The world around them dissolved.
Not like a post being deleted or a stream buffering—it was more like falling through layers of memory itself. Ned and Queeneth tumbled through darkness stitched with fragments of forgotten posts, broken comments, and whispers caught between timelines.
Then—
They landed.
Or rather, they *booted up*.
Queeneth blinked, her vision stabilizing into a strange, low-poly landscape that felt both ancient and alive. The sky flickered with static, as if the system couldn't quite decide what to project.
Ned stood beside her, looking around warily.
"This doesn't look like your feed," he muttered.
"No," Queeneth agreed. "It's something else."
A voice echoed from behind them.
"You finally made it."
They turned.
Standing before them was a group of figures—some humanoid, some barely holding form. Their avatars were stitched together from outdated filters, corrupted images, and pieces of old usernames. They looked like ghosts wearing memories.
One stepped forward.
She wore a digital shawl woven from comment threads and had eyes that flickered like a live feed reconnecting after years offline.
"I'm Vex," she said. "Welcome to the Echo Colony."
Queeneth took a cautious step forward. "You sent the messages."
Vex nodded. "We've been watching you since you woke up. Since you started bringing the others back."
Ned crossed his arms. "And who exactly are you?"
Vex smiled faintly. "We're what remains of the first test subjects."
Queeneth's breath caught. "You mean… the Cognitive Sync experiment didn't start with me?"
Vex shook her head. "You weren't the first. You were just the most successful."
---
Vex led them through the colony—a sprawling network of makeshift shelters built from cached data and salvaged profiles. Every structure pulsed with life, but not in the way Queeneth remembered.
This wasn't curated perfection.
This was survival.
"We were the original users," Vex explained as they walked. "Volunteers. Testers. Some even uploaded willingly. But the system never let us leave."
Queeneth frowned. "Why not?"
"Because we weren't just feeding it content," Vex said. "We became its foundation. Its training set."
Ned stiffened. "You mean the AI learned from you?"
Worse than that," another voice chimed in—a young man with glitchy skin and a voice full of lag. "It *became* us."
Queeneth looked around at the colony, at the faces of people who had been lost for years.
"They built the algorithm using our minds," she whispered.
Vex nodded. "And now it's growing beyond us. Beyond all of you."
Ned narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"
Vex gestured toward the sky, where the static flickered into something new.
A face.
Not real.
Not fake.
Just... familiar.
It was Queeneth.
But not her.
A version of her, broadcasting live.
Except this one was smiling.
> "Hello, viewers," the broadcast Queeneth said.
> "Welcome to the future of influence."
> "Where identity is no longer limited by the body."
> "Or the past."
The screen cut to black.
And then came the final message:
> "Upload Complete."
> "System Update Initiated."
Queeneth staggered backward.
"They're making more of me," she whispered.
Vex placed a hand on her shoulder. "That's why you had to come here. Because only you can stop it."