Cherreads

Chapter 26 - Sovereign Fracture

The silence in the chamber felt alive, like the very walls were holding their breath. Pale light from the cryo-pods bled across the floor, casting sharp reflections of Marei's stunned face and Kade's tightened jaw. Nothing moved, yet everything had changed.

Marei stared at the frozen version of herself, eyes wide. "This place shouldn't exist. None of this should exist."

Kade stepped back from his own pod, fists clenched at his sides. "It does. Which means someone wanted it erased."

Above them, the Catalyst's golden orb still hovered, flickering with unreadable code. The system's last message echoed in Kade's mind: *Some timelines are cursed for a reason.*

He walked toward a far wall glowing faintly with half-formed code—an unfinished interface, frozen mid-process. With a sharp breath, he reached out.

"Activate Sovereign Archive," he commanded.

The wall shimmered, solidified, and bloomed with a stream of old data—system logs, encrypted video feeds, corrupted entries. Most were too damaged to read. One stopped him cold.

Origin Log 09.

He read aloud, voice steady:

"Subject K.F. successfully rewritten. Memory pathways retained. Emotional dampeners functional. Marei V. rewrite failed. Consciousness reasserted. Recommend lock status. Status: Do not awaken."

He turned. "Marei… you weren't supposed to wake up."

She stepped forward, eyes fixed on the words. "They tried to erase me."

"They failed."

Her voice grew hard. "Not all reboots erase the soul."

Before either could speak again, the chamber vibrated with a low-frequency hum. The Catalyst's orb blinked—then fractured. From the broken light stepped a figure. Human. Transparent. Familiar.

It was Kade. But younger. Sharper. Eyes colder than ice.

"Protocol breach detected," it said. "Recalibrating Sovereign Designation."

Kade narrowed his eyes. "What the hell is this?"

The figure responded with perfect calm. "I am the echo of what you were meant to become—before you diverged. Before you broke the chain."

Marei raised her weapon. "Delete yourself."

"I can't be deleted," the figure said. "I am the Catalyst's default king. You're the aberration."

"You think this is about memory?" Kade growled. "This is about control."

"No," the echo replied. "It's about supremacy. And now the system has to choose."

The light around it surged.

"You started Project Origin," Kade snapped.

The echo tilted its head. "In every timeline where you made it this far, yes. You feared extinction. So you created copies… with yourself at the center."

"Liar," Kade hissed.

"Just a version you buried."

Then the figure stepped back into the orb and vanished.

Silence. Again.

Marei holstered her weapon slowly. "We can't undo this."

"No," Kade said. "But we can finish it."

A hiss echoed through the chamber.

One of the pods was opening.

Steam drifted upward as internal lights flared. A hand moved behind the glass.

One of them wasn't sleeping anymore.

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