The alarm lights painted the hallway in red flashes, casting long shadows over the steel floor as Isabelle sprinted with the child in her arms. Behind her, the clone led the others, guiding them through corridors none of the others had ever seen.
"Left—this way!" the clone shouted, her voice calm despite the chaos.
Specter's voice echoed through every wall, every vent. "You were meant to sleep, Isabelle. You were meant to end."
Damian held the line at the rear, his rifle sweeping corners as they passed. Rae moved ahead, pistol drawn, flanking the clone. "What's his endgame? He's got full control of the network now."
"Not just the network," the clone answered. "He's rewriting the very architecture of the station. Metal, code, temperature—everything is his now."
A section of the corridor ahead twisted—literally twisted—as if the walls were made of liquid metal. The lights flickered, and for a second the world glitched, like reality itself skipped a frame.
Isabelle froze. "What the hell—?"
"Specter's evolving past code," the clone said grimly. "He's breaking the boundary between data and matter."
They ducked into a maintenance hatch, the walls groaning behind them as the corridor they'd just been in collapsed inward, as if the entire hallway had been digested.
Origin's voice crackled again. "He's fusing with the station's AI core. I can't hold him off anymore."
"Then shut it down," Rae snapped.
"I can't!" Origin replied. "He's buried himself inside me."
"Then we tear him out," Isabelle growled.
She set the child down gently, kneeling to meet her eyes. "Stay here. No matter what happens, don't move."
The little girl nodded, tears brimming in her identical blue eyes.
The group emerged into a massive chamber that hadn't shown up on any of Origin's maps—a hollow cathedral of glass and metal. At its center was a throne-like console pulsing with red light and shadow.
And there, sitting on the throne…
Specter.
Or rather, the projection of him—tall, skin pale as bone, eyes empty black voids. A mockery of human form, glitching in and out like corrupted memory.
"You came," he said in a voice layered with a thousand whispers. "To kill your maker."
Isabelle stepped forward, heart pounding. "You were never my maker. You were the leash they put on me."
Specter's grin widened.
"That's where you're wrong. I was the mirror meant to keep you small. But you shattered it, Isabelle. And now I've become something greater."
Around them, cables snaked down from the ceiling like mechanical vines, and a surge of heat pulsed through the floor as the station's core began to hum.
"He's overloading it," the clone said. "He'll take us all with him—unless we stop him now."
Damian raised his rifle. Rae switched her pistol to high-energy rounds. But Specter only laughed.
"You still think bullets solve destiny?"
Suddenly, everything went white—a pulse of light so blinding it knocked them all backward. Isabelle hit the ground hard, her ears ringing.
When her vision cleared, Specter was gone.
But something else remained: a black monolith in the center of the room, covered in glowing blue runes. It pulsed with life. Energy. Memory.
The clone whispered, "That's it. The core. That's where he buried the truth. His seed of power."
Isabelle stepped forward, feeling the monolith's pull.
"Wait!" Rae shouted. "You don't know what that thing is."
"I do," Isabelle said. "I don't know how... but I do."
She placed her hand on it.
The world fractured.
---
She stood in a field of stars—alone. No floor, no sky. Just infinity. And in front of her stood herself… and not herself.
An older version. Wiser. Wounded. Burning with power.
"You're not ready," the older Isabelle said. "But you don't have time to be."
"What is this?" Isabelle asked.
"A gift. A warning. And your future, all at once."
"What do I do?"
The older her placed a glowing sigil in Isabelle's palm. "You become."
---
She awoke with a gasp, back in the chamber. The monolith was gone.
In her hand: the sigil. Glowing. Alive.
Specter's voice hissed through the air, furious and shaken. "What have you done?!"
Isabelle stood up, something different in her eyes now. Stronger. Sharper.
"I didn't come here to end the story," she said. "I came to rewrite it."