The revenants moved like echoes of a corrupted past—twitching, jerking, eyes glowing with fragmented memory. Clyde and the woman stood their ground, back-to-back, as the swarm crept closer over the glitching terrain.
"Got any bright ideas?" Clyde asked, tightening his grip.
The woman raised her device. "One."
A sharp tone pierced the air. The ground beneath the revenants flared with neon-blue symbols—circles, runes, patterns resembling lines of code more than ancient sigils. In an instant, half the swarm froze, limbs locking as if caught in a force they couldn't resist.
Clyde's eyes widened. "What is that?"
"A fragment of the original shutdown sequence," she said. "But it's incomplete. Won't hold them for long."
"Then we move. Now."
They darted forward, weaving through the immobilized revenants. The air buzzed with unstable energy. Clyde's heart pounded in his chest. He wasn't sure if the fear was his—or something implanted, a leftover from the rewrite.
Minutes passed in chaos. When they finally found shelter inside the husk of a rusted transit station, Clyde collapsed onto a bench that flickered between metal and code.
The woman paced. "We'll need the full shutdown key to stop the spread permanently."
Clyde wiped sweat from his brow. "And where do we find that?"
She met his gaze. "The Core Archive."
Clyde went still.
He didn't know how, but he knew that name.
It wasn't just a place—it was a memory. A room with white walls. A circle of light. A voice that whispered into his subconscious.
"That's where I woke up," he said. "The first time."
Her expression darkened. "Then they've already marked you. You're the key, Clyde. You were never just another subject—they modeled the rewrite around you."
Clyde swallowed hard, the weight of her words sinking in. If the Core Archive was tied to him… then maybe everything that happened—the void, the alternate version of himself, the collapsing world—it all started from him.
"Then we end it where it began," he said.
She nodded. "We find the Archive. We unlock the truth."
As night fell—though even the concept of night was strange now, with a glitching sky that looped on itself—the two rested, knowing what lay ahead would challenge not only their bodies… but their very identities.
Because the deeper they went, the more fragile reality became.
And the closer they got to the truth, the more dangerous the lies became.