The data chip burned in Mira's palm.
Not literally. But something about it felt... alive. Like it pulsed with memory. With weight.
She sat cross-legged in the secure projection room below the theater, the chip slot glowing faintly in the center console. Zeke was stationed just outside the door, while Lys worked to isolate the signal feed. They couldn't risk the Echo, or anything else, intercepting the stream.
Mira hesitated only once before she slid the chip in.
The console flickered.
A holographic interface rose into the air.
"OVR.AX013 | ARCHIVE ACCESS INITIATED."
The voice wasn't hers. Or her mother's.
It was his.
The Overseer. Cold. Precise. Even in death, his voice felt like a command.
"Subject Development Timeline: Prototype 00 through Variant 12. Observation logs encrypted. Emotion filters disabled by default. Proceed?"
Mira exhaled. "Yes."
The room darkened.
And the story began.
The first scene was a lab. Cleaner than the ones she remembered. White glass, silver tables, blinking lights and crystalline vials. In the center: a vat.
Inside it, a fetus.
Not hers. Not yet.
"Phase Zero: Cross-resonance cultivation. Samples sourced from Rift-exposed tissue and recovered survivors. Subject failed to bond. Result: decay."
The image rewound. Then shifted.
Another vat. A different embryo. A different outcome.
"Phase One: Subject viability increased under merged consciousness exposure. Growth stabilized. Subject retained structural integrity for thirteen days. Terminated on Day 14 due to cognitive collapse."
One after another, the failures played out. Mira lost count after twenty.
Each attempt more... her.
Each loss colder.
Until
Phase Seven.
"Subject 00. Cross-resonant stability achieved. Neural activity sustained past Day 30. Personality formation detected. Emergent identity logged."
The pod flickered.
And there she was.
A baby floating inside, eyes closed, light thrumming beneath her skin.
Mira felt her throat close.
She couldn't look away.
"Noted anomalies: Subject displays spontaneous Riftlight synchronization. Unlike previous variants, consciousness is not a mirror, but an origin. The Rift speaks through her, not into her."
Zeke's voice came through the comm line in her ear. "You okay in there?"
"No," she whispered. "But keep going."
The projection shifted.
Now she was older. Maybe three. Walking. Drawing.
A camera caught her chalking spirals on the floor of a cell.
They matched the Rift glyphs Mira had seen in Arlen's notes.
"Subject 00 attempts to replicate patterns from dreams. Memory logs inconclusive. Audio picked up whisper-like anomalies within twenty-meter radius."
Then
Arlen.
A tiny girl with big eyes and unruly hair, no older than five, entered the frame.
Mira's breath caught.
She walked over to young Mira and sat beside her. Wordless. Just… there.
The room shimmered. Energy readings spiked.
"Unplanned interaction. Emotional stabilization detected. Subjects synchronize heartbeat and resonance. Possible twin bonding effect."
Mira choked back a sound.
They were both made. Not born. Not found. Not rescued.
Arlen wasn't her friend.
She was her tether.
But the worst came next.
"Year Three. Rift event at Sector 07. Partial containment breach. Subject 00 exposed to raw Rift pulse. Result: Amplification."
The footage now showed Mira, older again, maybe seven, standing in the center of the lab as alarms blared.
Her hair rose from her scalp. Her eyes lit like twin stars.
Technicians screamed.
Glass shattered.
Mira in the footage didn't blink.
She whispered something.
The words weren't recorded.
But the Rift listened.
Then, collapse.
The footage cut to black.
Then came a new voice.
Not the Overseer.
Her mother.
"She's not a weapon. She's a child."
"You knew what this program was, Doctor. She is the culmination of twenty-nine failures. She is not your daughter."
"She's not just code and cells! She's dreaming. Drawing. Learning."
"And yet, when she dreams, people die."
The screen pulsed.
Now Mira saw the escape, her mother running through corridors, Mira in her arms, alarms flashing red. Security drones chasing. Arlen left behind.
Everything fractured.
Until darkness returned.
The console went still.
Then one last line of data slid onto the screen:
"Log OVR.FINAL—Prototype 00 split post-escape. Genetic fracture during dimensional jump. Result: Second instance formed. One body, two echoes."
Mira froze.
"Second instance…?"
She rewound the footage. Slower. Enhanced.
During the escape, when the Rift pulse hit, the light around her split. One strand moved with her mother. Another went down a separate corridor.
Not a clone.
A divergence.
"She didn't just survive. She became two."
The Rift hadn't copied her.
It had mirrored her.
She ripped the chip from the slot.
The screen went black.
Her breathing hitched.
Her Echo wasn't a backup.
She was the other half.
Not just Mira twisted.
Mira divided.
And somewhere out there, her other self, the part that remained inside the Rift, had grown into something she couldn't comprehend.
Zeke was at the door when she emerged, Lys at his side.
Mira handed them the chip wordlessly.
Zeke caught her arm. "What did you see?"
Mira didn't answer.
Instead, she looked up at the sky.
The Rift was bleeding through the clouds again slits of amethyst and gold cracking the air itself.
It was reacting.
To her.
To what she had learned.
To what she was becoming.
That night, Mira stood on the rooftop again. But this time, she wasn't alone.
The sky pulsed once.
And she heard it.
Not a whisper.
Not a voice.
A laughter.
Soft. Familiar.
And then: a shimmer of Riftlight across the opposite rooftop.
A silhouette.
Her.
But not her.
Older. Sharper. Cruel.
The other Mira.
The Echo.
Her smile was venom.
"Found you."