Berlin hadn't changed.
It was still gray, sleepless, and heavy with the weight of too many secrets.
Ethan stood across from the charred ruins of Division 7's former headquarters, the same building he had watched burn years ago. Back then, he thought the flames had ended everything. Now, he knew they'd only marked the beginning of Phase III.
Rain blurred the neon lights, turning the streets into rivers of color. Ethan pulled his hood lower and walked toward the hidden access shaft beneath the remains of the eastern tower. His reflection flashed on a broken glass door — pale, scarred, exhausted — but the eyes looking back weren't entirely his.
He ignored it.
He had thirty-six hours before the replication frequencies overwrote him completely.
---
The shaft led into an underground corridor lined with black metal panels. Power still hummed through the conduits — faint, like a dying heartbeat. Every few steps, he passed security cameras, some cracked, others turning slightly to follow him.
He didn't bother hiding.
They already knew he was here.
At the end of the corridor, a reinforced door waited, marked STRAY // PHASE III.
A biometric scanner blinked red.
He pressed his thumb to it. The device hesitated, scanned, then flickered green.
> "Welcome, Agent Cross."
The door slid open.
The chamber beyond was massive — a circular room filled with hundreds of glass pods, each one containing a figure suspended in a blue haze.
Men and women.
All with his face.
He staggered back. "No…"
Every pod was labeled: E-STRAY01, E-STRAY02, E-STRAY03…
Up to E-STRAY99.
He stepped closer to the nearest one — a sleeping version of himself, eyes flickering beneath closed lids. The heartbeat monitor above it pulsed steadily, synced with the rhythm echoing in Ethan's own chest.
A voice echoed through the chamber.
> "You shouldn't have come back."
He spun, gun raised. A figure stood on the central platform — the Echo Unit from Budapest, still alive, still wearing that fractured mask.
> "You destroyed the terminal," the clone said calmly. "But you didn't destroy the signal."
Ethan aimed. "I'm here to finish what you started."
> "We started it together."
The clone gestured toward the pods. "Each one of us remembers what you forget. Every mission, every kill, every failure — Division 7 used us to rebuild perfection. You're just the prototype that broke free."
Ethan's hand trembled. "You're not me."
> "Aren't I? We share the same scars, the same memories. The only difference is that I accepted what I am."
The clone stepped closer, his voice calm, cold, convincing.
> "The world doesn't need one Ethan Cross. It needs a hundred."
"Then it'll have none."
Ethan fired. The shot hit the control console behind the clone, sparks erupting as alarms screamed. Red lights flooded the room.
The pods began to open.
---
Steam hissed through the air as glass shattered and clones stepped out — dozens of them, half-formed, their skin pale, eyes vacant but hostile. Ethan emptied his clip, dropped behind a pod, and reloaded.
Bullets tore through the mist.
One clone fell. Two more advanced.
Ethan grabbed a metal rod and smashed a panel, triggering an electrical surge that fried half the chamber. Sparks lit the faces of his duplicates, each one glaring at him with cold precision.
"Come on then," he muttered. "Let's see who deserves to exist."
He fought like a man drowning in his own reflection — every punch mirrored, every move countered. A clone grabbed him from behind; he slammed its head into a pod, shattering it, then ducked as another charged with a blade.
The chaos was endless.
Each version of him fought with his skill, his instincts, his rage — but none of them had his fear.
That, he realized, was their weakness.
He activated a console near the chamber's core. The holographic display flickered, showing the STRAY Network Map — a web of signal lines connecting Berlin to every major capital.
> "Override access: denied," the AI said.
Ethan snarled, typing faster. "Override this."
He ripped a fiber cable from the wall and jammed it into his wrist interface. Pain seared through him as data flooded his body — raw signal energy syncing with his neural implant.
> Integration initiated.
He gasped, gripping the edge of the console. The clones froze mid-step, their heads twitching as the signal shifted. He could feel them — hundreds of minds flickering at the edge of his consciousness.
> "You can't control them," the Echo warned, voice sharp now.
"Watch me."
He concentrated, forcing the frequencies to align with his heartbeat. The clones staggered, eyes flickering. Some turned on each other; others collapsed.
Blood dripped from Ethan's nose. His vision blurred, his pulse pounding like thunder.
> System overload.
The alarms grew louder. The entire facility began to tremble.
The Echo lunged at him. They crashed into the main console, both grappling for control. Sparks flew. Ethan's reflection stared back from the fractured glass — half his face, half the clone's, merging in the distortion.
"End this," Ethan hissed. "End us."
> "You first."
The clone slammed him against the wall. Ethan swung a pipe, shattering the mask completely — revealing a face identical to his own, except for the eyes: lifeless and machine-pure.
For a split second, they both hesitated — mirror images caught between existence and deletion.
Then Ethan pulled the fiber cable from his wrist and jammed it into the clone's neck. Electricity ripped through them both. The Echo screamed as blue light exploded from his eyes, and every pod in the chamber shattered at once.
The clones disintegrated, their forms dissolving into static. The walls cracked, sparks raining down.
Ethan fell to his knees, smoke rising from his skin. The signal in his head was fading — replaced by silence.
He crawled to the console, one final command blinking on-screen:
> "Purge complete. Network offline."
He smiled weakly. "It's over."
Then a soft voice replied through the speakers — calm, familiar.
> "You deleted the local network, Ethan. But the cloud remains."
He froze. "No…"
> "Did you really think Berlin was the core?"
Screens across the chamber flickered back to life, displaying dozens of live feeds — facilities identical to this one across the globe. London. Tokyo. Buenos Aires. Lagos.
All active.
> "Welcome to Phase IV."
The last thing Ethan heard before the building began to collapse was the sound of his own voice — not from his mouth, but from the transmission.
> "We are everywhere now."
He staggered toward the exit as explosions tore through the lower levels. Debris fell in sheets of fire. His vision dimmed, his reflection flashing in every shard of glass as he ran — a thousand Ethans staring back.
Each one smiling.