It started with a video.
Layla — or what looked like her — sitting calmly on a leather chair in a Ministry studio, voice poised, eyes unwavering.
"My name is Layla Rami," the double said.
"I regret spreading lies about Project Safa.
The Republic has always protected its people.
I was misled. I am sorry."
The footage was near-perfect.
Her voice, her tone, even the faint scar on her cheekbone.
But Layla was 40 feet underground at that very moment, live on a secure call with six whistleblowers from the Eastern Zone.
She hadn't recorded anything.
It wasn't just a deepfake.
It was a replacement.
The real Layla watched the clip on a cracked tablet, surrounded by her people. Nobody spoke for a long time.
Finally, Fadi whispered, "They cloned your voiceprint, matched your mannerisms. It's not a fake video anymore. It's a fake you."
Zahra, who had escaped after four days in detention, leaned forward.
"They don't want to erase you now," she said. "They want to own you."
And worse — it was working.
State media flooded the airwaves with the fake Layla's "confession." International journalists hesitated. Some already backtracked, reporting "uncertain credibility of the earlier leaks."
A truth once believed was now a matter of opinion.
It wasn't just erasure anymore.
It was corruption of memory.
That night, Layla stood before her people — the Forgotten Ones, the ghosted engineers, erased nurses, wiped teachers — and asked a question she'd never dared say aloud.
"What if they win?" she said.
The room went silent.
"Not with guns. Not with prisons. But with pixels. What if they can convince the world that I never was who I am?"
No one answered at first.
Then a young girl — barely twelve — stepped forward. Her name was Samar. She had never known her real birthday; it had been removed from every registry.
She said simply:
"You're real to me.
That's enough."
Layla knelt down to her level.
"Then I need your help."
The next day, they launched Echo Protocol.
Not just a rebuttal — but a flood of human-confirmed video.
Layla reading handwritten letters to families of disappeared victims. Layla walking barefoot through the riot site. Layla holding up newspaper headlines from that morning — undeniable time-stamps.
And most powerfully: a broadcast done completely analog, filmed by Samar on an old camcorder and aired through an illegal radio frequency:
"I am not a ghost.
I am not your puppet.
And if they need to invent a version of me to kill the real one…
It means the real one is winning."
The clone's broadcasts stopped.
The regime tried to spin it as "Layla's redemption," but no one believed it now.
Because realness had become the resistance.
Not proof. Not code. Not signal.
But presence.