Ash's voice echoed in my mind.
> "If you want answers, meet me in the Thread."
He didn't speak aloud. He couldn't—not now that the Ministry's scans had locked both our cells into silence mode. But the ghost had left a link between us, something deeper than audio: a neural tether.
I sat cross-legged on the cold floor, closing my eyes, focusing on the pulse behind my thoughts.
> Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The heartbeat wasn't mine.
It belonged to her—the girl whose memory I carried like a second spine.
The ghost.
I reached inward, just like Ash instructed: center your thoughts, open the neural gate the Ministry buried under the toxin Veras injected. Let her unlock it from the inside.
And she did.
With a flash.
> ACCESS GRANTED: THREAD KEY UNLOCKED.
The world collapsed.
---
I fell.
Not through space. Through memory.
Data roared past like burning wind—snippets of archived lives, dreams, fragments of strangers. Somewhere between them all, I felt Ash's presence stabilizing the link.
And then—
A soft click.
I landed on something solid.
Not real. Not physical.
But solid in a way that meant this part of the Thread had purpose.
We stood in a corridor of glass and rusted steel, suspended in an infinite dark. Data flowed through the walls like blood through veins—fast, liquid light, too fast to read.
Ash appeared next to me, slightly blurred, like a bad hologram.
"You made it," he said.
"Where are we?" I asked.
He motioned to the corridor. "This is a spine node. One of the oldest layers of the Thread."
"Oldest?"
"Pre-Ministry. Pre-Archive. Built by someone long gone—or hiding."
The corridor rumbled.
A section of glass ahead shimmered and peeled open.
A chamber.
Inside it, a throne of tangled cables.
And someone sitting in it.
A girl.
She looked up as we entered—eyes glowing white, hair floating around her head as if underwater.
But she didn't speak.
She projected.
> "You found me."
My breath caught.
"Who are you?" I asked.
> "I am not a name. I am what was left behind."
Ash took a step forward. "You're the ghost. The fragment that infected us."
> "No. I am the original signal."
The Thread trembled.
Around us, the data walls flickered and surged.
She stood from the throne. The cables pulled free with a sound like tearing skin.
> "You carry my final broadcast."
Ash looked at me. "She chose you. You're her last vessel."
"What was your message?" I asked.
She stepped closer. Her glow dimmed, resolving her face into something human. Young. Sad.
> "The Ministry didn't just archive memories. They extracted futures."
"What?"
> "They were testing probability synthesis. They used my mind to simulate timelines. They asked me to predict outcomes, then erased the paths they didn't like."
She looked at Ash.
> "You were one of the paths."
He staggered back, stunned.
> "You died in 92. But you're alive here. A rejected timeline."
I turned to him.
"You're not supposed to exist?"
Ash shook his head slowly. "I always felt broken."
The girl—ghost—raised her hand.
A flood of memories rushed from her palm.
Images:
—A vast machine learning engine named PANTHEON.
—Ministry officials watching her brainwave patterns spike beyond human limits.
—A chart labeled: PROBABILITY-COMPATIBLE SUBJECTS – CULL ORDER: ACTIVE.
—My name.
> "You were marked for deletion," she said to me. "But I rewrote you. Hid your identity inside a memory echo and waited for someone to find it."
> "You were the only path where I survived."
The floor shook violently.
The walls cracked.
"Someone's breaking into the node," Ash warned.
The ghost girl looked pained.
> "They found the link."
"Can we disconnect?" I asked.
> "No. You must run. The core is near. If you reach it, you'll find the truth."
"Where is it?"
> "Follow the collapsed threads. They lead to where time was erased."
She turned to me, her eyes soft.
> "Elian. If they catch you, they'll end all versions of you."
Then she dissolved into light.
Ash grabbed my arm. "We move. Now."
The corridor split open again, showing a path of disintegrating bridges over swirling codestorms.
We ran.
Behind us, black tendrils erupted through the walls—digital agents shaped like spiders, shrieking as they chased us across the dying Thread.
But I didn't look back.
Because ahead, at the center of the collapsing world, pulsed something massive.
A core.
Burning white.
Waiting for me.