Chapter 75: Memories of Before
The chamber pulsed softly, like a heartbeat—slow, rhythmic, ancient.
Kael-X stood alone, surrounded by floating memory cores. As the first orb hovered before him, it shimmered with strands of silver light, threads of time gently winding in and out of the core's surface.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers touched it, the world shifted.
FLASH.
He wasn't in the chamber anymore.
He stood in a white hallway. Clean. Sterile. The kind that hummed with quiet, clinical precision. People walked by in gray uniforms, unaware of him. The air smelled of metal and ozone. Somewhere distant, machines hissed.
Kael-X looked down at himself.
No cloak. No shadow. No void crackle.
Just… a man in uniform.
A badge read: Kalen Vor. Level 7 Chrono-Analyst. Division XIII.
"Sir, the anomaly in Sector 4 has destabilized again."
Kael-X turned instinctively. A young assistant was walking beside him—glasses, nervous energy, holding a datapad.
Kalen—his past self—nodded. "Seal off the lab. Don't let anyone else near it until I recalibrate the siphon."
As he spoke, Kael-X—now spectating like a ghost—watched the memory unfold. His own voice. His own body. But before all the blood. Before all the pain. Before Compound-X and the beasts.
"Something's wrong," Kalen muttered in the memory. "Every test loop we send in gets rewritten. This anomaly... it's not just reacting to time. It's feeding on it."
Another flash.
Kael-X staggered. More memories surged.
He saw himself injecting something into his arm.
A syringe labeled Compound-X: Proto Type-Zeta.
"I'll go in alone. If we're going to stabilize the rift, I need to anchor my own temporal frequency to it."
"Sir, you could die!"
"Or I could save the timeline."
Kael-X's eyes widened.
This was it.
This was how it started.
How Kalen Vor became Kael-X.
The experiment failed.
Or maybe it succeeded too well.
Time collapsed around him.
Memories fractured.
He saw moments of war—his first kills. His shadow erupting. Beasts being born from his own essence. Screams. Laughter. Maya's voice. Elijah calling out. Then silence.
Then… the voice.
"Kael-X. Do you remember now?"
He turned.
Umbra stood in the memory, more solid than usual.
"You were meant to die in that rift. But you didn't. You tore out of time itself. And I was born from your shadow—the only part of you that wasn't afraid."
Kael-X clenched his fists.
"I'm not that man anymore," he said.
Umbra tilted its head. "No. But you needed to know who he was… to know what comes next."
The chamber flickered back into view.
Kael-X stood in the center, panting.
The others rushed in—Nyx, Veyron, Maya, Elijah.
"You okay?" Maya asked, gently grabbing his arm.
Kael-X's eyes glowed faintly.
"I remember."
He looked up.
"I wasn't created by the void. I chose the void. I became Kael-X… to fight what's coming."
Elijah stepped forward. "And what is coming?"
Kael-X looked at the final memory core—still untouched, still pulsing.
He pointed to it.
"That."
Chapter 75 – Memories of Before:
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Kael-X stared at the final memory core as silence settled among the team. Unlike the others, this core flickered erratically—unstable, almost… alive. Tiny arcs of dark lightning danced along its edges.
"Are you sure about this?" Maya asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
He nodded. "Whatever's inside… it's the part I've never been able to access. The part locked away by something—or someone."
Veyron floated forward, serious now. "Caution, Kael-X. That core isn't just memory. It's encrypted. I can feel it—Chrono-seals layered with void strands. Someone didn't want you remembering this."
Kael-X didn't hesitate. He pressed his palm to the surface.
BOOM.
A shockwave knocked everyone back.
But Kael-X didn't move. His body remained upright as his mind was pulled in.
This time, he didn't see just his memories.
He saw… someone else's.
A child in a stasis pod.
Wires everywhere. Monitors flashing warnings.
Outside the pod, figures in white lab coats argued. Their voices echoed through the fog:
"Subject K-0X shows unstable mutations."
"He's absorbing timelines like a sponge—this shouldn't be possible."
"Shut it down before—"
The pod shattered.
The child—barely six—opened glowing eyes.
A scream followed.
The lab turned black.
Everyone died.
Kael-X's heart thundered. That wasn't him, was it? He saw the boy again—growing up in darkness. Surrounded by silence. Fed visions. Trained by projections. Conditioned.
It wasn't Kalen Vor.
It was the prototype.
"I'm not the first…" Kael-X whispered in horror.
The prototype looked into Kael-X's soul.
"You carry my number, but not my rage. They thought you were better. Cleaner. But you're still a copy."
Kael-X jolted back into reality, gasping.
Blood dripped from his nose.
Maya held him. "What did you see?"
He turned to the others. "There was another before me. The true Kael-X prototype… and he's not dead."
Veyron froze mid-air. "Wait. You're saying—?"
"Yes," Kael-X said, standing. "The original survived. And he's out there. Somewhere. Watching."
Umbra hissed low. "Then what we've fought so far… was only the beginning."
Kael-X turned toward the chamber doors, eyes blazing with new purpose.
"Then we find him," he said coldly. "And we end this cycle."
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Next: Chapter 76 – Prototype Zero
Would you like chapter 76 to begin with the hunt for Prototype Zero or focus first on how the group reacts and plans?