POV: Cole Harker
He's not supposed to remember this part.
The transfer is meant to be clean—full consciousness suspended, neural imprint stored in cryo-partition, and a temporary bridge body leased for a curated, anonymized experience. No bleeding, no memory crossover. That's the guarantee.
But something is wrong.
Cole wakes not with clarity, but with disorientation. The world stutters like a corrupted file. Sound arrives in slices—his own breathing is too fast, too loud. His skin doesn't feel like his own. And the air smells wrong: acidic, burnt, real.
The lease interface isn't there.
There's no boot-up script, no orientation menu, no avatar stabilizer. Just... raw sensation. Panic wells in his chest. He jerks upright and hits his head on something hard—metal. Around him, he sees rust, condensation, pipes.
He's in a basement.
What kind of reset experience is this?
"Session assist," he says aloud. "Lucid, begin debrief."
Nothing.
Not even static.
Cole scrambles to his feet. The body he's in feels… off. Taller, leaner. Left knee stiff. He limps toward the cracked mirror hanging above a workbench—and stops cold.
The reflection staring back is not his.
It's a gaunt young man with sharp cheekbones and a faint scar under the eye. Brown eyes. Not blue. Definitely not polished. This isn't a custom-leased vessel. This is a real person.
And Cole is trapped inside him.
Internal Malfunction
He paces, panicked, hands trembling. This isn't just a memory bleed. It's a systemic failure. Somehow, his consciousness—his neural imprint—has overridden a live host. Not a proxy. Not a simulation.
A real person.
And not by choice.
This is impossible.
Lease protocols have safeguards. Failsafes. Regulatory partitions to prevent full consciousness transference outside the cradle environment. The only time a full overwrite is authorized is in military black-ops tech—and that was mothballed after the backlash.
So how the hell did he do it?
The last thing he remembers clearly is sliding into the cradle for a routine reset. He picked a 48-hour off-grid simulation. A nameless, faceless nobody in some undercity zone. Something different. Something realer.
But instead of exiting safely, he's stuck. Not as a tourist—as a hijacker.
System Access Denied
He tries activating the fail-safe recall, which is hard-coded into every NeuroLease user's cortex. A mental trigger phrase, unique and unspoken.
"Primus Lock. Restore original imprint. User: Cole Harker."
Nothing.
No flicker. No transition.
Just the cold hum of the room around him.
Someone's severed the tether.
The realization hits like a punch. He's cut off from the network. Unanchored. A ghost in someone else's shell—and no way back.
He slumps against the wall, sweat beading along his forehead. This body is breaking down. Or maybe it's his mind.
What's worse, he's not alone.
Inside the unfamiliar skull, there's another presence. Silent now, but aware. Like two people jammed into the same room, circling each other.
Glitch Echoes
He starts to see things.
Not hallucinations—fragments. Flash-memories of this body's real owner. A narrow hallway lined with blinking server lights. A girl's laughter echoing through static. A smell: engine oil and lavender.
Cole gasps.
That wasn't his.
It was Nico's.
He remembers the name, though he shouldn't. The boy from the NeuroLease underground. A known hacker and resistance sympathizer. On the watchlist. Supposed to be monitored.
And now… Cole is inside him.
How the hell did our streams cross?
Unless… unless this wasn't an accident. Unless someone did this to him.
Someone who knew how to breach the NeuroLease framework.
Someone like Echo Root.
The Identity War
The days blur. Time means nothing when every moment feels like your mind is fraying.
Sometimes, he slips. Mid-thought, mid-motion—he's no longer himself. He reaches for a cup with a hand that shakes in the wrong way. He answers a question before it's asked. And sometimes, he hears his own voice—but it's Nico's words coming out.
They're merging.
Cole tries to write things down. Anchor points. Facts.
My name is Cole Harker.
I am the CEO of NeuroLease.
I was born in New Lyra, District Solace.
I am 37.
My mind is my own.
Each time he reads the words, they feel fainter. Like they belong to someone else. Like he's reciting a part he's forgotten how to play.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments, a thought pierces the fog:
What if Nico's not the echo?
What if I am?
Infiltration
Eventually, he's found—dragged out of the underlevel hideout by two masked rebels with stun batons. They don't recognize him as Cole. Why would they? He looks like Nico. Talks like Nico—sometimes.
They think he's been compromised by the bleed. They don't realize they're dealing with something worse.
They drag him to an abandoned datacenter turned makeshift safehouse, where a girl with sharp eyes and synthetic tattoos scans him. Lira.
Cole knows her from surveillance. Echo Root lieutenant. Dangerous.
She leans in, narrowing her eyes. "You don't look right."
He shrugs. "Guess I'm not."
"You're supposed to be Nico Varn."
"Yeah?" He forces a smile. "Tell him to stop borrowing my mind."
Lira stiffens.
"You shouldn't know that name."
"I shouldn't know a lot of things."
He watches her process it, that flicker of doubt in her eyes.
"You're not Nico."
"No," he says. "And I think Nico isn't entirely Nico either. We've got a bit of a… housing crisis up here."
Dual Crisis
They lock him up, of course. No one believes him. Not yet.
But he doesn't panic.
Because now, he understands.
He is the virus. The anomaly. The glitch in the goddamn system.
Somewhere in his last lease, something went wrong—or maybe, something went right in a way it never should have.
The NeuroLease imprint system has a flaw.
And he found it by becoming it.
But the problem is no longer technological.
It's existential.
Because the longer he stays in Nico's body, the more he loses himself. The boundaries blur. The personalities intertwine.
Memories reshape each other like melted wax figures being forced into the same mold.
And the worst part?
Sometimes he agrees with Nico.
About the ethics. About the system. About everything.
And that's the scariest glitch of all.