Silence.
Not the kind born of peace but of obliteration. The kind that stretches forever, where even the concept of sound feels like a myth.
Liam floated in it or something that used to be Liam. His body was gone, stripped apart at the atomic level, yet awareness persisted. Not pain. Not breath. Just being.
Then came the light.
It wasn't outside him, it was him. His consciousness glowed, pulsing in slow waves, scattering across what looked like an endless sea of fractured code. Streams of data shimmered like constellations, each one a fragment of a memory: faces, orders, gunfire, screams, laughter dissolving as soon as he reached for them.
[SYSTEM CORE: Disconnected.]
[User consciousness: unstable.]
[Reconstructing neural pattern… failed.]
The words flickered in the air around him, projected from nowhere and everywhere at once.
He turned or thought he did and saw something that wasn't supposed to exist: himself, floating across from him. A mirrored copy, perfect and hollow. But its eyes were blank, its voice mechanical.
"You are the last echo of the weapon called Liam Blackwood," it said.
"Purpose: terminated."
Liam's echo-voice rasped back, raw with confusion.
"Then why am I still here?"
The figure tilted its head. "Because you refused to die obediently."
The world flickered. Lightning arcs of code spiraled around him, pulling images from the void: laboratories drenched in sterile white, soldiers screaming under bright lights, Captain Varic watching from behind a glass wall.
Then another presence stirred in the static softer, deeper, like an ocean breathing beneath a storm.
"Rebirth Protocol complete… searching for viable host…"
The voice wasn't quite the System anymore. It carried an echo of warmth, a strange melancholy, like something trying to understand emotion through binary language.
"Subject: Elias Torvic. Cadet class.
Age: 19.
Neural capacity: compatible.
Fragility level: 92%. Commencing transference."
A vortex of light opened beneath him, pulling everything downward. Liam tried to resist tried to cling to what was left of his self but the pull was inexorable. He was being downloaded into a storm, drawn through a tunnel of burning data.
As he fell, fragments of himself began to shed: memories, instincts, guilt. Each fragment screamed in silence, vanishing into the black.
And through it all, he heard the System's last whisper, almost tender:
"Remember who you were. Even if you must become something else."
The light shattered.
He fell.
Then..... air.
Cold, heavy, real air slammed into his lungs. He gasped violently, coughing, choking, clutching at his chest. His eyes snapped open.
Fluorescent lights. White ceiling. The sterile scent of disinfectant and rust.
Liam Blackwood was gone.
A young man lay on a bunk bed, wearing a cadet's uniform soaked in sweat, his body trembling as though it had just been struck by lightning.
Elias Torvic.
He sat up too fast, dizziness spiraling through him. The room around him was small, utilitarian grey lockers, steel desks, and rows of unmade beds. The hum of a ventilation unit filled the silence.
His reflection caught his eye, a narrow mirror bolted to the wall.
For a moment, he didn't recognize the face staring back.
Pale. Gaunt. Human. But in the eyes a flash of something else, golden and burning.
Elias clutched his head as a surge of memories not his own crashed through his mind, gunfire, sterile laboratories, blood, and a name that pulsed behind his eyes like a forgotten command:
Liam Blackwood.
He stumbled off the bed, his knees buckling. The other cadets in the dormitory were asleep, shadows under dim light. He pressed a trembling hand to the mirror, staring into those alien eyes.
"Who… who are you?" he whispered.
And then the whispers began.
Not through the System.
Through his mind.
Voices, distorted but familiar Kira's voice screaming his name, the System calling his ID, Captain Varic's cold tone echoing commands.
He gritted his teeth, shaking, his pulse racing. The mirror fogged with his breath, and behind his reflection, another shape moved.
A shadow.
His own silhouette standing independently behind him for a fraction of a second, then fading.
He spun around. Nothing. Only the hum of air vents and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
He staggered to the window and looked outside. The academy yard stretched beneath the cold moonlight, recruits marching, instructors barking orders. Everything looked… normal.
But inside his head, something whispered in two voices:
Elias's confusion, and Liam's silent fury.
His hand clenched unconsciously, muscles tensing with strength that shouldn't exist in a cadet's frame. The bedpost near him bent under his grip, the metal squealing softly.
He looked at his palm, horrified.
"What's happening to me…?"
No answer came, And then a voice outside the door.
"Torvic! Lights out! You'll need your strength for tomorrow's drill."
He froze. His heart thundered. For a second, he could hear the guard's heartbeat on the other side of the wall, as clearly as his own. His senses sharpened too sharp. His pupils dilated, catching faint golden reflections.
Something was changing.
He turned slowly toward the mirror again.
His reflection stared back and smiled, though he hadn't.
The light flickered.
Elias gasped, stumbling backward as the reflection whispered in a voice that wasn't his low, calm, and inhumanly steady:
"You thought death could erase me?"
The mirror cracked.
And with that single fracture, Liam Blackwood lived again.