Part 2
Lin Xi's heartbeat thundered in her chest.
She stared down at the chip resting in her palm—its crystalline blue core pulsing faintly, as if sensing the warmth of its host. The rhythm was too organic, too precise. Alive.
"What exactly do you want from me?" Her voice was hoarse, but her gaze had sharpened, clarity returning like steel drawn through flame.
Lu Yan didn't answer immediately. He stood at the edge of the easel, his face half-lit by the stormlight filtering through the window. Angular, still, composed. As if weighing the truth in his hands before setting it loose.
Finally, he spoke.
"This isn't the first time you've painted the Shattered Star Trajectory."
Her brow furrowed.
"You were six," he continued, "when you first rendered a similar pattern—while in a comatose state. The media called it a 'dream painting.' But that canvas… was lost in a lab fire. No one ever told you, did they?"
Lin Xi's pupils contracted.
She remembered the fire.
But in her family, it had been a forbidden topic—wrapped in silence, sealed with fear.
Lu Yan stepped closer, carefully avoiding the electroshock device still gripped in her hand.
"That wasn't an accident. It was a purge. The lab destroyed it to erase evidence of a failed experiment—an attempt to implant embryonic memory strands."
Lin Xi's fingers whitened on the trigger.
"What kind of lunacy is this?"
"You're a Resonant Host, Lin Xi." His voice dropped to a whisper, as if wary of waking something unseen. "You possess an extremely rare—cognitive imprint retention. Those meteorite shards, those pigments, even this chip… they're all trying to re-establish a connection with an anchor inside you."
She let out a cold, bitter laugh that trembled beneath the storm's roar.
"So you're saying I've got the universe lodged in my skull?"
"No," he said quietly. "It was put there. By them. They tried to use you as the key… to unlock a star map access gate."
A heavy silence fell.
Lin Xi's eyes chilled. She stepped back, the chaos inside her giving way to clinical detachment.
"And you think saying all this will make me believe you?"
She placed the chip on the worktable and retrieved her magnifying scanner and diagnostic probe. Her movements were precise, practiced. Numbers leapt onto the screen, data unraveling in real time as the chip's inner structure unfolded like a blooming algorithm.
"You'd better hope these readings back you up," she muttered, fingers dancing across the interface.
As the system parsed the encrypted layers, the screen flickered. A 3D projection slowly resolved—floating midair like a phantom constellation. Thousands of luminous points swirled into alignment, a hidden architecture spinning within darkness.
Lin Xi stared.
"This is…" she whispered.
"The map you've been painting is only a fragment," Lu Yan said behind her. His voice was so close, it vibrated against the bones in her skull.
"The Shattered Star Trajectory is just a sectional rendering—of what we call the Mirror Cluster. Only you can complete the missing piece."
She turned slowly, locking eyes with him.
"Then who are you? A researcher? A fugitive? Or… just another puppet master pulling strings?"
Lu Yan's lips curled in something between a smile and regret.
"I was part of Project Aurora Dawn."
The name hit her like an explosion. Lin Xi yanked open a hidden drawer beneath the table, pulling out a worn, yellowed document—the remnant of an anonymous delivery she'd received months ago. Stamped across the top in bold black letters:
[PROJECT AURORA DAWN]
"You got this too?" she asked, her voice tight.
"I sent it," Lu Yan said quietly.
Lin Xi's eyes widened, breath catching in her throat.
"Why?"
"Because we're running out of time." A shadow crossed his gaze. "Your birthmark… it's begun responding. You're nearing the threshold."
"The threshold?" she echoed, jaw tight.
"It's not a birthmark," he said. "It's a biological beacon. A lock—linked to a higher-dimensional positioning system. From the moment it activates, it stops being yours alone."
Lin Xi stood frozen. His words didn't just alter the past—they redrew the very boundaries of her self. What if everything she thought she'd created… was merely a memory echo? A guided hand painting someone else's vision?
"So I've been copying, not creating?" Her voice cracked.
"No," Lu Yan said softly. "You've been awakening. Each layer of your work isn't imitation—it's reclamation."
She jolted upright, knocking the chip aside.
"I don't need anyone defining my past. Least of all you."
Lu Yan didn't react. He only watched her with a fatigue that felt centuries deep.
"You think I want to be here?" he said at last. "Every time I get near you, the world begins to fracture. Frequencies shift. Timelines warp. Memory threads unravel. But still… I came."
"Why?" she demanded.
"Because unless you complete the Mirror Sequence before the interface activates… the 'seed' inside you will break containment."
Her mind reeled.
Seed?
Before she could speak, a low hum rippled through the studio's mirrored wall. Concentric waves bloomed outward, distorting her reflection.
She spun around.
Her mirror-image was warping—blurring, dissolving—like a broadcast caught in interference. Then, behind the distortion, stars appeared. Dozens. Hundreds. An entire field of them burned into her reflected eyes.
Lin Xi stood paralyzed.
She had seen this vision once before.
But this time, her mirror-self parted its lips and whispered a sentence she had never spoken aloud:
"Activation parameters met. Consciousness channel open."
CRACK—
The mirror exploded.
Fractures radiated outward in a burst of blinding light, like shrapnel made of starlight. The epicenter landed squarely on the star map behind her.
Lu Yan lunged, pulling her aside. Shards fell like rain, the air thick with a metallic hiss. The plasma discharge from the chip glowed blue and heavy, fogging the room with ghostlight.
Pressed against his chest, Lin Xi could hear nothing but her pulse.
She opened her eyes.
In the shards strewn across the floor, her reflection fragmented into countless angles—each pupil staring back with a different star map burned within.
And at last, she understood.
She hadn't been seeing the universe.
The universe had been seeing her.