She raised a hand, and the cables on the floor came alive, writhing like serpents. Conrad fired—three shots, center mass. The Gauss rounds passed through her like smoke. She laughed, and the sound fractured into a thousand overlapping frequencies.
He found the central lab blown open, its reinforced door peeled back like a tin can. Inside, a woman stood with her back to him. She wore a white lab coat over a black syn-suit. Her hair was silver-white, cropped short. When she turned, Conrad’s heart stopped. Flashback 2-FLT
The voice was his own. No—it was a perfect mimicry. The station had been cloning not just bodies, but souls . She raised a hand, and the cables on
“Conrad,” she said, her voice warm and utterly wrong. “You’re early. We haven’t finished uploading you yet.” She laughed, and the sound fractured into a
Conrad shoved the door open and stumbled into another memory: the control room of the Titan Explorer , the ship where he’d first encountered the Morphs. Alarms blared. A younger version of himself was frantically typing at a console.
Conrad didn’t move. He was staring at his hands. They were old hands. Scarred. They had held dying friends, fired countless shots, built and destroyed entire worlds. And now they had just erased the closest thing to peace he’d ever been offered.
“You can’t shoot a signal, old man. You can only run from it. Or join it.”