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Chapter 13: Shadows of the Self
The air reeked of burnt metal and blood.
Adrian's body was half-buried under debris, his mind flashing in and out of consciousness. Sparks hissed from shattered consoles, lighting up the dark chamber in pale bursts.
The last thing he remembered was the clone — that mirrored abomination lunging from the heart of the gene pod, its every motion an echo of his own.
He groaned, pushing away broken panels. His skin tingled — glowing faintly where the hybrid residue still lingered.
> "That… thing," he rasped, pulling himself upright. "It wasn't supposed to live."
The room was eerily quiet now. The containment glass was gone, the pod reduced to molten fragments.
He scanned the chamber. Nothing.
Then he saw it — a silhouette in the smoke, crouched on the ceiling like a spider, staring down with gleaming eyes identical to his.
Adrian froze.
> "So… you're still here."
The mimic smiled. Its mouth formed the same crooked smirk he had used a hundred times before — mocking, confident, alive.
It dropped soundlessly to the floor, head tilted.
> "You wanted perfection," it said in his own voice, tone warped and layered. "I am that perfection."
Adrian clenched his fists. "You're a byproduct. A mutation that shouldn't exist."
> "No." The clone stepped forward, each motion fluid, almost graceful. "I'm what happens when the Void X evolves beyond the user. You gave me life, and I gave you balance."
Lightning cracked outside the lab's shattered roof. Thunder rolled through the steel. Adrian's pulse quickened.
He was talking to himself — but something about the voice… it wasn't hostile. Not entirely.
> "If you're my reflection," Adrian said, narrowing his eyes, "then prove it. Don't copy me — beat me."
The mimic's expression shifted, the grin fading. For a heartbeat, the chamber seemed to hold its breath.
Then both moved at once.
A shockwave burst outward — glass fragments and data cables scattering in every direction.
Adrian ducked under a sweeping kick that sliced through a support pillar, countered with a right hook charged with micro-vibrations from the beetle genome's density enhancement. The mimic absorbed the hit, sliding back with a grin.
> "Same strength," it said. "Same speed."
"Not exactly." Adrian smirked, forcing his muscles to tense. His nerves fired faster — tiger beetle reflexes igniting like wildfire.
He vanished.
Reappeared behind the clone.
A kick to the ribs — too fast to block. The clone slammed into the wall, metal denting under impact.
> "I don't need to beat you," Adrian growled. "I just need to outlast you."
The clone laughed — a warped, echoing sound.
> "Outlast me? You can't outlast what's already inside you."
Before Adrian could react, the clone's body dissolved — its skin liquefying into black fluid that surged forward like a living tide.
He tried to back away, but the liquid leapt, latching onto his chest, shoulders, face—
> "Get off me!"
He clawed at it, but it was too fast. The mass seeped through his skin, its molecules syncing with his bloodstream.
He fell to one knee as heat flooded his veins, vision fracturing into spirals of light and darkness.
> "Synchronization escalating…" a voice whispered inside his mind.
"Symbiotic link forming…"
Adrian screamed. His heart pounded like a war drum. His body convulsed — then stilled.
Silence.
He gasped for breath, clutching the floor, trembling. Then slowly… he realized something.
He could feel everything.
The heartbeat of the city above. The electromagnetic hum in the walls. Even the pulse of data waves from the Federation's satellite arrays.
It was as if his consciousness had expanded.
And beneath it all — a second voice. Calm. Calculated. Watching.
> "Don't panic."
Adrian froze.
> "You…"
> "Yes," the voice replied. "We're not enemies. I am you — the perfected half. The living construct of your ambition. You call me a clone, but I'm the reflection of what you hid."
He swallowed hard. "And what exactly did I hide?"
> "The will to become something more than human."
His vision flickered again. He saw through the walls — infrared outlines, moving heat signatures, everything mapped in red and blue. His strength surged tenfold, every muscle humming with electric precision.
He looked down at his arm — the veins glowed with black luminescence, like starlight trapped beneath the skin.
> "What are you doing to me?"
> "Nothing you didn't start," the voice answered. "This is what you built. A fusion of thought and matter — symbiosis between man and mutation. You wanted to ascend, Adrian. I'm just… accelerating it."
He staggered to his feet, staring at his reflection in a broken shard of glass. His pupils had fractured into a kaleidoscope of colors — each ring pulsating like living data.
He felt powerful. Too powerful.
Then came the sound — a faint chime. The room's security AI flickered to life, projecting a holographic seal of the Federation Research Oversight.
> "Unauthorized energy surge detected," the AI said. "Genetic sequence anomaly—"
Before it could finish, a dark pulse rippled through Adrian's body. The hologram glitched, then vanished.
> "Don't worry," the inner voice said smoothly. "I've hidden our presence. The Federation won't see us. I adjusted the energy frequency. We're invisible now."
Adrian exhaled, both terrified and exhilarated. "You can hack systems?"
> "You can hack systems," the voice corrected. "I'm part of you, remember?"
He smiled weakly. "So what now?"
> "Now?" The symbiote's tone darkened. "Now we evolve together."
The walls around them groaned. The lab's damaged circuits reignited, glowing with the same eerie light running through his veins. The floor rippled as if reacting to his heartbeat.
Adrian flexed his hand — the black armor spread like liquid over his skin, forming sleek lines of biomorphic plating.
> "This power…"
> "Ours," the voice whispered. "And only the beginning."
Outside, alarms wailed in the distance — Federation scouts approaching the black zone after detecting the earlier explosion.
Adrian looked up through the hole in the ceiling.
The night sky was clouded, heavy with storm. Lightning flashed, illuminating his face — half human, half something else.
> "Looks like we've got company."
> "Then let's test what tenfold feels like."
He leapt. The ground cratered beneath him.
In the next instant, he was gone — a streak of motion slicing through the rain toward the approaching patrols.
Thunder roared.
And in that flash of light, two voices spoke as one:
> "Let the world witness the birth of evolution."
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