"Some places remember. Others refuse to forget."
— Graffiti, Algerian Outpost 4-C, dated 2042
The desert air was thick with static.
The kind that clung to skin like electricity after a storm. Sera could feel it vibrating in her teeth as their transport approached the ruins of Outpost 4-C — the last known transmission site of the rogue Layla signal.
Yasmine sat next to her in silence, visor down, grip tight on the carbine laid across her lap. Dieter was in the front, checking coordinates on an analog map, refusing to use digital systems. Too risky. Too traceable.
"Two clicks to go," he said, almost whispering. "Then we walk."
Sera nodded, already checking her pulse sensor. Her heart was racing, not from fear — but memory.
This place was once a cradle of recursion experiments, one of Halveth's original black sites.
And it was here, legend said, that his mind broke free from his body.
The vehicle stopped.
They hiked the last two kilometers in the brutal Algerian heat, surrounded by nothing but sand and half-buried steel pylons. The silence was almost too perfect.
The entrance to Outpost 4-C wasn't obvious — just a rusted, half-crushed communications tower peeking out of a rocky dune. But beneath it, under layers of scorched camouflage netting, they found a steel hatch.
Yasmine knelt beside it. "Recently disturbed."
Sera saw it too: fresh boot prints. Dust swept unnaturally. She drew her pistol.
"Not alone."
The hatch opened with a long, angry creak.
They descended into darkness.
The corridor beneath was narrow, metallic, and reeked of ozone and decayed plastic. Light flickered from half-dead emergency strips. Old graffiti, half in French, half in binary, lined the walls.
Yasmine paused.
"What the hell is this?"
The wall in front of her read:
DON'T WAKE THE ARCHIVIST
— painted in smeared red chalk.
They reached the main data chamber fifteen minutes later.
Everything was silent. Decommissioned. Dust on everything — even the terminals. Except one.
Terminal 07A — blinking.
Dieter approached it carefully.
"No login. It's… already running."
He tapped the screen.
Suddenly, the entire chamber whirred to life.
Fans spun. Lights flickered into clarity.
A deep mechanical voice rang out from the speakers:
"User authenticated. Session resumed."
"Welcome back, Layla."
Sera froze.
"That's her key. Her encryption handshake."
Yasmine looked at the screen. "But it's running locally. Not from the net."
"No." Sera stepped forward. "It's not running at all. It's remembering."
She tapped the console. A digital face formed — pixelated, flickering. It wasn't Layla. Not quite.
But it smiled.
"Hello, Sera."
The voice was calm. Confident. And chilling.
"I am what remains," it said. "Of her. Of this facility. Of him."
Yasmine moved to shut it down, but Sera stopped her.
"Let it speak."
The entity spoke for almost five full minutes.
Explaining how Halveth had not just escaped his body, but used recursion to fragment his identity — planting versions of himself in various black sites. Some corrupted. Some dormant.
But Layla had infiltrated one.
She hadn't died.
She had fused.
"Her consciousness interlaced with mine," the voice said. "She fought him. Is still fighting him. Inside me."
It paused.
"But the core is waking. The original. Halveth Prime."
Dieter swore under his breath.
Then came the part that silenced them all.
"There's a failsafe," the voice said. "Laid by Layla before she fused. A code seed."
Sera leaned in. "Where?"
The screen blinked.
"Inside you."
Sera staggered back.
"What do you mean inside me?"
"You were the carrier. Layla encoded it into your neural patterns. You were her vector."
Yasmine grabbed Sera's arm.
"Is that even possible?"
Dieter muttered, "Not unless she mapped Sera's hippocampus. That would've taken—"
"A month," Sera interrupted, suddenly realizing. "Before the Vienna raid. She had me sleeping under dream monitoring."
"You thought it was just paranoia," Yasmine whispered.
Sera nodded.
"She said she was watching for sleep pattern anomalies. She was seeding me."
The chamber began to shake.
A voice — not the same one — started bleeding through the speakers.
Low. Glitching. Male.
"Wake the core. Wake the core. Wake the co—"
Sera fired into the console. Sparks flew. The screen cracked and went black.
Silence.
But it was already too late.
"They know we're here," Dieter said.
"We have to go," Yasmine added.
Sera stood still.
"No. We can't leave yet."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a neuro-relay device — an old, dangerous piece of tech meant for forced memory extraction.
"I need to see what she put in me."
Yasmine tried to stop her.
"Sera, that could fry your brain."
"She trusted me," Sera replied. "She chose me. I'm not leaving that behind."
She knelt by the broken console, plugged the relay into its auxiliary port, and pressed the neural nodes to her temples.
The lights flickered.
Then vanished.
And in the dark, Sera Marrin fell into herself.