THE WATCHER: REVOLUTION
By Rapwizzy Debaron
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Episode 16: Collapse Protocol
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The world cracked.
Literally.
Fractures snaked through the air like lightning frozen mid-strike. The lab was no longer a place—it was a memory unraveling.
Jax stood in the eye of it.
Alira floated—yes, floated—her body suspended in a flickering storm of light and data. Her hair whipped around her like tendrils of fire. Her veins glowed, and her skin pulsed with the strange, divine energy of the Omega core.
But her eyes…
They weren't hers anymore.
> "Jax," she said, and her voice wasn't a voice. It was a chorus. Alira—and something else—spoke in unison.
> "I remember everything."
Jax's heartbeat was thunder in his ears.
> "Then you remember me."
A smile ghosted across her lips, painful and soft, like it cost her everything to make it.
> "That's the problem."
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> [Collapse Protocol: 83% complete.]
> [Warning: Memory bleed will result in identity corruption.]
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Jax stepped closer, one hand outstretched, even as the air around her buzzed with lethal static. His skin blistered just being near her.
But he didn't care.
> "They broke you," he said. "They tried to rebuild you into something you're not. But I know who you are. I saw you."
> "No," she whispered, her voice rippling through him like a blade. "You saw who I wanted to be. Not what I am now."
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She lowered slowly, her bare feet touching the broken floor with an unnatural grace. Her eyes shimmered—one silver, one stained with violet light.
> "Do you know what they did after you escaped?"
Jax tensed.
He hadn't meant to leave her.
He never forgave himself for surviving without her.
> "They uploaded fragments of the Omega code into my spinal column. I wasn't supposed to survive it. I wasn't meant to remember."
She stepped closer now, until their shadows touched.
> "But I did."
Her fingers traced his jaw. A cold, soft brush—like a ghost remembering the warmth of flesh.
> "And every second after that, I hated you for leaving."
His breath caught.
> "I didn't leave you."
> "But you did."
> "I came back."
> "Too late."
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> [System Overload: Initiating Final Phase.]
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Jax dropped to one knee, his body giving out. Pain lanced through his spine—like wires threading into bone.
> "They're linking us," he gasped. "Through the core…"
> "Because I let them," Alira murmured.
> "Why?"
Her lips trembled.
> "Because I wanted to know… if you'd still love me when I became your worst fear."
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The light exploded.
Jax screamed—not from pain, but from knowing. Every locked memory, every buried experiment, every broken version of her—they rushed into him. He saw her: shackled, dissected, rewritten again and again. A girl who never got to just be.
And still… she sang that same melody. Quietly. Always.
For him.
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Then the light faded.
And Alira collapsed.
Jax caught her.
This time, he didn't let go.
> "You don't scare me," he whispered into her hair. "Not even now."
Her breath hitched.
> "You should be terrified."
> "I am. But I'm not leaving."
> "Even if I kill you?"
> "Especially then."
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She laughed. Bitter. Beautiful.
Then—silence.
Her eyes closed.
Her body went still.
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> [System Link Severed.]
> [Collapse Protocol: Aborted.]
> [Subject: Alira — Status: Unknown.]
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Jax didn't move.
He held her like she was the last real thing left in a world built on lies.
Because maybe she was.
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TO BE CONTINUED…
👁️ By Rapwizzy Debaron
🧬 Next: Ashes of Memory — Jax is left with fragments of her consciousness inside his mind. But something else came through too… and it's watching.