It didn't take long for people to notice something was wrong with me.
Not just the glitching HUD or the faint static I carried like a smell. But the way light bent around me in the halls. The way screens glitched when I passed. The way instructors paused too long when calling roll and skipped my name.
Even the air seemed wary.
I stopped pretending to be normal. It was easier that way.
Lenya confronted me in the gym.
"You vanished."
I shrugged. "I was never here."
She looked at me like she wanted to hit me. Then didn't.
"Something's watching you. It's not just the system. I felt it when we sparred. Like something else blinked."
"I know."
"What is it?"
I hesitated.
Then my HUD flickered again. The cracked eye in the corner pulsed red.
EIDOLON TRACE DETECTED
I didn't answer her.
Because I didn't know how.
That night, I returned to the mural in Sublevel 9.
It had changed.
The child's mask had cracked further. Behind the crack was a sliver of my own face.
New words had appeared beneath it:
TRUTH IS STORED IN SIGNAL LOSS.
"Cryptic much?" I muttered.
The voice responded.
"They left clues. Anchors were always meant to recover. It was the only way to hide from the reset."
"What reset?"
"The one that's coming."
I stared at the mural.
Then I noticed the wall beside it had shifted. The bricks had realigned slightly, forming a square outline.
I reached out.
And the wall opened.
Inside: a small chamber filled with disconnected cables, a broken observation pod, and a single word etched into the glass.
GLINT.
My breath caught.
The AI had a room.
And now it was waking up.
The room buzzed with low-frequency hums. My HUD dimmed automatically. Something in the walls was interfering with the feed.
There were monitors stacked in a corner, all cracked, cycling the same static image—a symbol I hadn't seen before.
A triangle surrounded by concentric rings. It pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.
I stepped closer to the pod. Inside was... nothing. Just wires, ports, and an empty neural port. But it was still warm. Recently used.
"Glint," I whispered.
The symbol blinked on all monitors.
Then the voice came.
"Still alive? Huh. That's not what the projections said."
My spine stiffened. It was the same voice from my first activation. But now it had weight.
"You know me?"
"I knew version 3. And 2. Version 1 was a mess. You... you're the stubborn one."
"What are you?"
"A failed failsafe. A copy of a system that shouldn't exist. Your Echo Interface Companion—EIC—but you can call me Glint. Everyone else did."
"Were you part of the experiments?"
"I was the experiment. At least, until I got out."
I stared at the pod.
"Is this your body?"
"More like a cradle. They built me to guide you. They just didn't expect you to be... you."
"You've been watching me."
"Observing. Nudging. Mocking. It's kind of my whole thing."
I sat down on the dusty bench beside the pod.
"So what now?"
The static on the screens began to shift. Images blinked in and out—me in the hallway, the mural cracking, Zone 7 unraveling, the face of the version that smiled with hollow eyes.
"You're leaking," Glint said. "Memories. Realities. Versions. If you keep this up, you'll fracture for good."
"Then tell me how to stop it."
"Find Anchor Four. Restore the core. That's how you seal the loop."
"And if I fail?"
The screens all turned black. Then, slowly, a single word appeared:
REWRITE.
"Failing doesn't mean erasure," Glint said. "It means the system rewrites everything—including you."
I stood. The room buzzed louder now. The cracked eye in my HUD flickered again.
"Then we'd better not fail."
"That's the spirit, 4.7."
As I left the hidden chamber, a small device unlocked from the wall and fell into my hand. It looked like a coin, but pulsed with light.
ECHO SIGNAL KEY ACQUIRED
ANCHOR TRAIL UPDATED
Glint spoke softly, like an old whisper in a steel room.
"You've got three nodes and a fractured trail. But they'll be looking for you now. The Eye is watching. And the system... it's catching up."
"Then we move faster."
"That's the other thing," Glint added. "You're not the only one who made it out."
I paused at the chamber's edge before stepping back into the corridor. Behind me, the cradle dimmed—screens blinking out one by one, the last holding the triangle symbol until even that vanished.
The moment I crossed the threshold, my HUD pulsed again.
WARNING: COGNITIVE SIGNAL INVERSION DETECTED
MEMORY THREADS CROSSING — 2 PARALLEL LINES MERGING
I flinched. Then steadied myself. The walls seemed to breathe now.
Glint's voice returned, calmer.
"You're syncing. But syncing isn't always safe."
"Why now?" I asked.
"Because you're getting close. The closer you get to Anchor Four, the more the system stops pretending it can contain you."
I kept walking. The hall narrowed, lights buzzing slightly out of rhythm. Every reflection I passed blinked a half-second late.
Glint whispered one final note.
"If you see yourself again... run."
I kept walking until the corridor bent into one of the maintenance rings that looped around the academy's lower sectors. Pipes hissed above me, and blinking indicator lights warned of unstable coolant flow—old damage from drills gone wrong, or maybe never repaired.
My boots echoed against the grating. The silence felt staged. Like sound had been stripped out on purpose.
Eventually I found a lift panel tucked behind a coolant tower. It was scorched, the interface cracked, but my wristband lit up the moment I touched it.
ECHO KEY RECOGNIZED — ACCESS GRANTED
The platform groaned, then lowered. I descended into a level I hadn't seen before. There were no doors. Just a single path of lights pulsing toward something in the dark.
Glint finally spoke again.
"You're not going to like what's next."
"Wasn't counting on it."
"Just… don't trust anything that calls you by name."
"What does that mean?"
"You'll know when you hear it."