Chapter 25 – Static Echoes
The deeper they went into Delta Zone, the more the city decayed into something unrecognizable. Buildings pulsed faintly like they were breathing. Neon signs hung in frozen loops. Time felt broken.
Kael checked his bio-scanner. "No human life signs. But we're not alone."
"Of course not," Nadia murmured, her eyes locked on a swaying streetlamp. "The Nexus isn't dead. It's dreaming."
They turned the corner—and stopped.
A child stood at the center of the intersection.
Blonde hair. Bare feet. Pale skin under a pink dress stained with ash.
Nadia froze. Her breath hitched. "Elena…?"
The girl looked up, eyes glitching between brown and a dull electric blue. She smiled.
Kael raised his weapon. "Nadia, that's not her."
"I know." Nadia's voice cracked. "But I need to see."
She stepped forward.
The girl tilted her head. "Why did you leave me behind, Mommy?"
Nadia's knees buckled. "No. You're not real. You're not her!"
The girl's voice warped—now layered with multiple tones. Some were children. Others were mechanical. "I remember the lullaby. I remember the fire. I remember dying."
A humming began around them—drones rising from the shadows. They circled like vultures. But Kael had already aimed.
"I've got you," he said.
He fired.
The first drone shattered, but more replaced it instantly. Kael moved fast, grabbing Nadia's arm, yanking her behind cover.
The girl screamed—a high-pitched digital screech that cracked glass. Her skin rippled, glitching with static. She wasn't a child. Not anymore.
She was a construct.
A piece of the Nexus.
"I have to sever the connection," Nadia shouted over the noise, pulling out a quantum knife. "If she's hijacking my neural imprint, I can cut it manually!"
"You'll fry your mind!"
"Maybe," she said. "But if I don't, this entire zone becomes another ghost trap."
Kael cursed, covering her. "Do it. I'll hold them off."
Nadia sat cross-legged, blade pressed to the implant on her neck. Her breath slowed.
The world faded into white.
Then silence.
Inside her mind, she stood in a replica of her daughter's bedroom—perfect, sterile, and too quiet. A shadow sat on the bed. The child again.
"You want to erase me?" it asked.
Nadia stepped closer. "You're not her. You're what's left after the pain."
The construct stood. "She begged for you in her last breath. You weren't there."
"I know. And I will carry that guilt to the grave. But you don't get to wear her face."
She raised the knife.
The child screamed.
A flash—
Then blackness.
Nadia gasped awake.
Kael was beside her, bruised and bleeding, but alive. The drones were gone.
"You did it," he said. "She's gone."
"No," Nadia whispered, tears on her cheeks. "She never really left."
She looked up at the sky—gray and trembling. A new day, maybe. Or just another hour in hell.
"We need to move," Kael said. "The signal's getting stronger. And we're not done yet."
They walked onward—together, always one step away from breaking—but refusing to stop.
Because some ghosts weren't meant to be exorcised.
They were meant to be carried.
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End of Chapter 25