The door sealed behind them with a vacuum hiss, no mechanical latch just pressure locking them inside.
Then the lights dimmed.
And the spools began to turn.
Dozens of them. Slow, deliberate revolutions. Each one humming on a separate axis, feeding memory threads into the system's inner network like veins pumping synthetic blood.
Argus pulled Chen close, backing them toward the center of the room.
The air thickened. Not heat compression. Electrostatic pressure. The kind you felt behind your eyes before a migraine or a bad memory.
Then the first illusion hit.
He blinked
And saw himself in an alley. Blood on his hands. A girl's voice screaming behind him. A body on the ground.
Except he didn't remember the job. Didn't know the victim.
But he felt the aftermath like it was his.
"No," he whispered.
Chen stumbled sideways, hand to her temple.
"Brian," she said under her breath. "I can hear him he's here."
She turned. Behind her, a glass wall had formed that wasn't there before. Beyond it: a white room. Her brother sat inside, head down, fingers twitching against his legs.
"Let him go," his voice echoed softly. "Let Cutter go, Amy."
"No," she said, louder now. "You're not him."
The memory flickered. The room bent.
The figure became Brian. Then became Lawson. Then Cutter.
Argus steadied her. "Don't trust what it shows."
The Ashbox Construct hadn't moved. Still standing calmly near the chair. But his voice rang out over the hum.
"You're inside the filter now. Your minds are mapped. Echoes recognize familiarity. They'll use your own guilt to soften the overwrite."
"What overwrite?" Argus shouted.
"The one that decides who walks out," the Construct said.
Then the system spoke in a flat, mechanical voice:
"Candidates Confirmed.
Argus Cutter – Full Sync Available.
Chen, Amy – Partial Host Anchor Detected.
Evaluation In Progress."
The lights flashed. Another vision.
This time Argus saw his old crew slumped in the back of a van. Faces half-burned. Glass embedded in their skulls. He was holding the remote. The bomb already armed.
He'd never pressed it.
Had he?
The scene faded. His hand trembled.
"They're not real," he muttered.
"No," the Construct said. "They're just versions of you the system wants to believe."
Chen stood in front of one of the spools. It was labeled:
Subject: Brian Chen / Echo Loop B / Fragment Stability: 27%
She turned to Argus. "He's in there. We can extract him."
"He's not whole," Argus said.
"He doesn't have to be." She pulled out the spool release tool from the terminal rack and jammed it into the access point. The reel began to slow.
Another illusion hit.
Argus now stood in Lawson's home. A family photo on the table. A birthday card in Lawson's handwriting. It read:
To Ethan,
If you ever feel like a stranger in your own body
just remember, this was always meant to be yours.
L.
He pulled back, gasping.
The projector voice whispered again:
"You are a replacement. You are a copy. You are excess."
"No," Argus growled.
He turned to the Construct. "Shut it off."
"I can't," the man said. "But you can redirect it."
"How?"
"You've got the Pandora drive. You have a falsified overwrite ID."
Chen's eyes shot to him. "You lied to the system?"
He pulled the Theta key from his coat. "I fed it a clone path. Told it I'd already been stored."
The Construct stepped forward.
"But you haven't," he said.
"I don't need to be," Argus replied. "Not if it thinks I am."
The Construct narrowed his eyes. "Then it'll look for a substitute."
"And it'll find you," Argus said.
The Construct blinked once.
"You redirect the overwrite into me, I'll absorb the sequence. The loop restarts, and you walk out with her brother."
The Construct hesitated. "That's not what this room was designed for."
"It is now."
Chen whispered, "Can it work?"
Argus looked at her. "It has to."
He stepped to the terminal and loaded the clone's ID as a target overwrite.
Redirected the memory dump to the Construct's profile string.
Hit confirm.
The spools slowed.
Brian's tag blinked.
STABILIZED – EXTRACTABLE
The Construct started to glitch eye twitching, voice cracking.
"You'll never know what parts of you it kept," he said.
Argus met his stare.
"I don't want to."
The chamber released.
The door slid open.
And standing there, framed in red light
Mirelli. Holding a new prototype drive.
Behind her, someone else stepped into view.
Lawson. Alive.
He stood just behind Mirelli in the corridor's red backlight, posture stiff, face unreadable. He wore NYPD plainclothes, sleeves rolled, hands empty. But Argus didn't miss the slight tilt of his head, the calculated scan of the room, or the way his feet were planted like he expected to move fast.
The man wasn't broken.
He was awake.
Chen stepped forward half a pace, but her gun stayed down.
Argus didn't move.
Mirelli broke the silence.
"I told you the overwrite was never about killing."
Her voice echoed off the metallic walls. Cool. Controlled.
"I preserved him," she said. "Same as I did for the rest. He was compliant, clean, cleared for overwrite. You just happened to be the stronger imprint."
Lawson looked at Argus without speaking.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
Argus's chest rose once then stilled.
"You kept him alive," he said flatly. "Why?"
"Because we needed to compare divergence," Mirelli said. "What happens when we split a body from its identity? What grows back when you take one half away?"
Chen stepped beside Argus. "You used him like storage."
"Don't make it sound cruel," Mirelli replied. "He's had no pain. No memory. No corruption."
Lawson finally spoke.
His voice was clear.
Unshaken.
"I remember everything now."
Argus stared at him.
"Even what you did with my hands."
There it was.
That flicker.
Not anger.
Not hate.
Just the quiet horror of someone who'd finally connected the gaps.
"You were in me," Lawson said.
Argus didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Mirelli stepped between them like a moderator at a trial.
"This is a moment of decision," she said. "Lawson is stable. Cutter is unstable. The Ashbox system chose who walks out. But the Vault chose who stays."
She raised the prototype drive.
"Both minds. One body. That's the offer."
Chen raised her pistol. "You combine them, you destroy both."
"No," Mirelli said. "They'll merge. Echo against echo. Let the stronger imprint win."
Argus took a step forward.
His eyes didn't leave Lawson's.
"You brought him back for this?"
"I never lost him," Mirelli said.
"You made a system that copies people and discards the rest like failed prints."
She didn't deny it.
Behind her, Lawson's hands curled slightly.
Not into fists.
Just tension.
Like someone caught between instincts.
"I'm not Cutter," he said. "And I'm not whoever I was before all this started."
Argus nodded.
"I know the feeling."
Then he reached into his coat slow and pulled out the Pandora drive.
Held it between them.
Mirelli raised her hand slightly. "That's not yours anymore."
Argus tilted his head. "No. But it knows me."
He tapped the side port and fed in the last command string he'd written in Ashbox.
The terminal behind him lit up.
Dual Identity Detected – Conflict Resolution Required
Candidate 1: Cutter (Overwrite Prime)
Candidate 2: Lawson (Preserved Identity)
"Choose," the system prompted.
Mirelli smiled. "Let the body decide."
But Chen didn't move.
She stepped to the side.
Raised her gun again.
"I choose him," she said.
Argus glanced at her.
Her grip didn't waver.
Mirelli frowned. "You don't get to decide."
"Neither do you."
Chen fired.
Not at Lawson.
At the prototype drive in Mirelli's hand.
It exploded in sparks, casing blown wide.
Mirelli cursed and stumbled back, clutching her arm.
The hallway plunged into red emergency lights.
From behind, the console sparked angry with command rejection.
Override Incomplete. Manual Selection Required.
Lawson stepped forward now closer to Argus.
"You don't want this," he said quietly.
"I didn't ask for any of it."
"I know," Lawson said. "So what happens now?"
Argus raised the Pandora drive. "Now we decide who the hell gets to walk out."
The chamber sealed behind them again.
From above, a hidden hatch opened
And a robotic voice announced:
"Final Host Selection Protocol Initiated."
"Memory Convergence Engaged."
Two men. One body.
And only one mind gets to stay.