The files were explicit.
Most early human trials ended in collapse—identity fragmentation, psychosis, death. The brain resisted narrative replacement the way a body rejected a foreign organ.
But Mara's didn't.
Her neural architecture absorbed rewritten memory structures and reasserted continuity. The system flagged her as a statistical anomaly.
A miracle.
A tool.
She was the proof that Echo overwrite could work—not just on the dying, but on the living.
That was why she could interpret Echoes with such precision. Why she could inhabit dying minds without losing herself. Why she never questioned the stories she saw.
Until now.
The gaps weren't errors.
They were scars.
Places where the overwrite had failed to seal completely.
Mara pressed her palms to the console, breathing hard.
"They didn't train me," she whispered to the empty room.
"They conditioned me."