Two vessels.
One voice.
No way back.
Ava blinked.
But the world didn't refresh.
It rewound.
She was on her knees in the Core Vault, breath hitching, hands trembling, the air around her alive with pulsing threads of memory. But when she opened her eyes again—she wasn't in the vault anymore.
She was in her cradle.
Suspended in biofluid.
Five years old.
Heartbeat slow. Eyelids fluttering.
And she wasn't watching it from outside.
She was inside it. Feeling the weightless warmth. The sterile sweetness of gestation fluid. The shape of the light—blue, indirect, refracted like memory through water.
Solaris stood above her, hand on the glass.
But his voice—was wrong.
He wasn't speaking to her.
"Stabilizing cognitive layer… begin feed imprint: designation Echo."
"Cradle integrity at 72%. Try again."
The fluid flickered. The sound warped.
A pulse too loud. A heartbeat out of sync.
Suddenly Solaris was on the opposite side of the room.
Another cradle. Another child.
Her.
