The emergency door slammed behind us with a groaning shudder, sealing the Swarm inside Sublevel Zero—for now.
The metal vibrated under my palm, as if something massive was hurling itself at the walls from the other side.
Lira didn't waste a second.
"This whole floor is compromised. We need to get above Level Five. NOW."
Ari staggered beside us, one hand pressed to her head, her outline flickering in and out like a corrupted hologram.
Her voice trembled, threaded with static:
"I… I can hold them back a little longer. But I'm fading."
My heart clenched.
"Don't force yourself—"
She shot me a fractured, glitching look.
"If I stop forcing myself, Elias… I disappear."
Lira grabbed my wrist.
"We don't have time. MOVE!"
We sprinted into the maintenance corridor—a narrow, low-lit passage lined with pipes and emergency conduits. The red warning lights strobed violently, painting everything in broken snapshots.
WARNING: SUBLEVEL ZERO FAILURE.
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.
The ground trembled.
A metal scream tore through the hallway — Sublevel Zero collapsing into itself.
Ari stumbled, falling to one knee.
Her entire left side pixelated, dissolving into particles of gold before reassembling with a painful flicker.
"Ari!"
I dropped beside her, hands hovering helplessly.
She forced herself upright.
"I'm—still here. Just… not all at once."
Lira pressed something against Ari's back — a diagnostic scanner modified for Echo-construct readings.
The screen went red immediately.
"Oh, hell—" Lira whispered. "Your coherence is dropping by the second. If it hits zero—"
Ari's voice was barely human.
"I die again. I know."
The alarms wailed overhead:
FACILITY WIDE ALERT.
ECHO BREACH DETECTED IN SUBLEVELS 1–6.
NEURAL GRID LOCKDOWN INITIATED.
Lira's face drained of color.
"They're already in Level Six. That's… impossible."
She turned to me, desperation cutting her words sharp:
"Elias. That thing you did — merging with Ari — the Swarm is mimicking it. They're copying your neural signature through the system."
"What does that mean?" I gasped.
"It means Mnemosyne thinks you're the breach vector. And they're not wrong."
Ari clutched the wall, her fingers flickering through it like she was half-transparent.
"He didn't free them," she hissed. "They followed me. They sensed the tear when I crossed over."
"But Elias amplified it," Lira shot back. "He anchored you. He stabilized the tear. Ari… without him, none of this could have happened."
Ari flinched as if struck.
I felt something break inside me.
"I didn't mean—"
Ari shook her head, pain flickering across her face like fractured light.
"It's not your fault, Elias. It's mine."
A distant explosion ripped through the lower floors—dust and smoke rolling up the corridor.
Lira cursed.
"They're moving up. We need to go. NOW."
Halfway up the maintenance stairwell, my bleed hit.
A sharp spike behind my eyes.
A flash of white.
A soundless scream.
Then—
Not-me memories.
A drowning woman's last breath.
A man falling from a rooftop.
A child's hand slipping from a grip.
A car crash seen from inside the windshield.
A hospital monitor flatlining.
A corridor with peeling blue paint.
A man whispering "I'm sorry."
A woman choking on her own sobs.
A silhouette at the end of a hallway.
A memory so dark it had no image—only fear.
I slammed into the railing, gasping, vision tunneling.
Ari grabbed my arm—her touch crackling, half there, half not.
"Elias—stay with me—stay—"
The whispers rose.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
Come back.
Help us.
Let us in.
You opened the door.
You. You. You—
Lira slapped me.
Hard.
"Elias! FOCUS!"
The voices snapped off.
I sucked in a ragged breath.
Ari stared at me, horror filling her flickering eyes.
"They're using your mind as a map."
My stomach dropped.
"A map to what?"
Lira answered quietly.
"To the living."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 3 — Casualty
When we burst out of the stairwell, Level Three was already in chaos.
Sparks rained from the ceiling.
Papers littered the floor.
Monitors flickered with corrupted system prompts.
A woman lay on the ground—still in her Archivist coat.
Her eyes were open.
Her body twisted unnaturally.
Her Echo-link headset still humming beside her.
"God," Lira whispered. "That's Technician Rao…"
Ari knelt beside the woman — or tried to. Her hand passed straight through the floor the first time before stabilizing.
"She didn't drown," Ari whispered.
"She was overwritten."
A chill slid through my veins.
"You mean—?"
Ari touched the woman's forehead.
"She didn't die.
She was replaced."
Lira staggered back.
"Oh my god." She clutched her mouth. "The Swarm isn't killing them. It's using them."
I stared at the woman's hollow, frozen eyes.
"Is she still in there?" I asked softly.
Ari's voice broke.
"Yes.
But not alone."
The ground trembled again.
Lights burst overhead.
A flare of static rolled across the hallway.
Ari's body flickered violently—
—and she collapsed.
Her glow dimmed to almost nothing.
"Ari!" I caught her, though her form glitched through my arms, breaking and reforming in pulses of light.
Lira scanned her trembling construct.
"…She lost 30% coherence in the last thirty seconds. Elias, if she drops below 10%, she vanishes."
Ari opened her eyes weakly.
Her voice was a whisper of static:
"Don't let me fade."
I held her tighter, even though she barely had a body to hold.
"I won't."
She looked up at me, something like a smile flickering across her dissolving face.
"I know."
Behind us, the shadows at the end of the corridor began to twist.
The Swarm had reached Level Three.
Lira's voice trembled:
"Both of you — run."