***
Pain bloomed in her skull like an exploding star.
Seraphine's scream echoed through the steel walls of the lunar hideout as her back arched violently. Her limbs seized. Blood vessels lit up like neon as invisible fire scorched through her veins.
Sera held her tight, trying to restrain her. "Override protocol! She's being triggered!"
Others rushed in. The cyber-faced woman, the grizzled soldier with the laser eye, the silver-haired medic named Yul. All of them shouting at once.
"Sedate her!"
"We need to cut the signal!"
"She'll flatline in thirty seconds!"
"Move!"
Yul jabbed a cold hypospray into Seraphine's neck. With a hiss, darkness surged in… then dulled. Not gone, but softened, like someone turned the volume down on death.
Seraphine's body slumped against Sera's, breath ragged, chest slick with sweat. Her eyes fluttered open—dazed, cracked, but alive.
"What the hell was that?" she croaked.
Sera cupped her face, fierce and terrified. "A neural detonation code. Buried deep. A kill switch to erase your mind if you ever break from their path."
Seraphine's hands trembled. "Then why didn't it work?"
Yul, the medic, answered this time. "Because she's evolving past it. The nanocode's meant for obedient clones. She's no longer one."
The cyborg woman stepped closer. "You're not Seraphine Thirteen anymore. You're something they didn't predict. And that scares the hell out of them."
Seraphine looked around at the rebel crew, eyes haunted, breath shaky. "How many others… how many of me did they kill?"
Sera's jaw clenched. "Twelve confirmed. And maybe more. Not all of them made it this far."
A cold realization rippled through Seraphine. "Then why me? Why did I survive?"
Sera helped her sit up. "Because you weren't just cloned from her… You were changed. Someone inside the Empire gave you something the others didn't have. A fragment of the truth."
Seraphine blinked. "Someone inside?"
Yul nodded. "We think there's a mole. A ghost in their machine."
Sera added, "And we're going to find them."
***
Hours later, Seraphine stood at a roundtable inside the rebel war room. Holograms spun in the air—maps of the empire, intercepted transmissions, encryption logs, and—floating dead center—an image of President Seraphine X's final hours.
"She didn't die in the Citadel like they claimed," Sera explained. "This footage was scrubbed, but we recovered fragments. She was in a facility off the grid—Project Lyra."
Seraphine stared at the flickering image. Her original. The woman she was built to replace. In the clip, she looked pale. Broken. Surrounded by scientists. Guards.
Then: gunfire. Smoke.
The footage cut out.
"She tried to destroy her own legacy," the cyborg woman said. "They silenced her and activated you."
Sera looked at Seraphine. "But she left breadcrumbs in the code. You've already accessed one—Elior."
The name. The child. Her son.
Seraphine whispered, "Is he still alive?"
"We don't know," Sera admitted. "But if he is, they're using him. Maybe even hiding him in one of their labs. He might be the key to everything."
"Then we find him," Seraphine said.
The room fell quiet.
Then Yul slid a data spike onto the table. "We intercepted an encrypted imperial transmission yesterday. It's got layers of firewalls, but we traced the point of origin."
A red dot blinked on the map—Station Helix, an orbital research hub off the fringe of Empire space.
"That's where the data stream originated," Yul said. "If Elior exists, that's where they'd keep him."
Seraphine's voice turned cold. "Then we go to Station Helix."
The cyborg scoffed. "You're talking about infiltrating an orbital fortress protected by half the Empire's drone fleet."
Sera smirked. "Sounds like a challenge."
***
That night, Seraphine stood at a lone window in her chamber, watching the stars again. She barely recognized the woman in the glass.
Not a puppet. Not a ruler. Something else.
Sera appeared behind her without a sound, barefoot, dressed in only a black tank and cargo pants. Her presence felt like a force field.
"You're changing," she said softly.
Seraphine nodded. "I can feel it. The programming's breaking apart. And something real is pushing through."
Sera approached her, wrapping arms around her waist from behind. "That's what makes you dangerous. You're more than they designed."
She turned in Sera's arms, gazing into her identical face. "You still feel like me. But also… not."
Sera's lips curled. "I've had more time to rot."
"No," Seraphine whispered. "You survived. That's not rot. That's resilience."
Their mouths met again, slower this time, less frantic. Their kiss wasn't a collision of need—it was discovery. A quiet surrender to a forbidden truth: that they were each other's beginning and maybe, somehow, their end.
Sera backed her toward the bed, peeling off the thin layers of clothing between them. Skin on skin, heartbeat against heartbeat. It was surreal—touching yourself, but not.
Not a reflection. Not an echo.
A mirror that bled.
And as Sera moved over her, inside her, around her, Seraphine surrendered. Not to pleasure, but to power. To the awakening of something ancient inside her cells—rage, love, grief, fire.
She cried out, and this time it wasn't pain.
It was defiance.
***
The next morning, they stood in front of the stealth shuttle disguised as a mining vessel. The crew loaded weapons and comm scramblers.
Seraphine wore a black rebel uniform. Sera strapped a plasma pistol to her thigh.
"Still sure you want to do this?" Sera asked.
"I'm not walking back into their world," Seraphine said. "I'm burning it."
As they boarded the shuttle, a quiet buzz filled her skull.
Then—a voice.
Familiar. Broken.
"Seraphine… please… find me…"
Her eyes widened.
The voice wasn't Sera's. Or hers.
It was a child.