Night air rolled in over the rooftops of New Orleans, thick with heat and tension. Phoenix watched the security feed from Maya's loft, her face reflected dimly in the screen. The other her—Echo—stepped through some gleaming NovaH corridor, calm and purposeful. A phantom in her own skin.
"Where is she now?" Phoenix asked.
Maya frowned, rerouting the signal through half a dozen encrypted proxies. "They scrubbed most of the trail, but I think I found her next location."
A flashing AR tag blinked into focus: The Revival Clinic. Mid-City. Restricted corporate property.
Sam checked his weapon and nodded. "Looks like we’re going in."
Before they could hit the clinic, Phoenix insisted they make one stop. An old contact of Sam's, a data broker who'd once worked corp-side. What they found was an empty safehouse, a datapad still sizzling from an overcharged wipe.
But Maya found a buried remnant: PHX-1, PHX-2, PHX-3. A date. A status: "Merged / Incomplete / Terminated."
Phoenix stared at the screen. "How many of me did they make?"
Sam put a hand on her shoulder, then stopped himself. "It doesn’t matter. Only one of you is standing here now."
Mid-City had seen better days. The Revival Clinic looked like a spa on the surface, all marble hallways and ambient music. But deeper inside, it was all glass tanks, data conduits, and arcano-tech surgery rigs.
Nolan was already there. "They evacuated the lab ten minutes ago. But they left something behind."
Inside one of the containment rooms, they found a third tank, shattered. No body. Just residue. And claw marks.
Maya tapped the shard readers. "She was here. And something’s wrong with her energy profile. It’s destabilizing."
Suddenly, the lights flickered. Doors slammed shut.
Echo stood at the far end of the corridor.
"You came," she said, smiling. "I was hoping you would."
The showdown wasn’t violent at first. Echo didn’t attack. She asked questions. Spoke like Phoenix. Remembered things Phoenix didn’t. Childhoods that never happened. Names that meant nothing.
"They gave me your voice," Echo said. "But the memories... those are mine. I earned them."
Phoenix looked her in the eye. "Did they give you your fear too? Your loneliness? The nights you woke up screaming, not knowing why?"
Echo flinched.
Then she lunged.
The clash wasn’t just physical. It was astral. Twin flames colliding. Sparks of memory. Shards of lives lived and stolen. Echo burned brighter—for a moment—but Phoenix held the center. Grounded. Real.
Finally, Phoenix reached out, not with fire, but with will.
"You were made. But so was I. That doesn't make either of us less real. But I choose who I am. Can you?"
Echo hesitated. And the energy inside her fractured.
Maya screamed. "She's collapsing!"
Phoenix lunged, catching Echo as her form flickered, glitched, and faded.
"I'm sorry," Phoenix whispered.
"Find them," Echo whispered back. "The ones before us."
Then she was gone.
They left the clinic in silence. Nolan stayed behind to scour what data remained.
In the soft morning light, Phoenix stood at the edge of the Mississippi, watching the sun rise. Sam stood beside her, saying nothing.
"She was me," Phoenix said finally. "But broken in a different way."
Sam handed her a fresh data chip. "One of the files Nolan found. It has more names. Projects. Codenames."
"The ones before us," Phoenix murmured.
Behind them, Maya stared at the flickering logs on her commlink.
PHX-0. Lost Echo. Veil Access. [Redacted].
And in the distance, a shadow watched from a rooftop.
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