There's a moment right after you decide to fight back when the universe takes a breath.Everything goes quiet, street noise, inner doubts, even the beat of your own pulse.Then reality crashes in harder than before.
I kicked open Aomi's safe‑room door and felt the first punch of adrenaline. Rain hammered the alley, puddles rippling neon pink and lime‑green. My communicator chimed: "Unknown signals nearby. Scrambling ID."
Good. Let them hunt a ghost tonight.
"Adam!" Aomi's voice followed me into the downpour. "Wait.... "
But waiting is what got me killed the first hundred times.
Two blocks away, twin drones sliced through the sky like matte‑black razors. Their optic lenses glowed red, painting alley walls with cross‑hairs. They weren't Sparta patrol units; their serial codes pulsed in a restricted wavelength, the kind reserved for off‑books operations.
In Pandora X, that could mean only one client: Sapiens Internal Security, the people who "correct" mistakes before the public learns they exist.
The drones locked on to Adam's biometrics, closed in, and readied dart guns loaded with neural‐synapse disruptors. One hit and a clone's memory could be wiped like cheap graffiti.
I skidded under a hanging vendor sign "Authentic Childhood Memories, Half‑Price!" and yanked the disconnector puck from my belt. Two seconds to charge. One.
The drones swung level with my head. I slammed the puck against the wall. EMP shockwave, three‑meter radius. My jaw clenched as the surge rattled my teeth.
Whummp—both drones spasmed, lights flickered, rotors stalled. They careened into opposite walls, metal screeching, igniting trash fires in the puddles.
"Overkill," I muttered, but I'd take the win.
Aomi caught up, breathless. "You said not alone. Remember?"
I stared at her, water streaming down her hood. Behind her, the vendor snatched up his memory vials and scrambled for cover. Pandora never paused for drama.
"We need intel," I said. "Real proof. Sapiens HQ keeps clone‑tracking logs on a dark‑fiber archive called the Mausoleum. If I reach it, I can pull the orders on Zen Zero's hit."
She wiped rain from her lips. "That vault's under Sparta‑Three jurisdiction. Even Sparta‑Two agents need triple clearance."
"I'm banking on old friends," I replied, though what I really meant was old nightmares.
Getting out of Pandora X took more than luck. The main mag‑rail checkpoints flagged every departing clone for contraband and illegal memories. Adam chose the sewer lines instead, veins of forgotten infrastructure that flowed beneath the neon city like black arteries.
Aomi followed, boots sloshing through ankle‑deep runoff, nose wrinkling at the chemical musk. She watched him in the dim glow of his wrist‑light: jaw set, eyes distant, a man building walls around grief even as he charged toward it.
Aboveground, night deepened and the rain eased. The city's pulse slowed, but the digital tableau inside Adam's communicator flared bright. He'd cracked an admin shell, ghost access left over from his Spartan training years.
Lines of code scrolled, and a single phrase blinked:
"Proxy link established: user 141."
Fifty kilometers away, Lieutenant Klim sat alone in a decommissioned troop carrier, wrists still bandaged from Adam's earlier "interview." He nursed a bitter grin; painkillers dulled the throbbing, but not the humiliation.
His communicator chimed, an encrypted channel, signature 141.
Klim's grin faded. 141 was supposed to be Adam's Spartan designation, revoked years ago.
A terse message popped up: "Need a favor. Mausoleum gate pass. One‑time. Now."
Klim hesitated. Helping Adam meant betraying Sapiens. But payback has flavors money can't buy.
He spat blood, typed a string of override codes, and hit send.
"Enjoy your suicide mission."
Unexpected allies come dressed as enemies.
Klim's pass lit up my HUD: a route through Sector Delta's forgotten service tunnels—straight to the Mausoleum's sub‑entrance.
"Got our key," I told Aomi.
She raised an eyebrow. "From who?"
"A ghost I left unfinished."
"Adam… when this is over, what happens to us?"
I kept my eyes on the map. "First we survive the night. Then we find out."
Truth is, I didn't have an us in any future I'd envisioned. But her question planted a seed the system never accounted for... hope.
The Mausoleum rose out of the desert like a metallic monolith, miles of mirrored tiers vanishing into a storm‑lit horizon. Lightning stitched the sky, reflecting off its razor‑sharp edges.
Security nets shimmered-blue hex‑fields swaying in the wind. But Adam and Aomi emerged beneath them, having followed an old maintenance bore that terminated under Tier 3.
Inside, the air tasted sterile, recycled every forty‑two minutes, the way Sapiens liked their secrets: cold and clinical.
Hallways lined with frost‑white LED strips converged at a vault door—adamantine alloy, DNA‑coded lock. Beside it, a retinal scanner awaited a Sparta‑Three imprint.
Aomi whispered, "We don't have that clearance."
Adam slipped Klim's code on a shard‑drive into the port. Lights cycled from red to amber, then to green. The vault hissed open.
"Klim never disappoints when he's angry," Adam said.
Rows of glass sarcophagi stretched into darkness. Each pod held a humming data crystal—one life per shard, one ledger of every movement and memory a clone ever recorded.
Ghosts in data.
I located the section labeled "Zen Series / Zero‑Class." Twelve crystals glowed. I slid the thirteenth into the rack—the one Aomi had smuggled on the data‑rod.
A prompt appeared:
"Merge instance? Y/N."
I hit Y.
Files fused—memory with metadata, video with telemetry. The truth assembled itself frame by damning frame: purchase orders for the assassination drone, signed by Sheehan / Sparta‑Three, countersigned Russell / Internal Security. Mission objective: "Silence entangled anomalies. Maintain narrative integrity."
They'd killed Zen Zero, then spun me as the aggressor. A perfect loop: blame the clone you control, bury the clone you fear.
My hands shook, anger, vindication, maybe both. I copied everything to my communicator. Then I armed the rack's self‑destruct. No one else was dying for their cover‑ups.
"Done," I told Aomi.
But an alarm began to howl, high, shrill, hungry.
Red strobes flooded the corridor. Auto‑turrets unfolded from the ceiling, barrels tracking motion. A metallic voice boomed:
"Security breach detected. Lethal protocol engaged."
Adam grabbed Aomi's wrist. "Back to the shaft, now!"
They sprinted between glass coffins as gunfire erupted, shattering pods, memories splintering into holographic dust. One turret clipped Adam's shoulder; nanoweave coat absorbed the worst, but blood still bloomed down his sleeve.
Aomi skidded, slammed a panel, and yanked an emergency purge lever. Halon gas vented, clouding lasers, choking sensors. Turrets sputtered, choked, stalled.
They dove into the maintenance tube just as the vault door slammed shut behind them, boom.... sealing the screams of ruptured ghosts inside.
Pain flared hot, but purpose burned hotter. She asked what happens after.
After starts now.
I sent the evidence packet to every open node on the city mesh, black‑market feeds, citizen boards, even Sparta‑One training hubs. Data wants to be free; truth wants to ignite.
My communicator pinged with transmission reports: "Copy complete… copy complete… copy complete…"
Let Sheehan drown in the flood.
High above the city, in an office of obsidian glass, Sheehan watched warnings cascade across eight holo‑screens. Unauthorized data bursts. His signature on every kill order now public.
A single line of text overlaid each feed:
"THE DEAD REMEMBER."
Sheehan's jaw tightened. "Bring me Subject 141. Alive or in pieces. Don't care which."
Outside, dawn bled over the horizon, pale light washing the city's neon sins. Sirens wailed far behind us; drones crisscrossed the skyline searching for yesterday's version of me.
But that Adam was gone.
I had my proof. I had Aomi at my side. And I had one last mission:
Make the world remember what they tried to forget.
Even if I had to die, again, to write it into history.
This time, I'd make sure death stuck…to all the right people.