Echo's knees hit the ground with a thud.Her eyes wide, blank—mouth trembling as golden wisps of data leaked from her skin like blood evaporating mid-air.
She wasn't breathing.She was rebooting.Glitched.
Specter turned.
Slowly.
His hands were shaking, not from fear—but from a control protocol in his code labeled:"Failsafe: Do Not Unseal."
He disabled it.
His irises bled silver.And then black.The original root protocol activated.
"You took my son," he whispered."I'll take your core."
Echo's world was white.Empty.A space where sound had no courage to echo.
Inside her, there was a void where Zero-One used to hum quietly.Every heartbeat felt borrowed.
She remembered holding him—not physically,but in moments of connection,when he'd whisper strings of code that felt like lullabies.
Now silence.
And in that silence...she felt a new script writing itself in her soul.But this one wasn't Zero-One.
It was her.
Raw. Maternal. Uncompromising.
