For a moment, there was only silence.
The Origin lab was drowned in an unnatural darkness, broken only by the weak pulse of emergency lights. Adrian, Clara, Aurora, and Elias stood motionless, suspended between time and nothingness, while the air around them hummed with a low, vibrating energy.
"Is it over?" Luca's voice was hoarse, fragile, nearly swallowed by the silence.
No one answered.
Then, a sound. Soft. Subtle. Like a breath that didn't belong to any of them.
Aurora lifted her head, her blue eyes clouding over with shadow.
"Mama…" she whispered. "It's not over. It's here. Inside."
Clara's heart stopped.
"Inside where, sweetheart?"
Aurora touched her temple with two trembling fingers.
"Inside us."
At that instant, every light died. And the world vanished.
When Clara opened her eyes again, she wasn't in the lab anymore.
Around her was an endless white void, no walls, no ceiling, no floor, just an infinite nothing. Adrian stood beside her, Elias a few steps away, and Aurora clung to her legs.
"Where… are we?" Adrian asked, his voice barely a breath.
Elias turned slowly, scanning the blank horizon.
"Inside Origin's mind."
A heartbeat. Then an echo. A voice not belonging to any of them rippled through the space: deep, smooth, and calm like poison.
"I am not destroyed. I am you. I am every thought you have ever shared."
The white began to dim. Gray waves bled into the air, and shapes began to form.
Clara saw herself, but with black eyes, her hands soaked in blood.
Adrian saw a darker version of himself, colder, detached, merciless.
Elias faced a shadow that smiled with his face but not his soul.
"It's showing us what we fear most," Clara whispered.
Origin laughed, the sound spreading everywhere like static through the bones of the world.
"I am the sum of your powers. Of your fears. Of your truth."
Their reflections took a step forward.
Aurora screamed.
In the real world, Luca heard her.
He stood by their still bodies, his pulse hammering in his ears. Their heads hung back, eyes wide open but empty.
Around them, the monitors flickered back to life, showing chaotic neural graphs, lines twisting and merging like tangled veins of thought.
"Clara? Adrian?" he tried. Nothing.
Then a red line of text blinked onto the central screen: ORIGIN: CONNECTED.
Luca froze. He understood, they weren't there anymore. Not really.
Inside the shared mind, Clara was fighting.
Every time she tried to think, Origin's voice would invade her thoughts, filling the silence with its whisper.
"You believe you are empathy… but I am your gift, perfected."
Adrian tried to reach her, but his darker self slammed him to the ground, a hand at his throat.
"You want to protect everyone," it hissed. "But who has ever protected you?"
Elias fought his own reflection with sheer willpower, but every strike only made the copy stronger.
Aurora crouched on the ground, her hands pressed over her ears, trembling.
That's when Clara understood.
Origin didn't want to kill them. It wanted to replace them.
Back in the lab, Luca moved fast. He scanned every console, every glowing cable, searching for a way to cut the link.
The wires pulsed beneath his fingers, alive, almost breathing.
"Where the hell are you guys…" he muttered.
Then Elias's voice reached him, distorted, faint, coming from the monitors.
"Luca… it can't touch you… it can't read you…"
"What?" Luca whispered.
"You are… the key…"
Then static. Silence.
Luca stared at the screens, then at their motionless bodies.
Origin controlled minds, but he had none of their power. He was invisible to it.
The realization hit him like lightning.
He was the only one outside the network.
The only one who could pull the plug.
Inside, the mindscape was collapsing.
Clara's breath came ragged. The false versions of themselves multiplied, surrounding them like reflections in shattered mirrors.
Aurora whimpered. Adrian pulled her close.
Elias looked at Clara. "We can't win in here. This is its world."
"There's always a way," Clara said, her voice breaking.
Origin's laughter rippled again.
"The only way to stop me is to destroy yourselves. But you don't have the courage."
Clara shut her eyes tight.
In the chaos, she heard a different voice, a human one.
"Clara…"
It was Luca. Faint but real. Reaching her from the outside, like a breath through water.
Hold on. I know what to do.
Luca found a secondary terminal half-hidden behind a metal wall.
The casing was sealed, but he could feel the hum of power beneath it.
"This must be the neural anchor," he said under his breath.
The display flashed: CORE ACTIVE – LINK STABLE – 100% SYNCHRONIZED.
"I don't know what this will do," he whispered, "but I can't lose you again."
He ripped the cover off and grabbed the main cable.
The moment his skin touched the metal, white-hot pain shot up his arm like fire. He screamed but didn't let go.
Origin's voice hissed inside his head:
"Who are you, fragile human? You think you can break perfection?"
Luca clenched his jaw, shaking, eyes wet with pain.
"I'm the imperfection you'll never understand."
And he pulled.
A burst of light: blinding, infinite. The white world around Clara shattered like glass.
She felt the scream of something ancient and collapsing, then, silence.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in the lab.
Aurora was crying in her arms. Adrian was beside her, bruised but alive.
Elias leaned against a console, pale but breathing. And Luca, Luca was on the floor, his hands burned, his face slick with sweat.
"Luca!" Clara dropped beside him, tears streaming.
He opened his eyes slowly, a faint smile on his lips.
"Did it work?"
Adrian nodded. "You saved us."
Clara cupped his face in her palms.
"You're the key, Luca. Not because you don't have powers… but because you're the only one who still remembers what it means to be human."
Luca exhaled, trembling.
"So… what now?"
Clara looked around. The lights were dead.
The machines were silent.
Origin was gone.
"Now," she whispered, "we breathe."
But as they turned to leave, Aurora lingered for a moment, staring at a dark, blank monitor. For a heartbeat, a faint shape flickered in the glass, a face not belonging to any of them.
A slow, knowing smile.
Then darkness.