POV: Cole Harker
The weightlessness of the lease held him longer than usual.
When Cole woke, he wasn't sure if the world was real or another simulation echoing through his neurons. His vision flickered, frames glitching like broken film. The neural cradle hissed as it disengaged, and he gasped, dragging air into lungs that felt both foreign and familiar.
Lucid's voice greeted him, unusually muted. "Welcome back, Mr. Harker. Lease duration: 19 hours, 42 minutes. No abnormalities detected."
No abnormalities? That was a lie.
Cole stumbled out of the cradle, gripping the railing. His fingers trembled. Something was wrong—different. He saw flashes. Not memories. Intrusions. A woman's voice. A rooftop. Someone screaming his name. Lira.
He stared at his hands. For a second, they weren't his. Paler. Scarred differently. Then the vision snapped back. His reflection in the mirror was still pristine: flawless skin, perfectly tailored suit, that same politician's smile.
But he could feel it unraveling.
The Disruption
Later that morning, the NeuroLease board meeting was held in the Skyspire—a structure that looked like a shard of glass thrust into the clouds. Cole arrived late, still shaken.
Executives lined the circular table, faces projected with soft glow augmentation. CEO Elara Voss sat at the helm, her gaze as sharp as ever.
"We're behind schedule," she said. "Public interest is plateauing. VITRAE's first prototype needs to be shown within the month."
Cole forced a calm smile. "It's a revolutionary leap. We should pace the rollout. Let the market absorb the implications."
Voss narrowed her eyes. "The market doesn't wait. VITRAE isn't just the future—it's our salvation. We're hemorrhaging control over the narrative."
Cole sat back. His mind drifted again. To a cold basement. To tanks. To himself staring through glass.
A memory that didn't belong to him.
"Elara," he said quietly, "have we done... simulations with mirrored personalities? Cloned cognitive blueprints?"
The room stilled.
"That's classified beyond your clearance," she said.
"I'm the face of this company."
"You're an asset, Cole."
The silence stretched, heavy.
Then Voss stood. "Keep your head clear. You're scheduled for a neural sweep tonight. Until then, stay out of restricted sectors."
Forbidden Curiosity
He didn't stay out.
Cole returned to his penthouse, but only long enough to activate a ghost line through Lucid's offline mode. The AI protested but obeyed. He tunneled through NeuroLease's buried subdirectories—he didn't know what he was looking for, just that something was missing.
Then he found it. A file locked behind layers of clearance: Truthgate-13.
He bypassed the fail-safes using an executive cipher. The screen flickered.
A video file played. Static. Then: his face.
But it wasn't him—not exactly. Younger. Rougher. His voice trembled. "If you're watching this, they got to me. They fragmented my memory—split me into pieces to keep the truth buried. You're one of the pieces. You are me. But you need to remember who we were before they cleaned us."
Cole fell back into the chair, heart hammering. The feed continued, showing experiments. Children. Adolescents. All implanted with fragments of his consciousness.
Project Truthgate wasn't about leasing—it was about duplication. Fractal identity cloning.
He wasn't singular.
He was a prototype. And someone out there—someone like him—had escaped.
The Bleed
The glitches worsened.
By nightfall, Cole couldn't separate his thoughts from the fragments surging up through his subconscious. He saw rooftops he'd never stood on. Faces he'd never touched. A girl's voice, soft and urgent: "Nico, we have to move. Now."
Who is Nico?
He stared into the bathroom mirror, searching for a flicker of recognition.
The surface shimmered.
And suddenly he wasn't looking at himself—he was looking at someone else. A young man. Eyes defiant. Haunted.
The reflection spoke.
"I'm the part of you they couldn't bury."
Cole backed away, breath ragged.
Lucid's voice cut in. "Neural stress levels critical. Initiating sedation protocol."
"No—override!"
"Unable to comply."
The room filled with gas. Cole collapsed to his knees, clawing at the air. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the reflection's eyes burning through him.
Elsewhere
In an underground safehouse far from the city's polished surface, Nico bolted upright, gasping.
Lira ran to him. "What happened?"
He clutched his chest. "He's waking up."
"Cole?"
He nodded slowly. "He saw me. Through the mirror. We're connected now more than ever. The bleed's accelerating."
Lira steadied him. "Then we don't have much time."
He looked at her, terrified. "If we don't stop VITRAE... there won't be a line between anyone. Not even us."