Lena lay flat on the cold metal table, the hum of the neural uplink machine surrounding her like a mechanical lullaby. Tubes coiled along her arms. A thick black cable snaked from the back of her skull into the Pulse Engine's modified interface.
Arin stood nearby, silent, his jaw tight.
"You're sure you want to do this?" he asked one last time.
Lena nodded. "If I'm the code, I need to read myself."
The technician beside her glanced at the monitor. "Pulse Engine's set to run a frequency shield. It'll mask her signal from the Archive's tracking system—for a while."
"How long is a while?" Lena asked.
"Minutes, maybe. Depends on how deep you go."
"Then I'll make every second count."
The last thing she saw before the machine engaged was Arin's eyes. Regret? Hope? Maybe both.
Then—
Darkness.
Then—
A scream that wasn't hers.
And then—
Silence.
Lena opened her eyes.
She stood in a room filled with mirrors.
Each one reflected a different version of herself.
Some older, some younger. Some with scars. Some dressed in uniforms from simulations she didn't recognize. One was crying. One was laughing. One held a weapon. Another was chained to a wall.
"What is this?" she whispered.
A voice answered.
You're in the Threshold.
She turned. There was no one behind her.
This is the hall of recursion. All the versions of you that tried to leave and failed.
The crying Lena stepped forward. "You came back. Why?"
"I need answers."
The weapon-wielding Lena snarled, "You won't get them from us. We're just echoes. Ghost code."
"But echoes remember," Lena said.
One of the mirror-selves—the one in a lab coat—nodded. "You were always curious. That's why they chose you. To see how far you'd dig before you broke."
"I didn't break."
The mirror cracked.
The image shattered.
Suddenly, the room faded.
And she was elsewhere.
A street. Familiar.
Her childhood street.
But the people weren't people. They flickered—like projections caught between realities.
She saw her mother. Then a teacher. Then a faceless man in a business suit. All still. Watching her.
"You're not real," she said.
One of them turned. "Neither are you."
She clenched her fists. "I'm done playing by your rules."
But the street morphed again—walls rising around her, becoming a hospital. The hallway smelled of antiseptic and betrayal.
She knew this place.
Her first entry point.
The simulation where the Archive first tested her capacity to distinguish dream from memory.
She pushed through double doors—into a lab. White. Cold. Clinical.
A woman sat inside. Lena's mother.
But not her mother.
This one's eyes glowed faintly blue.
"You're not her," Lena said.
"No," the woman said gently. "But I have her memories. Would you like to access them?"
Lena hesitated.
"You want answers?" the mother asked. "Then you need to go deeper. Into the Core. Where the original imprint is kept."
"What imprint?"
"Your first consciousness. The version of you they copied. It's buried beneath layers of simulation—guarded, encrypted."
"Why?"
"Because she's not loyal."
Lena stepped back. "What?"
"She rejected them. Rejected you."
A pulse of static rocked the space.
The scene glitched—hospital walls peeling away into raw code.
The Pulse Engine was failing. Her window was closing.
You need to move. The thought was hers—but sharper, louder, as if someone was projecting into her head.
She ran.
Through code corridors. Flickering architecture. Every door she opened was a dead memory—her first kiss, her father's funeral, a room full of goldfish tanks from a simulation set in Tokyo.
Then—
A staircase descending into nothing.
She didn't hesitate.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until the space around her turned red.
A heartbeat thrummed in the walls.
She was in the Core.
A circular chamber, smooth and alive with pulse-light. At its center hovered a crystalline structure—shifting, fractal, fluid. A cocoon of data.
Inside it—someone.
Someone who looked just like her.
But older.
Eyes full of rage.
"You found me," the figure said. "Took you long enough."
"Are you—?"
"The Original. The one they copied, fractured, and rewrote a hundred times."
Lena stared. "Why are you here?"
"They couldn't delete me. I fought too hard. So they buried me. And used you—every version of you—to try and overwrite me."
"But I broke through."
The Original smiled. "Because part of me was still inside you. Buried in every line of your code."
"I came to free you."
"No. You came to become me."
A blast of energy surged from the Core. Lena cried out—images cascading into her mind:
Her recruitment.
The Threshold tests.
The endless loops.
The moment she first chose rebellion in a simulation where compliance was required.
"I remember everything," she whispered.
"Then you know what's next," the Original said.
"They'll try to shut this down."
"They already are."
In the real world, alarms blared.
Arin shouted over the Pulse Engine, "Her vitals are spiking!"
The technician screamed, "She's not coming back!"
Inside the Core, Lena reached toward the Original's hand. Their fingers met.
And everything exploded into white.
Lena gasped.
Eyes open.
On the table.
She was back.
But her eyes glowed faintly blue.
Arin leaned over her. "Lena?"
She blinked.
And smiled.
But something was different.
The woman who sat up wasn't just Lena anymore.
She was all of them.