The glass hissed open.
Amelia didn't move.
The clone—no, the version—stepped out barefoot, naked save for the sterile shimmer of synthwrap stretched over her chest and spine. Her movements were uncanny—fluid, graceful, rehearsed. As if every motion had already been performed a thousand times before.
Amelia flinched.
The version tilted her head. "You don't remember me, do you?"
Echo stirred inside Amelia, uneasy. "That's not one of the failed subjects."
"Then who—"
"She's not part of the program's public sequence. She's from the first batch."
Prototype Zero-One. A test before the catalogued series began.
The version stepped forward and touched Amelia's face with eerie familiarity. "They called me Lira. But I was you, once. Before you got... rewritten."
Amelia froze. "Rewritten?"
Lira's expression shifted. "You were never supposed to survive Echo's integration. But you didn't just survive—you changed her. You softened her. I didn't get that chance. I was raw code. Perfect. But unstable."
Echo growled low in her skull. "She's lying."
Amelia's hand twitched toward the stun baton at her belt. But she didn't raise it.
Not yet.
Lira smiled again. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to reclaim what was mine."
Then she lunged.
Amelia barely dodged, skidding across the polished floor. Lira moved like liquid data, hitting her with a precision that bypassed instinct. Echo surged in Amelia's mind, diverting the next strike just in time.
"Merge," Echo hissed. "Let me take control."
"No," Amelia spat aloud, sweat slicking her spine.
They grappled—raw and brutal. Every punch Amelia landed, Lira anticipated. Every step Lira took, Amelia already feared.
"I am the prototype," Lira hissed, pinning her. "You're just the accidental evolution."
Outside, alarms howled.
Kestrel slammed into the Node's west door as Eris hacked the lock override. "She's inside," he muttered. "And she's not alone."
Lights turned red.
Inside the chamber, Lira twisted Amelia's arm—until something in her grip changed. Amelia didn't scream. She stared into Lira's eyes and pushed—not physically, but with the full force of her will.
Echo surged.
And Lira staggered back.
"You're not stable," Echo said through Amelia. "Because you never had her heart."
Lira's eyes flickered—fear, or fury, it was hard to tell.
Then the lights went black.
In the darkness, a new sound bloomed in Amelia's comm: a deep, distorted voice. Not Lira. Not Echo.
"You fractured her soul."
Dominic's voice hissed over the external comm relay.
He was back at Mirror Node 1, accessing forbidden data from the earlier activation of Project HEARTGLASS. His voice was strained. Furious. Guilty.
"You activated it too early," the system whispered back to him. "Now... she's in pieces."
Inside Node 2, Lira disappeared into the dark.
Amelia stood alone in the humming silence.
But she wasn't alone.
"It's beginning again," Echo said. "And this time, someone else is writing the end."