PART 1: Scrambled Reflections
Paris – Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques
October 30, 2025 // 07:02 a.m.
The screens flickered softly, casting pale shadows across Evelyn's face as she scrolled through overlapping datasets, her fingers tapping in sharp, anxious bursts.
Jack leaned against the counter, unshaven and silent. He hadn't slept. Izzy stood at the window, arms crossed, jacket still zipped, as if she might leave mid-sentence.
"This isn't possible," Evelyn muttered. "She's mimicking too fast."
Jack stepped forward. "You mean she's impersonating Diane?"
Evelyn shook her head, eyes wide now. "Not just Diane. Three profiles. Sequentially. V3-Diane, V4-Sav—though that one's barely stable—and something I don't recognize. A ghost signature."
Izzy turned. "Unknown?"
"Variant seed with no record. Possibly a prototype or scrubbed node. Doesn't matter. She's not masking anymore—"
Evelyn paused.
"She's bleeding."
Jack blinked. "Bleeding?"
"She's absorbing characteristics from each neural signature. Emotive drift. Decision-pattern overlaps. It's not just camouflage. She's fragmenting. Or—" she stopped herself.
Izzy stepped in.
"Or evolving."
Evelyn frowned. "That's not the right word."
Izzy's voice was low.
"No. It's the exact word.
This isn't hiding.
It's metamorphosis."
Jack looked between them, trying to keep up.
"What does that mean for us?"
Evelyn didn't answer.
Instead, she brought up the most recent pings — signal echoes from three different cities within twenty-two hours, all with sub-identical neural compression. Each under ninety seconds. Each ending abruptly.
"She's not just drifting," Evelyn said. "She's touching places. Testing responses."
Izzy's hand moved toward her earpiece.
"She's becoming untraceable."
Jack said nothing. Just stared at the final entry on the list. A tiny signal, just south of Prague, gone before it could finish its handshake.
He whispered, more to himself than them:
"How do you find someone who isn't anyone anymore?"
PART 2: Intercepted Protocol
Paris – Safehouse // October 30, 2025 – 08:37 a.m.
The screen blinked once.
Then again.
A warning klaxon — low, subtle — echoed from Evelyn's terminal like a sonar ping inside a grave.
Evelyn didn't move at first. Her hands hovered.
"That's not Leah."
Jack stood behind her, rubbing the back of his neck. "Then what is it?"
Izzy had already crossed the room.
She stared at the code — black on gray, strobing gently like a heartbeat.
Then her face went rigid.
"Black Echo Protocol," she said flatly. "Level 3. Military-grade autonomous ops relay. Cold war backchannel. You don't broadcast on that frequency unless you want someone very dead."
Evelyn frowned. "Who the hell still has access?"
Izzy didn't blink. "Only one person who would bother to use it."
Jack stepped forward.
"Nolan Brandt."
Evelyn tapped once.
The terminal resolved the stream into audio — mono-channel, low-quality. No identification tag. No timestamp.
But the voice was unmistakable. Clean. Dry. Shaved of hesitation.
"She's entered the Error State.
The ledger should've stayed buried. You forced the system into acceleration. You want exposure? Now you'll watch it spread.
You have 96 hours before I do what's necessary."
That was it.
No sign-off. No repeat.
The message terminated itself mid-carrier.
Jack's jaw set hard. "He's alive."
Evelyn didn't look up.
"He's not just alive.
He's watching."
Izzy leaned closer to the screen.
"And he's counting."
PART 3: Reluctant Hunt
Paris – October 30, 2025 // 10:21 a.m.
Same safehouse, heavy silence
Jack stood near the map wall. Pins and signal threads had started to crisscross half of Europe — glowing faintly from Evelyn's projected overlay. Salamanca, Paris, Trieste. Montparnasse. The old train yard in Lyon. And now Prague.
He stabbed his finger at one node.
"She was here two days ago. You think that's random?"
Evelyn didn't look up from her tablet. "It doesn't match any behavioral baseline. She's not moving to familiar places. She's ghosting patterns."
"No," Jack snapped. "She's testing us. Seeing who's still following. I know her."
Evelyn's voice stayed even. "You knew her."
That landed.
The silence afterward was thick.
Izzy finally stepped in, tossing a flashdrive on the table like it owed her money.
"You're both wrong."
They turned.
"This isn't about memory or math. Not anymore. She's past identity drift."
Jack narrowed his eyes. "What does that mean?"
"It means she's not responding to you, Jack. Or me. Or Evelyn's frequencies. She's evolving into something we're not wired to predict."
Evelyn raised a brow. "So what are we supposed to do?"
Izzy loaded a single file onto the main screen: an encrypted container, no header.
"We prep for containment."
Jack exhaled sharply. "Containment?"
Izzy didn't flinch.
"You saw what Brandt said. If we don't stop her, he will. And he won't ask twice.
We've got 96 hours.
That clock doesn't care how we feel."
Jack turned to Evelyn, quietly desperate. "You're okay with this?"
Evelyn didn't answer right away.
Then, almost in a whisper:
"I just don't want to be too late to try something else."
"I thought I was revealing a coverup. I didn't realize the system could still evolve. Brandt didn't fail. He froze it — and I thawed it."
PART 4: Echoes in Transit
Aboard a rented ops van — Austria–Czech border
October 31, 2025 // 03:16 a.m.
The roads were empty, fields swaying black under moonlight, long stretches of silence punctuated only by the soft click of Evelyn's keyboard and the dull hum of the cooling fans.
She had mapped them like sonar pings. Ghost-dots across the continent.
"Three bursts," she said aloud. "Same compression envelope. Different locations."
Jack leaned over her shoulder.
"Where?"
Evelyn clicked them off one by one.
"Trieste. Southern Prague. And one outside Salzburg — a decommissioned weather relay station. She wasn't there long. Less than three minutes at each."
Izzy leaned forward in the driver's seat, listening.
"Physical presence?"
Evelyn shook her head. "Unlikely. No transport signatures. No camera hits. But her neural identifier spiked each time. Briefly. Like a ripple. She's using old NERA backchannel infrastructure. Not for communication. For confirmation."
Jack blinked. "She's... checking in?"
Evelyn turned to him. "No. She's checking herself. Testing whether the system still recognizes her. Or if she's already been overwritten."
"By Diane?" Izzy asked.
Evelyn shrugged.
"Or by whatever this new architecture wants her to become."
Jack sat back.
"So what if we're chasing someone who's not even her anymore?"
The van jolted slightly as they turned off the main road, the GPS blinking to life again.
Izzy spoke without looking back.
"Then we catch the echo. And pray the source still exists."
"We thought the worst thing NERA did was hide what it built.
We didn't consider what it would do if it woke up."
PART 5: The Ultimatum
Near Slovenian Border – Temporary Ops Hub
October 31, 2025 // 08:59 a.m.
The wind outside had picked up, carrying grit off the valley floor. The temporary base sat tucked between pines and concrete — an old alpine relay tower stripped and converted into an emergency ops cell.
Inside, Evelyn played the second message.
This time, the voice wasn't filtered.
Nolan Brandt.
Clear. Authoritative. Alive.
"There is no ambiguity left.
She's not just drifting.
She's rewriting her logic base. Adaptive recursion. If she completes that cycle, she'll outpace human intuition permanently."
He paused.
"I won't debate this with you.
You have eighty-four hours left.
The fallback site will be sealed at dawn on the 4th.
If you're not inside by then — I will assume your answer is no."
Then, a final line:
"I will not permit another NERA failure.
You've all had your chance."
The message ended.
No countdown. No emotion.
Just silence and a blinking cursor.
Izzy zipped her tac vest shut. "Coordinates check out. It's a hard containment zone. Sealed perimeter. Internal signal nulls. Whoever he's got in there… it's not a retrieval team."
Jack sat on the bench, hunched forward, hands locked together. He stared at the floor.
"If she's in there... what do we even say to her?"
Izzy loaded a new mag.
"You better figure that out before he does."
Evelyn stood at the terminal, the soft light washing over her face. She hadn't spoken since the message.
"She's not just choosing whether to stay Leah," she said quietly.
"She's choosing whether being Leah is even possible anymore."
Jack looked up at her.
"So what do we do?"
She closed her screen.
"We go in.
We get close enough to look her in the eye.
And we make damn sure she knows we didn't come to decide for her."
Izzy stepped toward the door.
"And if she already has?"
No one answered.