by force.
By access.
Chen leaned in. "That's Myles's precinct."
"Yeah," Argus muttered. "And it's moving. See that?"
The ping didn't stay in one room. It was hopping room to room, floor to floor. Every three minutes.
That wasn't idle browsing.
That was someone searching.
Or copying.
Derrick leaned against the warehouse table, his injured leg shaking. "You think he's already inside someone?"
"No," Argus said. "He is someone."
They reached a cold rooftop across from the precinct's east wing, an hour later. No rooftop guards. Civil tech gear covered the vents. Exactly what Argus needed.
He crouched beside the relay node, clipped a stolen Pandora uplink into its side, and waited as the drive decoded local badge log-ins.
Chen stood nearby, eyes on the street below. Her jacket was zipped halfway, gun holstered tight, hand never far.
"Security looks light," she said. "Myles's precinct usually runs heavier."
"Because they think the threat's already outside," Argus muttered. "Not sitting behind a desk wearing a badge."
The data finished syncing.
He scrolled.
"Myles checked in twenty minutes ago," Argus said. "Midtown Vice. Standard clearance, normal badge ID. Nothing altered."
Chen frowned. "That's his usual shift. You're sure it's him?"
Argus didn't answer. His eyes caught the second entry.
Same name. Same badge ID. Logged in five minutes later. Opposite entrance.
He rotated the screen toward her.
"Same badge. Two entries."
"That's not a glitch," she said.
"Nope."
They didn't speak for a moment.
Then Chen's burner buzzed.
One of Lawson's old backdoor logins still had access to precinct internal systems. She pulled the message up and read aloud.
"Login anomaly – Terminal Activity Conflict: Detective Daniel Myles – East Wing / Narcotics vs West Archive / Records."
"He's split," Argus said.
"Or duplicated."
Argus moved first.
He slid his old Cutter-issued toolset from the pack black case, magnetic clamps, one forged ID with outdated city network credentials still tagged to a dead maintenance contractor.
He clipped the forged badge to his vest and walked toward the rooftop vent housing. It led down into the relay junction where tech teams accessed back-end data cabling. Mostly forgotten. Not on NYPD schematics.
Chen stayed at the edge, watching every floor window.
At the hatch, Argus dropped to one knee, unscrewed the panel, and lowered himself inside.
The crawlspace was damp. Cold.
Dust coated the cables. No recent movement.
Perfect.
He moved to the relay server one side exposed. Pulled the external uplink cable loose and slid the Pandora drive into its place.
The screen lit up in his pocket. The precinct's entire internal badge movement log loaded.
Myles had just swiped his ID near narcotics.
And thirty seconds later again inside records.
"Two pings," Argus whispered into the mic. "Same ID. No lag."
"You see him?" Chen asked.
"No. But I've got a path."
He paused as the drive decrypted the badge photo log.
It loaded both entries.
Same man. Same uniform. But the timestamps were six minutes apart.
And in one of them his eyes were wrong.
Frozen. Too wide. No emotion.
Like the system hadn't finished syncing facial cues.
Argus tapped the screen.
"This one's Theta."
"How do you know?"
"Because he's looking straight into a mirror."
He yanked the drive free.
From down below, on the precinct's south side, he heard the low roar of an alert buzz. Internal not public.
Someone just triggered a security sync.
And both Myles copies were still inside.
He climbed out of the vent, dusted his jacket off, and rejoined Chen across the rooftop.
She already had her sidearm drawn. Eyes tense.
"They caught it," she said. "They logged both badge pings. They think it's a hardware breach."
"Let them."
"What do we do now?"
He pulled the photo from his pocket one Reyes fragment had dropped hours earlier.
The man in it wasn't Myles.
It wasn't Reyes.
It was someone between them.
Argus flipped it over again.
Written on the back in black ink:
"Vaulted Echoes - Mirelli clearance required."
As Argus stared down at the message, the Pandora drive buzzed again.
New clearance key detected: Lt. Sasha Mirelli – Grayridge Facility
Location: Active. Logged in 12 minutes ago.
They weren't done fragmenting identities.
They were exporting them.
"They were exporting them."
Argus said it flatly, like it tasted wrong in his mouth. He stared at the Pandora drive's confirmation of Mirelli's login tied to a Grayridge session fifteen minutes ago. Not internal NYPD. Not on any public server.
Chen exhaled through her nose. "Then Theta's not just copying identities to move around the city. He's copying them to send into the system."
"And not just any system," Argus said. "He's tapping Pandora's vault. Recycled memories. Buried programs. People marked incompatible."
"Resurrected inside other bodies," she said.
"Just like me."
They reached the precinct loading dock at 23rd fifteen minutes later, entering through a forgotten side hall using one of Lawson's old mechanical badge codes. No questions. No sensors. That wing had been flagged for repairs two weeks ago.
The records division was two floors down, quiet and dim. Lights running at half-power. One officer posted at the stairwell bored, face buried in a tablet.
Argus flashed the forged badge and nodded. "Systems check. EID crosswalk."
The guard waved them through without looking up.
Inside records, the hallway curved around two secure doors both badge-locked, both tied to active personnel.
The drive buzzed again in Argus's coat pocket.
LIVE BADGE LOCATION: MYLES, D. – Terminal 4B Records Access
They were close.
Too close.
Argus motioned. Chen kept her weapon low as they eased toward the door.
A sliver of light bled from the terminal room at the end. No movement. Just the sound of low, rhythmic tapping.
Argus stepped in first.
And stopped cold.
Detective Myles sat in the desk chair face slack, body upright, eyes open but unfocused. His hands were moving.
But not on the keyboard.
They were twitching across a tablet surface, tracing symbols.
The screen was blank.
Chen followed him in. Froze just behind Argus. "Is that?"
"It's the real Myles," Argus said. "But he's not logged in."
He stepped closer, careful.
On the desk, a second tablet sat turned off.
Taped to its back was a small black card with the word Δ–THETA etched into it.
Argus yanked the card and slipped it into the Pandora drive's side port.
The screen flared once bright, then dark then a log appeared:
Secondary Identity Injection Complete
Status: Passive Echo Active
Facial ID: Myles, Daniel
Conscious Access: Suppressed
Last Accessed Files:
– Pandora Cleanup Schedule – Tier 4
– Host Transfer Logs – Experimental Branch
– Failed Container: CHEN, BRIAN
Chen sucked in a sharp breath. "My brother."
Argus turned. "He wasn't random, Chen. He was a test."
She nodded once, but her hand was shaking.
The drive pulsed again.
A new prompt appeared:
Echo Extraction In Progress Host Vessel Compromised
Time Remaining: 00:02:51
"He's about to be overwritten," Argus muttered. "Or collapsed."
They had less than three minutes.
Chen moved to the chair, crouched in front of Myles. "Myles. Can you hear me?"
No response.
"Daniel listen to me. You don't have to fight it. Just focus on my voice."
His eyes twitched. Barely.
Argus pulled the panel off the desk terminal and yanked the relay cord directly from the main frame.
The tablet screen blinked.
The timer paused.
Extraction Interrupted. Error: LINK SOURCE LOST.
Myles blinked. Twice. Then gasped sucking in air like someone who hadn't breathed in hours.
"Wha" he croaked. "What... just happened?"
"You've been piggybacked," Argus said. "Your badge was used by something else."
"Something?" he asked, voice weak.
"Someone who used your face to look like they belonged."
Myles looked at Chen, then the card on the desk. His hands still trembled.
Chen stood. "You remember anything?"
Myles blinked again. "There was a mirror," he said slowly. "I looked in it, and... something looked back."
Argus pocketed the drive. "He's not stable. Not safe. If Theta makes another push, he'll fold again."
"We need to move," Chen said.
Myles stood slowly, still off-balance. "Where?"
Argus turned to answer
when the lights cut.
The hallway outside went black.
A power hum shifted. Not full shutdown a transfer.
Red emergency lights flared. The door behind them slammed shut.
On the drive:
NEW IDENTITY LINK DETECTED ECHO SIGNAL ALIGNED
Location: 23rd Precinct / Sublevel D / Classified Storage
They all looked at the screen.
Chen whispered, "There's no Sublevel D."
"There is now," Argus said. "And someone's already down there."
From behind the locked hallway door, a voice crackled through the speaker distorted, wrong, glitching between tones.
"You're late, Cutter. And I'm not alone this time."