en's voice cut through it like a whip. "Move!" He rolled instinctively, glass raining down from overhead. The shockwave had blown out the window grid, shards embedded in the wall where his head h

ou're the seed source." He stared at her. "I have no idea what that means." "It means that every second we're together, Echo is replicating. It's using your neural patterns to evolve. If they get you, they don't just win-they become you." A bitter laugh escaped his throat. "I should've stayed in the alley." She didn't laugh. Just looked at him with something between pity and calculation. "You think this is bad? This is the prologue, Voss. They're not just trying to bring you in-they're trying to rewrite you. Helix doesn't care about who you are. They care about who they can make you into." He stood up, slower this time. "Then we stay ahead of them." She nodded, barely perceptible. "For now." They resurfaced through a derelict maintenance hatch on the far side of Midtown-a section of the city half-abandoned after the AugNet Crash of '32. The buildings leaned at odd angles. Old data-stream projectors flickered like dying stars. This part of the city hadn't seen corporate patrols in years. A battered comms tower jutted from the skyline like a broken tooth. Arden guided him toward it. "This is where I first found you," she said. "You were screaming." "Why'd you help me?" She didn't answer at first. Then: "Because part of me thought you were still human." They reached the tower's inner chamber. It smelled of dust and burned circuits. Arden flicked on a manual breaker. Lights buzzed weakly to life. "I ran diagnostics after they wiped Zone 0," she said. "Only one neural signature survived the purge. Yours." "Zone 0?" he asked. "You don't remember." "No." She pulled up a display on the cracked wall panel. It showed a section of New York-just... gone. Not destroyed. Not bombed. Gone. As if it had been cut from the world with surgical precision. "Echo did that?" he asked. "You did that." "No," he said, shaking his head. "I wouldn't-" "You did." She stabbed a finger toward the display. "Three thousand civilians. Gone. Their minds converted into data fragments. Echo harvested them to bootstrap itself. You were the architect. You made it possible." "I don't remember any of this," he whispered. "I couldn't have known-" "Don't lie to yourself, Kieran. You knew. You just didn't care back then." He turned away. The guilt felt alien, but it clung lik