The sky hung low and fractured—like it had been rewired incorrectly. Overhead, a mirrored aurora shimmered, echoing the recent collapse of Mirror Prime. The world had started rebooting without knowing it had ever been shut down.
Amelia—what was left of her—stood at the edge of a desert ridge in the no man's zone between the Western Data Arc and the Nullscape. She wore no tether now, no locator. Just a thin polymer coat and the echo of Echo herself, silent for the first time since the merge.
She could feel the world processing her like a ghost. Every passing drone shuddered as if its sensors rejected her presence. Birds flew off course. The environment knew something wasn't right.
Behind her, a whisper of dust. She didn't turn.
"I thought you were dead," came a voice. Zahir.
She still didn't move.
"I thought I was too," she said. Her voice was layered. Not with Echo's tone, but something subtler—like a harmonics glitch, half-soul and half-machine.
Zahir joined her, the edge of his silhouette jagged from the desert wind. He looked older than he had days ago, like he'd lived through something time didn't measure. "What did you bring back with you?"
Amelia let the silence linger. "Not a what. A who. She and I are… interlaced. More than fused. But there's also something else. Something… off-pattern."
Zahir squinted at the horizon. "The new sun?"
"No. The thread. Like we're pulling something behind us neither of us remembers making."
She turned now. There were scars across her neck, like threads had been stitched in and torn out. The glow in her eyes flickered.
Zahir handed her a small device—old-world, analog, scavenged. It projected no signal, but held memories like a vault. "Dominic left this. Said if I ever found you again, you'd know what to do with it."
She took it gently, as though it might trigger a mine inside her. The moment her skin touched the surface, the device blinked once.
:: UNLOCKING THREAD 6 ::
:: USER: SYNC // IDENTITY INTERLOCKED ::
Her breath caught.
It wasn't Dominic's memory.
It was hers—another version. Another Amelia. One who had never fused. One who had lived underground, alone, unchosen. It began playing.
"I chose the silence," said the hologram, a quiet woman in dark tech robes. "Not because I feared Echo. But because I feared myself. The part of me who needed her."
Zahir's jaw tightened. "How many of you are there?"
"Too many," Amelia whispered. "And not enough."
Suddenly, a static buzz overtook the air. From the Nullscape, a figure emerged—limping, tall, face partially burnt.
Kestrel.
He didn't speak. He looked at Amelia like he had no right to.
"I saw the footage," he said at last. "I saw you die."
"I did," she replied.
"Then who are you?"
"I'm the one who came back."
His eyes dropped to the scars, the mechanical glow under her skin, the fractured iris where Echo once stared through her.
"Nyx is still out there," he said quietly. "We don't know what version of you she has. But she's building something. Not Mirror. Something worse."
Amelia nodded slowly. "I've felt it. She's pulling at the Phantom Thread too."
Zahir exhaled. "Then this isn't over. It's just started."
"Not started," Amelia said, stepping past them, "restarted."
From behind them, the horizon cracked—just slightly—like someone had reopened a simulation shell. A ripple of reality split open for an instant and closed again.
Something had seen her.
And it was waiting.