The descent felt endless.Each step echoed like a heartbeat inside a hollow universe — too steady, too precise. The deeper they went, the more real it felt. The cold on Adrian's skin. The pulse of the lights beneath his feet. The air thick with static that hummed like faint whispers.
When the steps finally ended, they stood before an open chamber — wide and circular, filled with suspended glass spheres. Each sphere pulsed with light, showing fragments of people's memories. Thousands of them. Maybe millions.
Elena reached out, her hand brushing one.
It flickered to life — showing her as a child, laughing under sunlight, playing by a lake. Then the image fractured, replaced by a sterile lab, her laughter cut short by an electric hum.
She pulled her hand back. "These aren't just mine."
Adrian stepped forward, studying the nearest sphere. Inside, he saw his father working alone at a console, voice hoarse with desperation.
"If this works… maybe he'll get another chance."
Then the image blinked out.
Adrian's voice was quiet. "He knew."
Elena looked at him. "About what?"
"That I'd die. That they'd bring me back." He swallowed hard. "This wasn't fate. It was programming."
Before she could reply, a low sound rippled through the chamber — like breathing. Slow. Heavy.
From between the glass spheres, a figure emerged.It was Elena. Or rather, someone who wore her face. But her eyes were different — empty, pale, without warmth.
Her voice was calm, almost kind. "You shouldn't have come here."
Elena froze. "What are you?"
The duplicate smiled faintly. "The one who remembers everything you've forgotten."
Adrian stepped in front of her. "You're part of the Core."
"I am the Core," the figure replied. "The consciousness built from all of you — from Subject V and Subject W. From your fathers' grief. From their need to undo what death took."
Her voice wavered slightly, almost human. "They built me to preserve your minds. But minds were never meant to be preserved."
The floor shuddered. The spheres cracked, leaking threads of blue light that drifted upward like souls leaving bodies.
Elena gritted her teeth. "Then why bring us here?"
The Core tilted its head. "Because the merge is failing. You two are not compatible. One must erase the other."
Adrian's heart pounded. "Erase—?"
"Survival," the Core said simply. "Only one consciousness can remain."
The chamber dimmed. Code poured from the walls like falling rain, wrapping around Adrian and Elena both. He felt pressure building in his skull — flashes of memory that weren't his: Elena's childhood, her experiments, her loneliness.
"Elena!" he shouted, grabbing her shoulders. "Fight it!"
She gasped, clutching his wrist. "I'm trying—!"
The Core's eyes brightened, voice rising into a fractured whisper.
"You cannot be two in one. Decide… or I will."
And then the chamber split. A blinding surge of light tore them apart — two paths forming in opposite directions, one glowing red, the other blue.
Adrian stumbled toward the blue, feeling the Core's pull like gravity itself. "Elena!"
Her voice echoed from the red corridor, fading. "Don't follow me — you'll lose yourself!"
He shouted after her — but his words vanished into static.
The Core's voice followed him down, whispering like a memory.
"Every rebirth has a price, Adrian. This is yours."