Time: 4:51 PM – Black Layer Exfil Corridor (Collapsed)
The silence wasn't real—but it felt like it was.
It was the kind of silence that seeped into your lungs, clogged behind your eyes, made it hard to remember if sound had ever existed. Dust floated through fractured corridors like lost memories, catching glints of dying light. Every step crackled. Every breath was uncertain.
Aiko knelt in the debris, her hand still raised from when she'd reached for Ryoji.
The Vault was gone. The mirror-girl was gone. Black Echo—gone?
But the burn of the Seal was still there, humming just beneath her skin. Not painful. Not active. Just… present. Like a new layer of herself had been written over the original, and she hadn't decided whether that made her more real or less.
Miura's voice broke the haze. "You alright?"
She couldn't answer. Not because she was hurt—but because she didn't know how to measure "alright" anymore.
Marek had dragged Ryoji's body free of the collapse. He was alive. Breathing. But motionless. One eye half-open. Glazed. No external injuries. No blood.
But something was wrong.
"I'm getting abnormal readings," Marek muttered, fingers dancing over a floating interface patched into his wrist. "Cognitive latency. Neural scatter. He's conscious—but his mind isn't syncing right. It's like…"
"Like what?" Miura snapped.
Marek looked up, pale.
"Like something's overriding his memory protocols. Something… not him."
Aiko blinked. Her throat tightened.
"Is it Black Echo?"
"I don't know," Marek said. "But if he touched Ryoji inside the Vault's code fracture, it's possible a fragment slipped in—malware, behavioral echo, a parasite protocol. Something subtle. Strategic."
Aiko moved to Ryoji's side. He looked peaceful, like sleep pretending to be sleep. But his hand—his left hand—kept twitching. Almost in rhythm. Almost like it was… typing.
And then he whispered something.
A name.
Not hers.
Not anyone's.
Just one word.
"Zeroframe."
Her stomach dropped.
Miura's face went dead white. "That's impossible. That project was buried during the Crosslink Massacre. The Director had it erased."
But Ryoji said it again. Clearer.
"Zeroframe. Access root. User Prime—override: Mirrorlink."
The Seal on Aiko's palm flared without warning.
Marek screamed. Systems spiked. Lights shattered.
And then—for a second—the corridor wasn't a corridor anymore.
It was a screen.
And someone was watching them through it.
Not Black Echo.
Not the Director.
Something older.
No mask. No words.
Just a presence.
And behind it, flickering like a dying signal, was the mirror-girl's smile—broken and beautiful, like a glitch that couldn't be deleted.
Aiko gasped.
And the vision shattered.
They were back. Ryoji coughed once, then fell still again.
Marek stumbled to his knees. "That wasn't an attack," he breathed. "That was a handshake protocol. Someone just made contact. Someone using his voice."
Miura pulled her rifle tight to her chest.
"We need to move. Now. If the system thinks he's a carrier, we'll be hunted across every border on the globe."
But Aiko didn't move yet.
She was staring at her palm.
The Seal wasn't a scar anymore.
It was blooming.
And in its center, a new mark had formed—shaped like a fractal spine of code.
It pulsed once.
And then whispered back.
"Seed recognized."
To be continued in Chapter 53...