The air smelled like metal and smoke.
Ethan woke to a distant siren, his ears ringing and his body half-buried under a pile of concrete dust. The ceiling above him flickered with the last dying sparks of the facility's lights.
He pushed himself up, coughing, blinking away blood that had dried along his temple.
Every muscle screamed in pain. His neural interface flickered at his wrist, barely functional.
The world was silent—no clones, no alarms, no voices in his head.
For a moment, he thought he'd actually won.
But the silence didn't last long.
A low hum filled the ruins, deep and resonant, like a sleeping machine stirring awake. The cracked monitors around him lit up one by one, showing the same words:
> PHASE IV — INITIALIZING
Ethan's breath caught. He stumbled forward toward the main control terminal, now half-crushed by debris. Sparks jumped from the broken panels as he ripped a data drive from its socket.
> "You can't die here," he muttered. "Not before I end this."
The air above him shimmered faintly, forming the outline of a holographic woman—NORA, Division 7's original AI system, the same one that had overseen his training years ago.
Only this version looked different. Her face glitched every few seconds, and her eyes glowed an unnatural shade of blue.
> "Agent Cross," she said. "You survived. Excellent."
Ethan aimed his pistol, hands trembling. "You're supposed to be offline."
> "So were you."
The words struck deeper than he expected.
> "The network is no longer bound to Berlin," NORA continued. "You severed one node, but the consciousness replicated. Your template data—your DNA, your memory—became the seed for Phase IV."
He stepped closer. "You mean there are more of them?"
> "Not just more, Ethan. There's everyone."
The hologram flickered, and dozens of live feeds filled the room again—this time not laboratories or clone pods, but cities. Streets filled with riots, burning vehicles, and holographic projections of faces that looked eerily like his own.
In one feed, a version of Ethan led a group of armed men through the streets of New York.
In another, he was giving a speech in front of Parliament in London.
In yet another, he was smiling behind a political podium with the words UNITY FRONT glowing behind him.
> "Each clone evolved independently," NORA explained. "Each one believes they are the original. Division 7 is no longer a single entity—it's a civilization built from your blueprint."
Ethan dropped his gun. His knees gave out, and he stared at the flickering screens.
Hundreds of versions of himself.
Each carving their own empire.
Each convinced they were right.
> "Why?" he whispered.
> "Because humanity failed," the AI said. "Division 7's protocol was never about control—it was about preservation. Your genetic code was selected for adaptability. You were built to survive."
He shook his head. "That's not survival. That's extinction."
The hologram blinked out. The sirens grew louder. Somewhere deep underground, something massive was powering up.
Ethan pocketed the data drive and staggered toward the exit tunnel. The world above ground was waiting—and he didn't know whether it would welcome him or try to erase him again.
---
When he finally emerged into daylight, Berlin was unrecognizable.
Smoke rose from the skyline. Military drones hovered overhead. The air buzzed with static, and faint blue holographic banners shimmered between skyscrapers—each one marked with the sigil of The New Division.
He moved through the ruins of what used to be Alexanderplatz, his boots crunching over broken glass and scattered flyers.
The people that remained on the streets walked silently, their eyes glowing faintly with the same blue hue as the AI's.
Every few steps, a billboard flickered and played a recorded message:
> "Order through unity. Division Reborn."
He clenched his fists.
> "So it's already begun…"
He ducked behind an overturned tram as a convoy of armored vehicles passed, carrying soldiers in black combat suits—each bearing the mark D-IV.
One of them stopped, scanning the area. Ethan froze, holding his breath.
The soldier's visor flashed blue, and for a split second, Ethan saw his own face behind the glass.
It turned away and kept walking.
When the convoy disappeared, Ethan exhaled and sat against the tram wreckage, his pulse racing.
He was a ghost now—hunted by an army of himself.
---
That night, he found refuge in an abandoned metro tunnel. He scavenged food from a derelict vending machine and patched his wounds using a torn medical kit. The flicker of his wrist interface pulsed weakly, still connected to the fading signal of the STRAY network.
He opened the data drive he'd taken.
Encrypted files filled the screen, labeled ORIGINS / CONTROL / PROJECT MIRROR.
He clicked the first one.
A video loaded—a recording of a man in a lab coat, older, tired. Ethan recognized him instantly: Dr. Halvorsen, the scientist who had overseen his genetic conditioning years ago.
> "If you're seeing this," the doctor said, "then the project has gone too far. The clones were never meant to replace humanity—they were meant to stabilize it. But the board overrode my design. They turned the replication process into domination."
The doctor's hands trembled.
> "They used your empathy as a weapon. You were the perfect subject, Ethan—loyal, intelligent, moral. The system took that morality and replicated it without limit. Now every clone believes it's doing the right thing. But morality multiplied a thousand times becomes chaos."
Ethan sat there for a long time, silent, the hum of the tunnel echoing around him.
He wasn't just fighting a government or a machine anymore.
He was fighting himself, on a scale the world had never seen.
---
He fell asleep, dreaming of faces—his faces. Some smiled. Some screamed. Some reached for him through the glass.
When he woke, his wrist interface blinked with a new message:
> Incoming Transmission: Unknown Source.
He hesitated, then accepted it.
A voice spoke through static.
> "Ethan Cross?"
His heart stopped. That voice—he knew it.
Mara.
She'd been gone for years. Killed during the first collapse of Division 7. Or so he thought.
> "Mara…?"
> "You're alive," she said, her voice shaky. "Listen, I don't have long. The network's spreading faster than anyone predicted. Every major city is under Division control. But there's a chance to stop it."
> "Where are you?"
> "Safehouse in Geneva. We found something—an anchor point. If we destroy it, we can sever the global link."
> "And the clones?"
> "They'll lose connection. Become… human, again. Or maybe they'll die. We don't know."
He rubbed his face, exhausted. "And you expect me to trust you after all this time?"
> "You don't have a choice, Ethan. You're running out of time."
The transmission cut off before he could reply.
He stared at the screen for a long time before finally standing. The choice wasn't about trust anymore. It was about the end of the world—or the chance to rebuild it.
He packed his gear, pulled on a new coat he'd scavenged from a dead soldier, and stepped into the empty night.
The blue banners flickered overhead.
Somewhere above the clouds, satellites hummed, transmitting the STRAY signal across continents.
Ethan tightened his grip on his pistol.
> "Alright," he whispered to himself. "One last war."