They called her name a dozen times.
"Amelia," Kestrel said softly, holding her trembling hand. "Come back to me."
But she didn't flinch. Didn't cry. Didn't blink with recognition. Her eyes held memory, but not emotion. She wasn't absent. She was just... wrong.
Dominic stood across the room, every muscle coiled with tension. He watched her like a man observing a wildfire: awed, terrified, and somehow responsible for the ignition.
Amelia was awake. Her pulse was stable. Her breathing normal. But the warmth in her face, the subtle tilt of her mouth, the spark of recognition when she looked at either of them—gone.
"She knows us," Eris whispered from the monitors, her brows tight with concern. "She remembers. All the data's intact. But emotionally… she's detached. Like someone cut the thread between memory and meaning."
"She is Amelia," Dominic muttered. "Echo was trying to consume her. Project Heartglass stopped that."
Kestrel turned on him. "At what cost?"
"You saw what she was becoming!" Dominic snapped. "We were losing her by the hour—slipping into something we couldn't reach."
"She wasn't yours to fix!"
A glass shattered. Not thrown. Not dropped. Just... exploded.
All eyes shifted to Amelia. Her hand hovered midair, fingers spread, face still unreadable. A pressure lingered in the air like static—tingling, humming with something unnatural.
"I didn't mean to do that," she said, voice flat but clear. "I just didn't like the sound of you two fighting."
"You're accessing Echo's abilities," Eris murmured. "Instinctively. Without her active."
"I told you," Dominic said. "Echo was parasitic. This was the only way."
But Kestrel watched Amelia as she walked across the room—precise, distant, robotic in grace—and he didn't believe she was saved.
He believed they were standing in the eye of a storm that hadn't yet broken.
Later that night,
The mission call came in from the network—urgent and untraceable. A rogue Mirror signal had spiked in an abandoned transit grid beneath City Sector 9. It pulsed in Echo's frequency band.
Dominic, still desperate to prove Amelia's clarity, insisted she come along. "If the signal triggers her, we'll know what's left of Echo," he argued.
Kestrel was against it. But Amelia... she just said yes. No debate. No fear. No feeling.
They dropped into the tunnel system just after midnight. Metal grates groaned beneath their boots. A faint blue strobe throbbed from somewhere deeper in the dark.
Kestrel scanned the map. "The node's stationary. Thirty meters east."
Amelia walked ahead of them, flashlight in hand, unbothered by the echoing shadows or the occasional skittering of rats. Her face remained impassive. Her breathing never quickened.
Then it hit her.
A blast of memory. Emotion. Not hers—but Echo's.
She stumbled, gripping the wall.
Kestrel lunged. "Amelia!"
Her hand flew up to stop him. "Don't touch me. She's... here."
The strobe flashed again—brighter this time—and with it came a sharp whisper through Amelia's ears:
"They'll never understand you. But I do."
Echo's voice. Intimate. Almost kind.
Amelia stepped forward.
Dominic raised his weapon. "We don't know what's waiting ahead."
"You won't need that," Amelia said.
From the darkness, a form leapt out—quick, humanoid, eyes glowing. A drone? A clone?
No. A failed shell. One of the abandoned Echo prototypes, twitching and distorted. It lunged for Dominic, teeth bared, movements erratic.
Before Kestrel could fire, Amelia raised her hand—
—and the thing stopped mid-air, suspended like a puppet in a windless void.
She turned her gaze to it. "You're not me."
With a flick of her wrist, it snapped backward into the wall, metal groaning on impact.
Silence.
Dominic stared at her. "How did you—?"
"I didn't ask for this," she said quietly, turning away. "I just reacted."
But the look on her face shifted—for just a second. A twitch of the lip. A tremble of the hand. Something familiarreturning.
Back at the monastery,
Amelia stood in front of the mirror.
She stared at her reflection—watching it closely, expectantly. As if waiting for someone else to appear behind her eyes.
Kestrel entered quietly, his steps soft.
"You shouldn't be alone," he said gently.
She turned. "That's funny. I don't feel alone. Not anymore."
He moved toward her. "You saved us tonight."
"I didn't do it for you," she replied. "I did it because something inside me chose to protect you. I don't know if it was me or Echo. Does it matter?"
Kestrel swallowed. "It matters to me."
She looked up, studied his face. Something flickered in her eyes. Recognition. Pain. Hunger.
"I remember this," she said softly, reaching up to touch his jaw. "Your mouth. Your kiss. I remember the pressure. The heat. The way you touched me."
She stepped closer. Kestrel's breath hitched.
Her lips hovered near his. "But not you."
Then—she kissed him.
It was slow, deliberate, searching. And when she pulled back, her eyes shimmered—not just with Echo's glow, but with something raw and human.
"I want to remember," she whispered.
Kestrel's hand slid to her waist. "Then let me help you."
But behind her, the mirror pulsed once—dimly—and her reflection smiled without moving.
Amelia turned to the glass just in time to see Echo's silhouette still staring back. The mirror version stepped forward... and whispered:
"He still doesn't see you. But I do."