POV: Wu Xinlei / Wang Yichen (intercut)
The click echoed in the silence. Not from the warehouse.
But, from Xinlei's laptop.
She froze. Not from fear. From recognition. The sound wasn't mechanical. It was personal.
She rewound the footage.
The grainy feed from the Echo Facility's sublevel. A figure moved through the dim corridors. The camera's angle caught only partial detail — tactical gloves, regulation boots, a mask. Identifiable by posture alone. Precise. Balanced. Ghostlike.
Echo.
Xinlei squinted, enhancing frame by frame. Something had bothered her for days. Jian's syndicate always ran cleaner footage. But this file had digital noise—intentional distortion, like someone tried to erase something.
And then she saw it.
A moment where Echo hesitated. Turned slightly.
His hand twitched. Not strategic. Reflexive. Like a glitch.
Inside the corridor, the lights flickered.
Yichen's boots made no sound. They never did. He was programmed that way.
But his mind was not.
"Echo, proceed to clearance chamber B."
The command echoed in his skull.
He turned left.
And paused.
There. A reflective surface. Just a steel panel.
But in it, his face was wrong.
His eyes stared back at him like he wasn't inside.
"Chēn-ge..."
The voice wasn't part of the mission.
It was soft. Female. Familiar. The kind of familiar that doesn't belong in controlled environments.
His hand reached up.
Pressed against the panel.
Blood.
Not his. A flash — red against water. A rooftop. A girl falling.
ERROR. SYSTEM LOOP INTERRUPTED
Xinlei jerked back from the screen.
She hit pause. Rewind. Zoomed in again.
The reflection.
His eyes weren't blank. They were panicked. Only for a second.
A glitch in human disguise.
She didn't breathe as she filtered through secondary logs.
Frame. Frame. There — he whispered something.
Her decryption AI scraped the audio layer.
"Chēn-ge..."
Her heart thudded.
That voice. Shuoran's.
She leaned forward, knuckles white against the desk.
"What the hell are you remembering, Yichen?"
Yichen's fingers trembled.
He didn't know the name.
He didn't know the girl.
But he knew the pain.
It was old. Deep. Worn into his muscle memory. Like a shadow he forgot to unlearn.
He saw the rooftop.
Rain. A girl in red.
He had failed her.
"You were supposed to protect her," a voice hissed from deep within his skull. His own voice.
"You let her die."
His knees hit the floor.
He didn't fall. He collapsed.
The steel corridor blurred.
Whose side are you on, Echo?
Echo?
That's not my name.
Then what is?
He didn't answer.
Because the name wouldn't come.
Only the scream did.
Xinlei slowly reached for her comm.
"Miss Red," she said quietly. Her voice was glass.
"You need to see something. And I need you to see it before it gets erased."
She copied the file to a hidden backup drive, fingers moving fast, fear sharpening her precision. A part of her wanted to scream. Another part... already knew.
Yichen wasn't gone.
And whatever was left inside him—it had remembered Shuoran.
Xinlei didn't even bother waiting for Shuoran to respond. The file would reach her in twenty-three seconds. In twenty-four, there would be a storm.
She stood from her desk, breath shallow, fingers numb.
And across the city, on the rooftop of the warehouse—
—Shuoran turned.
Too late.
Click.