Amy Chen didn't breathe at first.
The chamber lights dimmed, then narrowed, then focused all beams converging on her.
She didn't move.
Couldn't.
Across the room, Argus struggled to stay upright, blood dried across his temple, one hand bracing against the wall. Behind him, Lawson was slumped near the collapsed pod rack, blinking but barely responsive.
Zero was still.
Still smirking.
Still confident.
But the system wasn't looking at him anymore.
The main console glowed a soft yellow.
Her name sat dead center.
CANDIDATE: CHEN, AMY
Status: Unmodified / Stable / Compatible
Authority Transfer: 97%
Final Host Selection Engaged.
She stared at it, mouth dry, hands cold.
"This isn't this wasn't supposed to be me."
No one answered.
Argus coughed once, the sound ragged. "It wasn't supposed to be anyone."
Zero stepped forward with the grace of someone still in control. "That's not true. You were flagged months ago. The system has always had a fallback option in case both dominant minds failed to converge."
"I'm not a host," she snapped.
"No. You're better. You're human," he said. "A stable one. A mind that hasn't fractured. That's why Ashbox chose you."
The console chimed again.
Awaiting decision input.
Chen's throat tightened.
Lawson tried to speak. "Amy…"
His voice was weak.
Broken.
Her name didn't sound right coming from him.
Zero tilted his head. "You want your brother back? You want the full version the part the loop couldn't reconstruct? Let me finish the merge. He passed through me. I held the final trace."
Argus looked up. "Don't trust him. He'll gut the whole system and call it healing."
Zero smiled wider. "She doesn't have a choice."
The console flashed again.
Merge option: CUTTER + LAWSON + ZERO
Failsafe override: CHEN, AMY
Proceed with manual authority input.
Chen swallowed hard.
"I don't want your mind," she said quietly. "I don't want anyone's."
She stepped closer to the control panel.
One line blinked at her, soft and pulsing.
Final Override Key Required.
Her hands trembled as she reached inside her coat. Pulled out the old key her brother's ID badge, worn thin from years clipped to the same lanyard. The photo was scratched, but his eyes were still clear.
She looked at Zero. "You said you have what's left of him?"
"I do," he said.
"Then let's find out."
She crossed the room to the final rack and tore open the backup spool archive. Inside: ten reels, blinking in red and green. Only one carried her brother's tag.
She slid it into the reader.
A soft whir.
A blink.
Then
Brian's voice filled the room.
"If you're hearing this… they didn't fix it.
Amy, they told me I could help people. That I could be part of something big.
But it was never about helping. They used me. I'm not whole anymore.
Don't try to bring me back.
Just shut it all down."
The file ended.
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Chen stared at the floor, the reader, her own hands. She blinked hard.
"I'm not saving anyone," she said. "I'm stopping everyone else from being taken."
Zero's smile cracked.
"You do this," he warned, "you kill every archived mind in the system including him."
"I already lost him."
She stepped back to the terminal.
Typed.
Command: CANCEL MERGE
Command: WIPE ECHO MEMORY STRUCTURE
Command: LOCK HOST CONTROL CHEN, AMY
The system paused.
For a moment, everything pulsed red.
Then
Green.
Override accepted. All convergence halted.
Final host authority: CHEN, AMY
System core unlocked.
The room exhaled.
Zero stepped back, stunned. "You don't know what you've done."
She stared at him. "You're wrong."
"I just gave this place its first conscience."
The floor panel beneath the console clicked. A hidden hatch slid open revealing stairs that led down into darkness. A final chamber. One only host-authority could access.
Chen looked over her shoulder.
"I'm going alone."
Argus didn't stop her.
Chen stepped down the hidden stairwell, boots thudding softly against the old metal grating. The light from the chamber above faded fast, replaced by a cold blue glow pulsing up from below slow and alive, like a heart buried deep in concrete.
She descended alone.
The further she went, the tighter the air felt. Not claustrophobic more like pressure. Like this part of the facility existed outside the rules of the rest. No cameras. No doors. No doors, because there had never been visitors.
At the bottom, the steps ended in a narrow tunnel.
Old.
Unmarked.
Wires ran overhead in uneven bundles, zip-tied to rusted hooks. The walls were reinforced, patched in places with older alloys some scratched with handwritten numbers and notes in faded black ink.
Pre-Pandora. Pre-Vault. This wasn't a lab. This was a lockbox.
Chen moved slowly, pistol at her side, but grip steady now. Her brother's voice still echoed in the back of her mind.
Don't try to bring me back.
Just shut it all down.
She reached a steel door with a simple red-lit scanner beside it.
No fingerprint.
Just a badge reader.
She took a breath and slid Brian's ID through the slot.
It beeped once.
Green.
The door hissed and opened inward.
Chen stepped into a room no larger than a shipping container.
Inside: one chair. One wall of terminals.
And a single upright tank at the center filled with cloudy fluid.
A figure floated inside.
Not moving.
Not breathing.
Male.
Not Cutter. Not Lawson.
Older.
Mid-forties. Gaunt. Tubes ran from his skull into the base of the tank. A wire rack extended into his spine.
His eyes were closed.
Above the tank, a plaque:
PROJECT NAME: MIRRORZERO
Operator: Sasha Mirelli
Function: Seed Origin | Emergency Authority Backup
Status: DORMANT
Chen stepped closer to the terminal.
The interface flickered on automatically, recognizing her presence.
Lines of unreadable code flashed then minimized.
A prompt appeared.
Hello, Amy Chen.
Your authority has been recognized.
You may access the final directive of the Reclaimer Protocol.
She tapped it.
A log file opened.
Audio first. Mirelli's voice.
"To whoever's listening… if you're down here, I'm either dead or you've locked me out. Which means you think you're in control.
You're not.
This facility was never meant to protect minds. It was meant to replace them.
We failed with Cutter. Failed with Lawson. But MirrorZero… MirrorZero was different.
We didn't just archive his mind. We wrote code into it. We taught him to evolve.
He doesn't need a name. He doesn't need a past.
When everything else collapses, he becomes the fallback.
You'll know he's awake when the city stops recognizing you."
Chen stared at the tank.
The fluid was moving faster now.
The figure's eyes still closed but fingers twitched.
The monitor blinked.
ALERT: MirrorZero Neural Activity Detected.
Auto-Reinstatement Countdown: 00:05:00
She turned to the terminal.
The only options now were:
Terminate Vessel
Transfer to External Host
She reached for the control.
And stopped.
On the side of the tank, a smaller label blinked on.
Handwritten.
Scanned from some old file.
Three words:
"Argus Cutter Alpha."
Chen's breath caught.
This wasn't just a backup.
This wasn't just a fallback.
This was the first Cutter.
Before overwrite.
Before memory loops.
Before he ever died.
Mirelli hadn't stored Cutter's memory after the fact.
She had built him from this.
A clean copy.
One waiting to be deployed when all else failed.
One that hadn't lived through any of this.
No regret. No past. Just potential.
Just execution.
The system pinged again.
Terminate Vessel
Transfer to External Host
Authority countdown: 00:04:18
She stared at the screen.
Outside, she could hear bootsteps. Argus was coming down the stairs. Maybe Lawson too. Maybe someone else.
The chamber lights dimmed again.
Then the tank hissed.
And the figure inside opened his eyes.
They were Argus's eyes but colder.
Empty.
Clean.
And focused directly on her.