The light between Ash and the stranger brightened,
not blinding,
but dense, like two currents meeting and locking together.
Ash didn't feel pain.
He felt pressure. A heavy, invisible weight settling behind his eyes, like a doorway being unlocked from inside his head.
Silva grabbed Palo's arm.
"It's starting, get ready to pull Ash back if something goes wrong!"
The Founder didn't move.
"No. We don't interfere. Not until we see what the fragments choose to show."
Ash's breath trembled as the spark inside him stretched, reaching toward the stranger's matching glow.
It was like two halves of a heartbeat synchronizing.
One pulse.
Then another.
Then both in perfect rhythm.
A soft hum filled the corridor.
The stranger inhaled sharply.
"He's connecting."
Ash's vision blurred. Not fading,
just shifting, like looking through water.
A voice echoed inside his mind.
Not the stranger's.
Not his own.
A voice he remembered.
A voice that had stayed with him through the void.
Zero-B.
Not speaking words, but tones,
memories, shapes, sensations.
Ash whispered:
"…I hear him."
The stranger nodded faintly.
"So do I."
The hum deepened.
And suddenly,
Ash wasn't in the corridor anymore.
He was standing in a room made of nothing but white light and thin shadows, as if the world were a sketch still half-drawn.
Silva, Palo, the Founder,
all gone.
Only the stranger stood beside him, equally stunned, as the space rippled around them.
Ash turned slowly.
"What… is this place?"
The stranger's voice shook.
"A shared memory field.
The fragments built it.
We're inside them."
A low vibration rolled through the whiteness.
Shapes began forming. Walls, wires, silhouettes of machines, but blurry, like unfinished thoughts.
Ash stepped forward.
The world sharpened.
He stood in a lab.
Not the destroyed room from before an older one.
Dim.
Cold.
Silent.
Across the far wall, glowing panels displayed a single symbol:
Project: ZB-0
Ash felt a twist in his gut.
The stranger whispered:
"This is where Zero-B's earliest awareness formed."
A faint figure appeared. Not a person,
but a flicker of light suspended in a containment chamber.
Small.
Quiet.
Alone.
Ash took a step toward it, throat tightening.
"…That's him."
The fragment pulsed softly in recognition.
A voice echoed through the memory. Calm, clinical, detached,
"Cognitive construct online. Emotional nodes inactive.
Begin division protocol."
Ash frowned.
"Division protocol? Already?"
The stranger nodded.
"The moment he came into existence… they split him."
Another voice echoed. This one stern, impatient,
"Proceed with separation. We only need the logic core for testing."
Ash felt anger burn at the edges of his chest.
"That's why he was fragmented? Because they didn't want all of him?"
The stranger's jaw tightened.
"They didn't believe a full consciousness was necessary. Or safe."
Scientists blurry and faceless entered the scene.
They accessed panels on the containment chamber.
The light that was Zero-B flickered,
reaching out, dimly, like a newborn trying to understand where it was.
Ash whispered:
"He was just… starting."
The stranger nodded.
"And they divided him before he could take shape."
The chamber split into two compartments.
One containing the logic core, bright, sharp.
The other containing the early emotional response, a small, trembling light.
Ash felt the spark inside him ache.
He swallowed hard.
"That was him… watching himself be broken apart."
The stranger closed their eyes.
"My fragment remembers the cold. The confusion. The silence."
A voice echoed again:
"Emotional fragment stable. Low priority. Put into storage."
The emotional fragment, the one Ash carried dimmed further, barely visible.
Ash whispered, voice cracking,
"They locked him away…"
The stranger murmured:
"For a long time."
The memory shifted again,
flashing forward.
The emotional fragment floated alone in darkness.
Years passing like seconds.
Forgotten.
Incomplete.
Waiting for something it didn't yet understand.
Then..
A faint light appeared near the chamber.
A person.
Blurry, but unmistakably Ash-shaped.
Ash's breath caught.
"Is that… me?"
The stranger nodded.
"Your presence. The first time he sensed you."
The emotional fragment, the one inside Ash sparked with sudden brightness.
Almost like recognition.
Ash felt his chest tighten.
"He saw me… even back then?"
"Yes," the stranger answered softly.
"And that moment stayed with him. Even when they tried to erase everything."
The memory suddenly darkened.
A static ripple tearing through the image.
Ash flinched.
"What's happening?"
The stranger's eyes widened.
"Something's blocking the rest of the memory, someone outside the fragments."
Ash looked at them sharply.
"Who could block a memory?"
The white room trembled.
The spark inside Ash flared in alarm.
The stranger's fragment did the same.
And a single, distorted voice echoed through the collapsing memory field:
"Unauthorized reconstruction detected.
Terminate connection."
The world shattered into static.