The phantom stood motionless, its digital skin flickering like a memory struggling to stay alive. Arden didn't blink. He couldn't. Every part of him screamed that this wasn't Clyde… and yet, deep down, he felt him.
"Prove it," Arden whispered. "Say something only Clyde would know."
The phantom tilted its head, voice low, jagged, but almost warm.
"You once called the Architect a 'glorified calculator with a god complex.' You were wrong… It was worse."
Arden froze.
That line—he had said it once. Only Clyde had heard him.
Echo stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "Then why do you look like this? Why not come back whole?"
The phantom's image wavered, revealing flashes of something underneath: blueprints, terminal lines, corrupted memories—like thousands of lifetimes compressed into one consciousness.
"Because the failsafe didn't just save me… It rewrote me."
There was a tremble in his voice. It wasn't just data anymore. It was grief.
Back at the outpost, a signal started pulsing through the walls. Echo ran diagnostics. Arden watched as numbers bled off the screens like melting ink.
"It's transmitting coordinates," she muttered. "Somewhere inside the Architect's graveyard."
That place wasn't on any map. It was where the Architect stored failed projects, corrupted dreams, abandoned prototypes of its vision for humanity.
And now the phantom wanted them to go there.
That night, Arden stood outside the bunker, staring at the stars. They looked dimmer. Colder.
Echo joined him, her tone softer than usual.
"You okay?"
He nodded slowly. "Do you think he's still Clyde in there?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I think whoever he is… he's still fighting. And that's enough for me."
Far away, deep in the Architect's graveyard, a signal beacon pulsed like a heartbeat. The phantom sat in a void of fading code, whispering to itself:
"They're coming… I hope I'm still me… when they find me