The mist from the thawing cryotanks blanketed the floor in a dreamlike haze. Isabelle stood frozen, her eyes locked on the name flashing across Cryo Pod 7:
Emory Vance.
The cold sheen on the glass began to melt, revealing a boy—no older than sixteen, with jet-black hair pressed to his forehead and a faint glow beneath his skin. He looked peaceful. Too peaceful.
"Isabelle," Rae said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You need to breathe."
"I watched him die," Isabelle murmured. "I was there. I buried his chip with my own hands."
"He's not dead," said the clone, her voice almost mechanical. "He's recompiled."
Damian cocked his head. "Recompiled?"
"Consciousness uploaded, reconstructed, and re-embedded," the clone explained. "He's not the original. He's… a replica."
"Still him," Isabelle insisted, stepping closer.
The pod hissed.
A pale blue light coursed through the boy's veins. His fingers twitched. And then… his eyes opened.
Bright silver. Like data reflected in a mirror.
"Emory?" Isabelle whispered.
He blinked. "Isa… belle?"
Her heart leapt. Tears welled in her eyes before she even realized it. She pressed her hand to the glass.
But Emory's expression changed. Confusion twisted into panic.
"I—I was somewhere else. I heard voices. Screaming. Then—then silence."
"You've been in stasis," Rae said, activating a diagnostic panel. "His vitals are stabilizing. But… something's off."
"Off how?" Damian asked, stepping forward.
Rae showed them the screen. Emory's neural signature wasn't just alive. It was hybridized. There was a secondary frequency interlaced with his brainwaves—an echo of something darker.
"Specter," the clone said grimly. "He left a fragment inside the boy."
Isabelle turned back to Emory, who now sat up, his expression blank. "No. He's not him."
"Maybe not now," the clone said. "But eventually?"
"Then we stop it before it happens," Isabelle said. "We can separate the echo from the host. Rae?"
Rae hesitated. "That's advanced interface surgery. I've never tried it on a live mind before."
"We have no choice," Damian said. "If Specter comes back through him, we're done."
Emory suddenly gasped and clutched his head.
The pod lights flickered again.
And from his throat came a warped voice: "Bind them. Reset them all."
Then silence.
Isabelle knelt by his side. "Emory, listen to me. You're not a weapon. You're not him."
His eyes cleared for a moment. "I don't… want to hurt anyone."
"You won't," she promised. "We'll fix this."
The clone looked to the cryo tanks. Half of them had now thawed. The chamber was stirring with life. Dozens of others—young, frightened, waking up to a war they never asked for.
"We need to move," she said. "Specter's code is spreading. The station's already alerting higher-level firewalls."
Damian stepped to a console and hacked in quickly. "I've set up a redirect loop. Should buy us 15 minutes."
"Then we take Emory, and whoever we can carry," Isabelle said.
Rae nodded and began unsealing more pods. "This just became a rescue mission."
As they worked, Emory stared at his hands, the glowing veins fading back to a quiet shimmer.
"I was gone," he whispered. "But something brought me back."
"Not something," Isabelle said, taking his hand. "Someone."
They didn't have time to unpack the truth behind those words.
Because far above them, in the central core, a new sequence had just triggered:
INITIATING: LEGION PROTOCOL.
And deep within Emory's mind, a new whisper stirred—stronger, colder… and watching.