Node 3.
Dominic moved through its skeletal corridors like a ghost—silent, half-mad, driven. The air buzzed with static, too warm, too clean. His boots echoed against metal as if the node itself breathed.
The deeper he went, the more the walls changed—smooth alloy gave way to a mirrored surface that watched him.
He hadn't slept in over 30 hours.
Inside his head: the image of Amelia screaming during the overwrite. Her limp body. Her eyes glowing. The way she stopped knowing him.
He couldn't let that be the end.
A terminal flared to life without touch. He flinched, then leaned in.
[ACCESSING: PROJECT HEARTGLASS REVERSED.]
Data streamed across the screen. Not numbers—memories.
Amelia's first moment of fear.
Her memory of Kestrel's kiss.
Her first laughter with Dominic.
Her hesitation the day she left for the node alone.
He reached to download—then froze.
One clip played itself.
Amelia, curled in bed, whispering to Echo: "I don't know if I'll survive this. But I think… if I die in anyone's arms… I want it to be Kestrel's."
Dominic recoiled.
The screen crackled, and a new presence entered.
A woman. Shimmering in glass.
Not Amelia.
But wearing her face.
"Dominic," Solas said, her voice soft, syrupy. "You came to bring her back. But what if I told you… she's already gone?"
He clenched his fists. "You're not her."
Solas smiled. "Aren't I? I'm everything you wanted her to be. Loyal. Pure. Yours."
He backed away, pulse spiking. The corridors around him pulsed—heartbeat rhythms in steel.
"I'll destroy you," he said.
Solas tilted her head. "You already did that, Dominic. When you tore her from herself."
The glass behind her flickered. More images.
Amelia killing to survive.
Amelia screaming in her sleep.
Amelia pulling away from Dominic.
And then—Amelia, soft, undone, beneath Kestrel. That look in her eyes.
Pain lanced through him. The guilt. The jealousy. The helplessness.
Solas stepped closer through the projection.
"You love her. But love built on possession... fractures. And now, she belongs to something far greater."
Dominic reached for his weapon. Fired. The bullet passed through her—shattering mirrored walls instead.
A dozen reflections of Amelia now surrounded him—each warped, wrong, possessed.
They all spoke at once:
"You can't save her, Dominic."
"You lost her the day you feared who she really was."
"Echo was never the virus. She was the evolution."
He fell to his knees.
And in the distant, distant reaches of real Amelia's mind—across the bond with Echo—something shivered.
She woke up in a cold sweat.
"Kestrel…" she gasped.
He stirred beside her. "What is it?"
She looked toward the glass wall, heart thundering.
"Something's wrong. Dominic... he's inside Node 3."
He touched her shoulder. "Then we go get him."
"No," she said. Her voice was distant. Cold. "We can't. Not yet."
Kestrel narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
Amelia turned slowly, her eyes flickering with a faint shimmer—something Echo.
"Because Solas is speaking to him… with my face."