The chamber cracked with silence. Not stillness—pressure. As if time held its breath.
Then, they moved.
Both at once. Identical bodies. Identical reflexes. But something beneath—the soul, the weight, the rage—that was different.
His fist met the clone's, a shockwave of light and code rippling outward. The girl was thrown back, shielding her face as sparks rained from the ceiling.
[CONFLICT MODE: ACTIVE. DNA SIGNATURE SPLIT. CORE ACCEPTING PRIMARY INSTANCE.]
They blurred into each other, fists and boots colliding in distorted motion. The clone fought with precision—perfect, rehearsed. No emotion, just algorithmic execution.
But the boy fought with something else.
Pain.
Memory.
Flawed instinct and raw fear shaped into something feral.
The clone whispered mid-swing:
"You are corrupted. Emotion is inefficiency."
"I am the error," he snarled, elbow cracking into his double's jaw.
They tumbled across the floor. The clone flipped, recovered instantly, and sent a wave of kinetic code into the boy's chest. He hit the wall—hard—but stood again, coughing blood, laughing through it.
[VITAL SIGNS DESTABILIZED.]
"You can copy me," he spat, "but you'll never carry what I've survived."
The clone hesitated.
And in that moment—the girl tossed him something.
A shard. No tech. Just memory.
A photo. Torn. Faded. Two children beneath a broken tree. Smiling.
The clone blinked.
[UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY DETECTED. COMPATIBILITY: NULL.]
He struck.
The boy didn't hesitate.
He used the shard like a knife and drove it into the clone's neck—digital blood spilling like light, pixelated and unreal.
The clone gasped—not from pain, but confusion.
"What… is this?"
"Humanity," the boy whispered.
The Protocol screamed.
Lights shattered. Code crashed. The room fractured around them like a hard drive dying mid-write.
And at the center, one figure stood—chest rising, hand bleeding, eyes burning with everything the system tried to erase.
Himself.