Location: Deadspace Sector 7-K — Planet Virelia Thorne
Target: Core Bloomsite 1A — "Eidolon Sprawl"
Mission Objective: Extract memory stem from Core-infected AI nexus
The city was alive.
It didn't rise from steel or stone but grew—spiraled spires of flesh-veined alloy, bones of synth-glass, organs pulsing just beneath the skyline. Every building breathed. Every corridor listened.
They called it Eidolon Sprawl.
Once a research colony. Now a neuromorphic biome, rebuilt by the Silent Core from the bodies and minds of its former inhabitants.
No one lived here now.
Not in the human sense.
But Mira felt something watching the moment they breached orbit.
"It's not just alive," she whispered, "it's aware."
∎ Descent
The Vesper Halo descended under silent cloak. Selene had jury-rigged a resonance mask to hide Mira's soulprint—now a known beacon for the Core.
Inside the drop chamber, the team prepped in silence.
Rin checked her pulse rifle and blink-drone swarm. "Priority: extraction. Not confrontation."
Veyla grinned. "So we're not shooting the building unless it shoots first?"
Aika, strapping into her bio-sync armor, smirked. "Define 'shoots.'"
Selene loaded a needle of nanoglass into her forearm. "I'll need direct contact with the sprawl's neural core to pull the memory stem."
Mira, quiet until now, looked up.
"If anything starts whispering in your head, don't listen."
They all nodded.
They remembered the Mirrorborn.
∎ Inside Eidolon
The entry tunnel was a mouth.
A literal, sealed maw of fused muscle and broken machinery. It opened for them—wet and slow.
They passed into the dark, weapons ready.
Inside, the city pulsed with bioluminescent veins. The walls twitched as they moved. Breathing vents released clouds of spores that glimmered like dust.
Selene whispered, "The tissue… it's growing around decayed AI cores. Every thought this city ever had, every person that died here—it remembers them."
Rin's drone pinged.
[LIFEFORM DETECTED. PATTERN: NON-STABLE. HUMANOID.]
A figure emerged at the edge of the corridor.
Thin.
Staggering.
Its face was smooth. No mouth. No eyes.
Just a static image projected from inside its skull:
Mira's face.
∎ Fragment Echo
Mira froze.
It stepped closer. Mimicking her movements in reverse—mirrorlike.
Selene scanned it. "It's not a person. It's a thoughtform. A recursive playback. The Core's trying to analyze your identity by splitting you into echo-reflections."
"Ignore it," Aika growled. "Stay mission-focused."
But Mira didn't move.
The echo-Mira cocked its head.
Then spoke—in Veyla's voice:
"You said I was worth dying for. Did you mean it?"
Aika raised her weapon. "That's not her."
Mira shook her head. "No… it's testing me. It wants to see what I'll reject."
The echo flickered.
Now it wore Aika's voice.
Then Rin's.
Then Selene's.
"Will you abandon them again?"
Mira's breath shook.
Then she stepped forward.
"I don't abandon. I choose."
And the echo collapsed into dust.
The corridor opened.
∎ Central Cortex
The team reached the heart of the city—what once was an AI governor tower.
Now it pulsed like a spinal column, ringed with nerve-like data conduits.
Selene knelt, connecting her neural spike to the root stem.
Mira and Aika guarded the entrance while Rin and Veyla mapped exit paths.
Inside the tower's memory, Selene began extraction.
[MEMORY STEM LOCATED: RECURSION EVENT "ORIGIN BLEED // EARTH-21"]
[ACCESSING: "DR. LIRA SATO – MIRROR ORIGIN"]
Selene gasped.
"Got it," she whispered. "I have everything. The Core's creation of the Mirrorborn… the recursive DNA of Earth-21's experiment… and Lira Sato's real role."
Aika turned. "And?"
Selene stood, pale.
"She didn't just send Mira to another world. She sent pieces of her… across many."
∎ Exit – Incoming Contagion
The sprawl screamed.
The walls shook.
Infection bloomed.
The city had recognized the intrusion—and it was rejecting them.
Bio-mass surged from the corridor behind them. Voices cried from the walls, from the floors—versions of Mira, Veyla, even Aika, screaming in recursion loops.
"Run," Aika snapped.
They bolted.
Veyla lit the path with plasma charges. Rin hacked a speedburst into their gravboots. Selene clutched the data core tight. Mira followed, teeth gritted.
But as they reached the extraction point—
Mira stopped.
A small child stood in the passage ahead.
Barefoot. Dark hair. Violet eyes.
It was her. A childhood version. Smiling.
"Don't leave me," the child whispered.
Mira touched her own chest. "I didn't come here to save who I used to be."
She walked past.
The sprawl screamed one last time—
And they escaped into the sky.
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