The photo didn't lie.
Even with its washed-out tones and distorted scan, Mira could see it clearly, the girl in the chamber was her. Not just someone like her. Her.
Only younger. Smaller. Pre-formed.
Prototype 00.
Before she had a name. Before she had a life.
She was a project.
Her mother didn't deny it.
When Mira confronted her, she said nothing at first, just stared at the photo with hollow eyes, like it was a ghost come home.
"I tried to destroy those records," she said at last, voice hoarse.
"Why?" Mira's throat burned. "Because it was easier to lie?"
"No," her mother said. "Because the truth was too heavy to survive."
Mira shook her head. "Then I'll carry it."
They gathered that night in the hidden theater, everyone tense, everyone waiting.
Zeke stood close to Mira, though he said little. His eyes said enough.
Lys was already mapping what little data they had from the photo. "This chamber—it's not the Depths," she said. "The structure doesn't match any known facility there."
Her mother nodded. "That's because it wasn't part of the Rift Labs. It was deeper."
"Deeper than the Depths?" Venn asked, incredulous.
"There's a level under the base of the school," she replied. "Built before the Rift cracked open. Before any of us understood what we were playing with."
"A Genesis site," Mira murmured.
Her mother didn't argue.
They descended the next night, disguised as a maintenance crew under the guise of Rift tremor inspections. The school was quiet, students had been evacuated to the upper quarters because of tremors in the east wing. But Mira knew it wasn't the school shaking.
It was her.
They reached the sub-sub-basement through a shaft hidden behind an old generator room. The air turned cold. Denser.
The walls changed from stone to metal.
And then to something older.
Crystalline.
They reached a sealed door. This one was different from the Riftsteel in the Depths. It shimmered black like obsidian, but when Lys touched it, it rippled.
Not like metal.
Like skin.
Zeke swallowed hard. "You sure about this?"
"No," Mira said. "But we have to know."
She stepped forward, raised her hand
The door split open.
Like it recognized her.
The chamber was dark.
Dead quiet.
Rows of stasis tubes lined the walls, most shattered. Inside them, only fragments remained bits of crystal, synthetic bone, faded wires.
Failed prototypes.
Mira counted at least twenty.
She moved carefully between them, heart thudding.
Then she saw it.
The central pod.
Still intact.
And inside
Another Mira.
Zeke gasped.
Lys stepped back.
The girl was unconscious. Curled, limbs floating slightly as if suspended in zero gravity. Her face was eerily identical to Mira's, but younger. Unused.
Mira pressed a hand to the glass.
"She's… me."
Her mother stepped forward. "She was the first physical vessel they created. But she never woke."
"Why keep her alive?"
"To study what failed."
Mira's hands shook. "You let them grow me."
Her mother didn't deny it.
"You didn't just run from them. You worked with them."
"I tried to stop it."
"You let them split me."
Her mother's eyes filled with tears. "Mira, you are more than what they made. You're the one who survived."
But Mira wasn't listening.
Because the girl inside the pod moved.
A twitch of the fingers.
Barely a flicker.
Then the eyes opened.
And they were not Mira's.
They were hollow. White. Ringed with Riftlight.
The chamber pulsed.
Lys swore. "She's not dormant anymore!"
Zeke reached for Mira, but the pod cracked from the inside, webs of crystal spreading across its surface.
Mira backed away.
But the girl sat up inside the glass like a puppet raised by invisible strings.
She tilted her head at Mira.
And smiled.
Then the voice echoed, not aloud, but inside every mind in the room:
"So this is the shape I was meant to wear."
Zeke staggered. "She's possessed, like the Echoes."
"No," Mira whispered. "She's not possessed."
Lys looked at her sharply. "Then what is she?"
Mira's heart pounded.
"She's the Echo made flesh. A perfected form."
And the Echo was using her own face.
They ran.
The chamber behind them collapsed in a bloom of violet flame, not hot but cold, so cold the walls frosted over in seconds. Riftlight bled through every crack.
The Echo's voice followed them like a wind in the spine:
"You can't outrun your origin. I am the beginning. You are the error."
Back in the theater, they barricaded the vault. Every entrance reinforced. Mira sat against the wall, body shaking.
"She's me," she said.
"No," Zeke said. "You're you. That thing is just… wearing you."
"But it's not just a copy. It's the original. I'm the escapee."
"Mira"
"She said I was an error."
Zeke knelt. "And you are. You're the error that ruined their plans. You're the flaw that survived. That's power, Mira. Not weakness."
At dawn, her mother found her on the rooftop again.
"I didn't know she could wake," she said softly.
"She wasn't supposed to," Mira replied.
"But she did."
They stood in silence for a while.
Then her mother handed her a final data chip. "This was from the Overseer's vault. It shows the entire chain."
"From what?"
"From your first breath to your escape."
Mira turned it in her hands. It felt warm.
"Why now?"
"Because you need to see it before she uses it against you."
Mira didn't respond.
She pocketed the chip and stared out at the Rift horizon, at the place where the sky split like an old wound never healed.
The Rift pulsed again.
And somewhere in the depths of the school, her Echo, her shadow was stirring.
Waiting.