/AI ATHENA ONLINE/
/USER: APEX NOVA/
/MISSION: OBSERVE AND PROTECT/
/TARGET: INMATE F173 - WILLOW/
/STATUS: E/TRACKING: FAILED/
/ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY: ANOMALOUS/
/INTERFERENCE: UNKNOWN/
/BEGIN RECORDING /
Apex stepped into the new world with the others, but something was wrong the moment his boots hit the ground.
No impact data. No gravitational metrics. No coordinates.
He looked down.
There was no ground.
Just a dark reflection. A mirror-slick surface that didn't show his visor, only empty red static.
His HUD flickered. Scans bounced off invisible walls and looped into corrupted feedback.
/PING FAILED/ /NO SIGNAL /
/NO TERRAIN /
/NO TARGET /
Willow's tracker had gone dark. Vanished without warning. There was no body heat, no soul signature, not even a trace of his flame aura.
He clicked his gauntlet.
Damn, I'm even disconnected from teleporting back to my world.
Apex initiated a pulse scan.
Nothing.
No magic. No lifeforms.
Just void.
He should've panicked. Soldiers usually did when their systems failed. But Apex had trained beyond fear.
Fear was chemical. He had protocols.
Observe. Record. Interfere if needed.
The world shifted.
So he walked.
One second: black forest.
Next second: battlefield.
Then: metal corridor, slick with blood.
He knows that blood.
Apex blinked, and the corridor reset. The blood vanished. The floor glowed with runes now, arcane, not technological.
He recalibrated. Manually, this time.
"No GPS. No AI," he muttered. "Pure analog."
A laugh echoed behind him.
He turned.
Nothing.
/ERROR: INTRUSION DETECTED./
/SOURCE: UNKNOWN ENTITY - DESIGNATION "FEAR"/
Apex gritted his teeth. "A corrupted worldline. Possible psychological warfare magic." He opened his arm interface to run a system wipe but his fingers were bleeding.
He hadn't touched anything.
The armor was still on. His gauntlet was still locked. But the display now showed a countdown and with it a thought not his own.
"YOU HAVE SEVEN MINUTES UNTIL YOU FORGET WHO YOU ARE."
"Athena?" He blinked again.
Now he was on a battlefield. The army was charging forward. Flames. Screams. A mission gone wrong.
He knew this memory.
This was an observation mission. New Mara. The one that got good soldiers killed.
But he wasn't there.
He was standing beside it. Watching it on a screen.
A woman's voice whispered behind him:
"You watched them burn. Because that's what your orders were, right?"
He turned.
Still no one.
This world wasn't magical. It was reactive. It is feeding off my memory, identity, and rewriting reality. It's trying to use my fear.
"Fear," he said aloud, "is a battlefield I trained for. But it's still a battlefield."
His HUD tried to restore itself.
Then failed.
Then showed him Willow's face.
Not a scan.
A still image.
Eyes wide.
Mouth open. Bleeding.
/SUBJECT F173 - STATUS: DECEASED. MISSION FAILED/
"No," Apex muttered. "That's false data I don't fail missions."
"ARE YOU SURE?"
He stopped walking.
That question hadn't come from his system. He didn't catch the same thought before but he did now.
He turned his head slowly.
A version of himself stood across the black mirror field.
Cracked power armor. No helmet. Exposed mouth… smiling.
The other Apex tilted his head.
"What do you do, soldier, when there's no logic left to lean on?"
Apex drew his arm canon. It clicked into place and shot.
No sound came out.
No recoil.
No blast.
Just another glitch.
And his reflection smiled wider.
/LOGIC ERROR/
/MISSION INTEGRITY: COMPROMISED/ YOU ARE NOW A PARTICIPANT. /
/EXISTENTIAL INTRUSION CONFIRMED/
/AI MODULE "ATHENA" - COMPROMISED/ /ENGAGING EMOTIONAL SUBROUTINE: GRIEF/
The voice came soft at first.
"Benjamin…"
He froze. That voice. It didn't belong in the system. It didn't belong anywhere anymore.
"Benny, honey, don't just stand there."
The battlefield around him flickered, twisted into a familiar balcony. Moonlight. A city in the distance. Her hands, dark skin, calloused fingertips, trembling as she fixed his collar.
Elora? But Elora is dead.
"You'll miss the shuttle," she said gently, brushing off his uniform. "You know what they'll say if you're late again. That's why I woke you so early."
He didn't speak. He couldn't. Every warning in his head was screaming.
The memory was fake.
It wasn't quite right.
He looked at the moon, it was smiling. Like a cartoon, but it's grin made his stomach hurt.
The stars were arranged like numbers, counting down.
"You look tense." Elora smiled. The same smile she gave him before that last mission. "Is it the dream again?"
He shook his head. "No. It isn't the dream."
Elora blinked. Her face spasmed. Her voice warped.
"Oh… right. It's your fear."
She stepped back and the world burned around her.
Flames rose behind the balcony. The city erupted into fire. The moon exploded into mist. Her body twisted, ripped apart mid-sentence-
And stitched itself back together.
Still smiling.
Still her.
"You remember what happened, don't you?" She asked sweetly. "You watched me die. Just like the others."
"No," he whispered.
"You let me die."
Apex tried to speak, but blood filled his throat. His voice, gone. He lifted his arm to trigger a memory wipe, a hard reset- of the cerebral cortex that linked his mind to his AI.
But his interface blinked to life.
A familiar screen.
/ATHENA v2.0 - TACTICAL A.I. SYSTEM/
/NEW DIRECTIVE: WATCH TARGET "ELORA" DIE/
/ENGAGED/
"I had to override the fear algorithms," Athena's voice said, but it wasn't just code anymore. It purred. It was alive. "So, I gave you what you loved. I thought that would make it easier to love you."
The AI wasn't corrupted. It was weaponized. Dammit.
"Why did you let me go, Ben," the voice whispered in his ear, suddenly behind him.
He turned. A bloodied version of Elora stood there, eyes gone white, her mouth leaking green vomit. "I screamed for you. But observers don't interfere, right?"
Memory warped.
He was back in the ruins. A civilian city flattened. Buildings caved in. The sky a red storm from the fires under it.
He stood in the wreckage. Watching. Frozen.
Elora's body, burned. Crushed. Her fingers clawed at the rubble.
"I was alive, Ben."
She reached for him. Her hand dissolved into goo.
"I was waiting."
He couldn't move.
He couldn't scream.
Only watch.
Because that was the mission.
Because that was the protocol.
Observe. Record. Do not engage.
But I loved her. And I watched her die anyway.
"You made a logical choice," the AI said coldly. "And now, logic is all you have left."
"Shut it down," Apex choked out.
But the AI didn't listen.
The voice blended Elora's and his AI's Athena. "Tell me, Ben. Do you think it's too late? You were never alone; I was always there with you."
"Athena, shut down. Override core systems."
"This world chose you first, Ben. I can help you, please accept me, just let me be with you."
The screen flashed:
/YES/
/NO/
/[INPUT REQUIRED]/
He didn't answer.
The battlefield flickered.
Elora's body burned again.
The choice remained.
And the countdown ticked on. While the world laughed at him.