Level Three buckled beneath our feet.
Lights burst one by one like dying fireflies, leaving behind a suffocating darkness that felt alive.
The floor vibrated, not with footsteps, but with a crawling, shifting movement beneath the metal panels — the Swarm spreading through the infrastructure.
Lira grabbed my sleeve, her breath sharp:
"We can't stay in open levels. The cameras will track Ari's signal. We need a blind spot."
"The what?" I asked, still holding Ari's fading form to my chest.
"A dead corridor," Lira said. "No surveillance. No scanners. No AI input. A flaw in the architecture. Mnemosyne never fixed it because—"
She swallowed.
"—because no one was supposed to be alive down here long enough to need it."
She dragged us toward a dim hallway branching off Level Three's main corridor. A warning sign flickered above it:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
NEURAL COVERAGE: NONE
I felt my pulse spike.
"Meaning no one can see us inside?"
"No," she said breathlessly. "Meaning nothing can see us inside."
The Swarm shrieked distantly — a chorus of mangled voices, overlapping and stitched together like torn fabric.
Ari clung to me, shivering, flickering in and out like a dying signal.
"They smell us," she whispered.
Her voice was soft. Broken.
"They smell me."
"What does that mean?" Lira hissed.
Ari's eyes fluttered.
"Memory scent. Why do you think animals avoid places where people died? Echoes… linger."
She looked at me.
"They know I'm not human. And they know you're still connected to me."
The Swarm's voices grew louder.
Come
Come back
Come inside
Elias—Rhane—open—open—
My blood turned to ice.
Ari stiffened suddenly — her body convulsing, glitching into three overlapping versions of herself:
Ari laughing on our first date.
Ari standing in the scanner room.
Ari lying on the hospital bed.
All layered on top of one another.
Her voice fractured into a chorus:
"Get—me—out—get—me—out—"
"Ari!" I held her tighter, but she kept flickering through my arms.
Lira swore.
"She's destabilizing — fast. Elias, you need to decide now. If she collapses inside the blind corridor, she may never reintegrate."
"What are you saying?" I choked.
"I'm saying if she drops below coherence, she'll get trapped in there like a corrupted file. A ghost inside a dead zone. No way out."
Ari's eyes rolled back. Another version of her flickered on top — younger, maybe nineteen, crying silently.
My chest shattered.
"I'm not leaving her."
Lira slammed her hand against the emergency bar and forced the door to the blind corridor open.
Everything beyond it was pitch black — as if light wasn't allowed inside.
Before I could step through, a cold whisper crawled across the walls:
"…don't go…"
Lira froze.
"That wasn't Ari."
The Swarm's voices crawled closer.
Elias—Rhane—stay—stay—stay—
Ari trembled violently.
"Don't… listen," she whispered. "They're copying your voice. All your voices."
"My what?"
She looked up at me, eyes glitching between brown, gold, static.
"You've been bleeding memories," she murmured. "More than you realize. Every time you touched me, every time you heard them, they learned more about you."
She reached up — her hand glitching through my jaw.
"They know how to talk like you. How to sound like your past."
The corridor lights behind us flashed once, twice—
Then darkness rushed forward like a tide.
The Swarm arrived.
But not in bodies.
Not yet.
They came as shadows first — smears of black static sliding along the walls like oil eating through steel.
Lira grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.
"ELIAS — CHOOSE!"
Ari's head dropped against my chest.
She whispered, barely audible:
"Take me inside. Please."
The shadows surged, reaching.
I stepped into the blind corridor.
The door slammed shut behind us.
The dark was absolute.
Not nighttime dark.
Not power-outage dark.
A thick, suffocating emptiness that swallowed sound, swallowed breath, swallowed thought.
Even Ari's glow dimmed to a faint, dying pulse against my chest.
Lira turned on her flashlight.
It flickered weakly — as if the corridor itself hated light.
"We can't stay long," she whispered. "This zone wasn't built for humans, let alone—"
Her eyes flicked to Ari.
"…whatever she is now."
Ari stirred weakly.
"I can't see. Elias… I can't see anything."
"You're safe," I whispered.
But I wasn't sure.
Not in this place.
Not in this void.
Then—
A soft tapping echoed down the corridor.
Tap.
Tap tap.
Lira lifted her weapon.
"That's not a drone. That's not footsteps. That's—"
Ari's voice cracked:
"Memory residue."
The tapping continued.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Coming closer.
Growing sharper.
Then—
A small silhouette flickered in the darkness ahead.
Child-sized.
Head tilted.
Unmoving.
Lira whispered, terrified:
"Elias… do you recognize that shape?"
I didn't.
But Ari did.
Her voice broke into a sob:
"That one… followed me from the dark."
The silhouette moved — fast.
Not toward Lira.
Not toward Ari.
Toward me.
The flashlight flickered—
And the shadow spoke with my voice:
"I remember you."