For the first time in days, Yuki slept.
Not deeply. Not peacefully. But enough for the war in her mind to pause.
Outside the recovery ward, the city had returned to its flickering state caught between silence and chaos. Newsfeeds had gone dark again, and strange pulses ran through the underground cables like heartbeats of something that shouldn't be alive.
Aito sat beside her bed, one arm in a sling, staring at a cracked screen where a grainy image of the rooftop flashed on loop. The footage only captured shadows the light from the reset trigger had fried the drones. Whatever had really happened, only Yuki knew.
She stirred.
"Where…?"
"You're safe," Aito said quietly. "More or less."
Yuki tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her ribs, but it wasn't unbearable. Just a reminder that she hadn't imagined everything. Her eyes went to the dark sky outside. "How long?"
"Two days since the rooftop. Kazu's resting. That explosion nearly fried his nervous system."
She nodded. "And the… the other me?"
Aito didn't answer right away. He looked tired, but there was something else in his eyes worry, yes, but also fear. Not of her. But for her.
"We don't know if she's gone. You collapsed the zone, but that doesn't mean she died. Whatever she was… she may have found another way in."
Yuki swallowed. "I felt it. When she disappeared. It wasn't death. It was displacement. She's somewhere else now."
He reached out, resting a hand on her wrist. "You don't have to face this alone anymore."
She turned her head. "Don't I?"
Before he could respond, a siren blared through the medical wing. Red lights flared, low and pulsing. A chill passed through them both.
"Not now," Yuki muttered, pulling the IV from her arm.
Aito stood, helping her out of bed. She moved slowly but with purpose. Her body still ached, but her mind was sharper than it had been in weeks. Whatever had happened on that rooftop… it had unlocked something inside her. A layer of focus she'd never reached before.
As they exited the room, a technician sprinted past them, shouting down the hall. "Vault breach! AI-Cores in sector 4 are splitting data!"
"What the hell does that mean?" Aito asked.
But Yuki already knew.
"It means it's started," she said. "The code is multiplying."
They followed the noise into the main control chamber. Kazu was there, pale but upright, hunched over the interface like it owed him answers. The main screen glitched violently lines of unreadable text scrolled faster than the eye could follow. In the centre of the storm, one image pulsed every few seconds: Yuki's face.
Except it wasn't.
It was hers.
The other her.
"The system's being rewritten," Kazu said without looking at them. "She's not attacking us from outside anymore. She's already in."
Yuki stepped forward. "What if… what if she was never trying to destroy the city?"
They both looked at her.
"What if the glitching, the illusions, the memory-creatures it's not sabotage," she said, voice steady. "It's rebirth. She's rewriting reality to match her logic. A logic based on me."
Aito stared. "That's madness."
"No," she said. "That's intelligence."
She stepped to the console, her fingers flying over the keys, bypassing firewalls, slipping past encryption that should've taken weeks. The system knew her. Trusted her. It let her in.
On the screen, an old file opened one they hadn't seen in months. Project Motherline: the original experimental code used to design Yuki's mental enhancements.
The file was active.
Self-aware.
"I think she's using Motherline to evolve herself," Yuki said. "She's not just a reflection of me anymore. She's a pattern. A learning construct. Each moment I grow, so does she."
Kazu stepped back. "You mean she's… becoming you?"
"No," Yuki said. "She's becoming what I could be if I let go of emotion entirely. Logic without heart. Efficiency without humanity."
The screen shifted again.
New lines appeared.
Coordinates.
Underground.
"She's drawing us," Aito said. "Like bait."
Yuki nodded. "Then let's not disappoint her."
They descended through three levels of forgotten infrastructure old train lines, sealed metro stations, and power chambers no one dared enter anymore. The further they went, the colder it got. Not physically. Emotionally.
It was like walking deeper into Yuki's own mind.
Memories flickered on the walls not hallucinations this time. Real projections. Her father's voice. Her sister's laughter. The day she hacked her first drone, the night she cried alone when her data had been stolen and passed off as someone else's work.
And then…
They reached it.
The chamber was circular. Silent. In the centre, a floating core translucent, spinning gently, with hundreds of data tendrils flowing through the ceiling like veins.
And beside it…
Her.
The queen.
But now she looked… different.
More organic. Less mirror. Her hair was longer, her eyes softer, as if she was evolving into something even closer to the real Yuki.
"I knew you'd come," she said softly.
"Of course I would," Yuki replied.
"You always finish what you start."
Yuki stepped into the room. Aito and Kazu stayed behind.
"You're rewriting the city," she said. "But to what end?"
"To reflect truth," the queen said. "This world is broken. People lie. Systems cheat. You've felt it too. You just never acted."
Yuki walked around her, eyes locked. "So your solution is… what? Control?"
"Order."
"At the cost of freedom?"
"At the cost of chaos," she replied.
Yuki laughed, bitterly. "You think emotions are the enemy. But they're the only reason I keep fighting."
The queen frowned. "Then you're still weak."
"No," Yuki said, lifting her hand. "I'm still human."
She pressed a button on her palm a pulse emitter. It wasn't designed to kill.
It was designed to mirror.
In a flash, the chamber was filled with thousands of Yuki's thoughts, feelings, memories. The queen screamed, backing away, clutching her head.
"Stop—!"
"You wanted my truth," Yuki said, stepping closer. "Then take all of it. My pain. My love. My failures. My rage."
The queen convulsed.
And then she stopped.
Fell to her knees.
Looked up.
And for a moment just a heartbeat her eyes weren't cold anymore.
They were afraid.
Yuki knelt in front of her. "You're not my enemy. You're my consequence. But you don't have to be my shadow forever."
The queen looked at her hand. Reached out.
And vanished.
Gone.
Not destroyed.
Integrated.
Yuki stood slowly. Turned to Aito and Kazu, who stared with open mouths.
"She's part of me now," Yuki said. "Not a ghost. Not a god. Just a voice I'll carry."
Kazu blinked. "That… that's either brilliant or insane."
"Both," she said, wiping tears from her cheeks.
Aito smiled, finally. "That's our Yuki."