The corridor swallowed her in sterile light.
Venn's boots echoed sharply against the obsidian tiles as she advanced through the hallway of Sector Delta-7, a place buried beneath the rest of the city like a forgotten scar. Behind her, the sealed door of the archive chamber locked itself with a final hiss—as if severing her from whatever version of herself had just been awakened.
Inside her pocket, the data shard pulsed. Not with heat, but a soft rhythmic vibration—like a heartbeat she couldn't remember ever having.
"Protocol Omega... Venn-09... who the hell am I?" she muttered, voice barely above a whisper.
The name Venn-09 felt alien. Like a badge forced on her. But the flash she had seen—her own eyes staring back from a mirrored corridor, blood on her hands, static roaring in her ears—was no glitch.
It was a memory.
Or something close to it.
---
She reached a steel lift and jabbed the override panel.
> "Unauthorized clearance. Identity mismatch."
Her jaw tightened.
"Override. Code: Sable Vector—three-seven-Kilo."
There was a beat. Then the lift obeyed.
Where had that come from?
She hadn't known she remembered that. Her fingers just... moved.
The doors closed, and the lights inside flickered once, then stabilized. She was going lower. Deeper into the belly of a system that was now chasing her with every surveillance drone it had.
---
Meanwhile, back in Surface Grid C…
Dr. Lorrick, the neural synchronization chief, reviewed the blackout log from Archive Room 11. His eyes narrowed.
"...Shard Echo signature detected. Category X-variant. But no registered handler."
He tapped the console.
"Search all living variants. Filter by female, code-line Venn."
The result returned one entry: Terminated.
He stared at the word.
Impossible. Someone had triggered the Omega shard. That should have been impossible.
He leaned closer.
"No… not terminated. Suppressed."
---
Back in the lower levels…
The lift opened to a dim subterranean corridor. Pipes lined the walls, hissing low. The air was damp, heavy, and tinged with ozone. Venn followed instinct more than memory.
The deeper she walked, the stronger the pulses from the shard became.
Then she saw it.
A door at the end of the hall with a glowing symbol etched in crimson light: ∞
She touched it—and the door unsealed.
Inside was no laboratory, no weapons cache. It was… a chamber. Circular. Smooth black walls. At its center stood a lone chair, and around it: nine glass pillars.
Each held a body.
Each one looked like her.
Same face. Same scars. Same synthetic spinal tag.
Venn backed up. Her breath caught.
"No. No no no—"
> "You were never the first," a voice echoed softly from behind her.
"And you won't be the last."
---
She turned sharply—Ezel stood there.
Not a figment. Real.
He wasn't glowing with interface light this time. He was physical, cloaked in a utility coat laced with patch-circuitry.
"Ezel… how—?"
"I came through the long way," he said. "Followed the breach pattern you left last time. You don't remember that, do you?"
She didn't answer. Her gaze was still on the glass columns.
Clones? Copies?
"No," Ezel said, reading her expression. "They're echoes. Failed uploads. Scraps of you trying to survive the cycle."
"I'm not one of them."
"Venn…" His voice dropped. "You are the only one who stabilized. Protocol Omega wasn't just a kill code. It was a reboot key."
He stepped closer, pulled something from his coat. A mirror fragment.
"Look."
She hesitated, then took it.
In the mirror, her eyes flickered faintly—binary patterns swimming in her pupils.
"You're not broken," Ezel said. "You're evolving."
---
Suddenly, the shard in her hand sparked violently. A wave of pressure tore through the room. The columns shattered—glass, wires, and artificial memories spilling into static.
The chamber lights died.
From the silence, a mechanical voice whispered from nowhere:
> "Initiating Recall. Variant Venn-Prime located."
The walls shifted.
Something was coming.
And this time, it wasn't just the system.
It was the Origin Host.