The skyline of New Lyra shimmered in distorted waves from the Penthouse tower's window, a vision painted in glass and steel—and yet Cole Harker couldn't tell if it was the world that was warping or just his perception of it.
He stood perfectly still, one hand resting against the window as the city buzzed below him, veins of neon and synthetic life stretching into a tangled glow. Everything looked as it should. Perfect. Untouchable. But something inside him was starting to crack.
The meeting with the board had been a blur—numbers, projections, praise, and soft threats. He remembered laughing at one point. Or maybe someone else had. His memories had begun to smear together like wet paint. His reflection in the window didn't quite match what he expected. The tie was his. The tailored suit. But the eyes that stared back at him—they didn't blink when he did.
Lucid's voice broke through the silence like a whisper from the walls. "Cole, your vitals show elevated stress levels. Would you like a sedative or guided neural meditation?"
"No," he muttered, stepping back. "Silence, Lucid."
The AI complied, and the room went eerily quiet.
He moved toward the liquor shelf, hands trembling. Something was wrong. The Neural Cradle session last week—he hadn't fully come back from it. At first, he thought it was simple exhaustion. A hangover from the borrowed body. But now, hours… days later, he still woke up forgetting where he was. Who he was.
Not forgetting like a lapse.
Forgetting like someone else was in there.
He poured a drink. Didn't taste it. His fingers drifted unconsciously toward the back of his neck, tracing the almost invisible scar left by the earliest version of NeuroLease he ever used. The original implant. Before it went commercial. Before the world bought into it.
It pulsed.
He stumbled to the mirror in the hall.
"You're fine," he told himself. "You're Cole Harker. You built this. You're not losing control."
The mirror fractured—not literally, but in his vision. His face split into four, five versions of himself, each tilting their head at slightly different angles.
A whisper crept up from behind his thoughts.
Who were you before the mirrors?
His breath caught. That message. The one he'd dismissed.
He leaned forward, gripping the sink beneath the mirror.
"Lucid," he snapped. "Run full identity diagnostic."
The AI didn't respond.
He turned around, but the room was empty. Then a shadow passed behind the glass wall. When he spun, no one was there. And yet… he could feel them.
Voices that weren't his. Images. A child crying in a desert shack. A woman running through a rain-soaked alley. A hand clutching a bloodied contract. None of them were real. None of them were his.
Except—
They were.
Fragments of leased lives. Backup copies. Admin overrides. His status as CEO gave him unprecedented access. He could sample anything. Dip into any life. For fun. For empathy. For control.
And now, those lives were leaking.
He collapsed onto the cold floor, breath short, pulse spiking. Flashes. He couldn't tell what was memory and what was artifact.
He saw a woman's hands tied with fiber cord. A father whispering goodbye to his daughter. An old man signing a lease contract with shaking fingers.
Cole clutched his head, the pain searing behind his eyes. "Stop... STOP."
He slammed his fist into the floor until he felt the skin break.
Lucid blinked back to life.
"Cole, emergency neural activity detected. Initiating emergency override."
"NO!"
He stumbled to his feet, staggering toward the secure server port behind his desk. The override would erase the leakage. Strip the borrowed fragments. Reduce him to factory settings. Blank out the noise.
But that wasn't an option.
Because deep down, a part of him didn't want to forget.
Cole fumbled with the console, bypassing the safety protocols. He ran a raw diagnostic himself—a dangerous move, even for him.
The data came in jagged bursts:
Conscious Host Signature: Inconsistent
Overlay Personalities Detected: 17
Fragmentation Ratio: 43.6%
Root ID Integrity: Degrading
His core identity was unraveling. Not just splintering, but competing.
He fell back into his chair, sweat dripping from his brow.
Then, a flicker on the screen.
A message.
FROM: UNKNOWN
Subject: CONTINUUM
"You were never supposed to be the host, Cole. You were supposed to be the gate."
His blood ran cold.
Continuum. He remembered that name. A shelved project. One only a few people at the top even knew about. NeuroLease had pitched it as a side experiment in multi-consciousness integration. Experimental empathy modules. The future of collective minds.
But they never told him he was part of it.
Or worse—the centerpiece.
He reached for his private comm-link. It was time to call someone he hadn't spoken to in years.
"Contact: Elian Varas."
Lucid stalled. "Error. No active line available. Subject: Elian Varas presumed deceased."
"Override protocol. Run encrypted trace. Level Nine."
The system hesitated.
Then blinked.
Trace initialized.
Cole leaned back, body trembling. If Elian was alive… he'd know what to do.
And if he was dead, then Cole was well and truly alone.
The city shimmered again in the windows. But now, the lights looked wrong. Off-kilter. Like a city built on false memories.
Cole pressed his hand to the glass.
"Who am I becoming?" he whispered.
No answer.
Only static.