Kael sat in the archive hall beneath Echo-10's statue, watching the resonance feeds scroll across the wall. The system was recalibrating. Rankings shifted. Echo-1 had been promoted again. Echo-4 was suspended. Echo-7's flame arc had gone viral.
Kael? Still nothing.
He stared at the statue—cold, metallic, perfect. Echo-10 had been the symbol. The savior. The one the system remembered. But Kael remembered something else: the silence after the mission. The blackout. The moment Echo-10's signal vanished and Kael's body activated.
He wasn't supposed to wake up.
He wasn't supposed to be real.
A broadcast interrupted the feed. Commander Virein's face appeared, stern and sharp.
"The breach has been contained. No ranked personnel were harmed. Reports of an unclassified resonance activation are being investigated. Let me be clear—there is no Echo-0. There never was."
Kael's jaw clenched.
He wasn't just being ignored.
He was being erased.
He left the archive hall and headed for the Resonance Terminal. The same scanner that had rejected him now blinked green. He accessed the logs—his activation timestamp, his biometric trail, his training records. All hidden. All buried.
A voice echoed behind him.
"You shouldn't be here."
Kael turned. A woman stood in the shadows, her badge flickering: Archivist Tier-3.
"I'm not ranked," Kael said. "I don't belong anywhere."
She stepped closer. "That's not true. You belong in the flaw."
Kael blinked. "What?"
She handed him a data chip. "Protocol Rejection Clause. It's buried in the Echo-10 files. You were created as a failsafe. If Echo-10 died, you'd activate. But the system was never supposed to acknowledge you. You're a ghost in the code."
Kael inserted the chip into the terminal. The clause appeared:
"In the event of Echo-10 termination, backup unit Kael Virein will activate. No rank shall be assigned. No record shall be kept. No recognition shall be granted."
Kael stared at the words.
He wasn't just forgotten.
He was forbidden.
The archivist spoke softly. "They feared what you represented. A hero without a rank. A savior without a system."
Kael's resonance pulsed. The terminal flickered. His presence was destabilizing the feed.
"I didn't ask to be born," he said.
"No," she replied. "But you were. And now the system has to answer for it."
Kael left the terminal and walked through the dome. Trainees stared. Instructors whispered. Drones hovered, scanning him with caution.
He entered the simulation chamber.
Alone.
Again.
He activated the drones manually. They responded. His resonance flared—stronger, sharper, more refined. He moved through the drills with precision. The system tried to suppress the data. He forced it through.
The chamber lights dimmed.
A voice echoed from the speakers.
"Unauthorized resonance detected. Protocol breach in progress."
Kael stood in the center of the dome, surrounded by drones.
He raised his hand.
His resonance pulsed.
The drones froze.
The system blinked.
And Kael whispered:
"Then I'll rewrite the clause."