Amina woke screaming.
Not loud—but sharp, sudden, like she was surfacing from underwater with fire in her lungs. Jack was at her side before the others could move. She clutched his wrist, eyes wild, heart monitor spiking into alarm tones.
"It's okay," Jack said. "You're safe. You're with me."
"No," she gasped. "Not safe. Never safe. Not since—" She cut herself off and looked around, disoriented. "Where am I?"
Lena leaned in, scanning her vitals. "You're at a secure location. We removed the implant. You're not connected anymore."
Amina's hand went to her collarbone. Her fingers touched the scar, still red and raw. Her whole body shook.
"Jack…" she whispered.
"I'm here."
"I don't know which part of me is real."
Jack knelt down, meeting her eyes. "Start with what you remember."
She exhaled shakily. "It's in pieces. Like someone cut my brain with a glass. I see Elara. But not just her. Versions. Fragments. She's standing in a field. Then she's bleeding. Then she's on a train with a man who isn't you."
Ezra raised an eyebrow. "A little on the nose, don't you think?"
Lena shot him a glare. "Shut up."
Jack ignored both of them. "What else, Amina?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I remember giving her up."
The words hit him like a slap.
"I handed her to them," Amina said, eyes filled with something Jack couldn't name. "Not knowing what they'd do. I thought I was saving her."
Kael stepped into the room, arms crossed. "From what?"
Amina looked up at him.
"From herself."
Silence settled like dust.
Lena frowned. "What does that mean?"
Amina tried to sit up. Jack steadied her.
"Elara wasn't just a person to them," she said. "She was a map. A living prototype. She'd been exposed to more relics than any recorded subject without full psychic fracture."
"She survived long-term exposure," Lena whispered. "That's almost unheard of."
"They wanted to study her," Amina continued. "But she made them nervous. She was too… unpredictable. They couldn't code around her intuition."
"So they wiped her?" Jack asked.
"No," Amina said. "They copied her. And then they started erasing the original."
Jack's jaw tightened. "Rhea."
"She's the echo," Amina said. "But not the first. They tested versions. You've seen some. The failed girls. The ones who broke down. But Rhea held together because she was willing to become Elara. She believed in the story."
"And what about the original?" Kael asked.
"She's still alive," Amina said. "But not for long. They're draining her memory one layer at a time. Every moment they keep her alive, Rhea becomes more 'real.'"
Ezra paced behind them. "They're trying to overwrite reality. The past. Relationships. Memories. They want a version of Elara that's fully programmable—and the only way to do that is to hollow her out completely."
Jack looked at Amina. "Why did you help them?"
She didn't look away.
"Because they told me they'd kill her if I didn't."
"You still ran."
"I ran when I found out they already had."
Jack didn't speak.
The silence between them wasn't angry—it was heavy.
Lena cleared her throat. "There's more. The implant we pulled from Amina—it had a signature. Faint. But I traced it."
Jack turned to her.
"It links to a Raven Circle safe site buried under the old water treatment plant. Same one where we lost two agents four years ago during the Orpheus case."
"That site was sealed," Kael said.
"No," Lena replied. "It was reactivated six months ago. You know what else happened six months ago?"
"Rhea surfaced," Jack said quietly.
Amina nodded. "That's where they keep the echo data. Where they test emotional triggers. They run simulations of past events—your rooftop conversations, your old cases, even your private messages. Rhea was trained on you."
Jack's hands curled into fists.
"They programmed her to be what I needed."
"Yes," Amina said. "And now they've lost control of her."
Ezra let out a slow breath. "And we're standing in the middle of it."
Jack looked around the room.
They had pieces. Scattered, bloody pieces. But no clear line to the core. Just a growing storm.
Amina lay back on the cot, her voice growing fainter.
"I never wanted to be part of this. I didn't want to betray you. I just…"
She trailed off.
"I wanted to matter."
Jack didn't respond.
Not yet.
But something shifted in his face.
Resolve. Or regret.
Maybe both.
"We're going to the treatment site," he said finally.
Kael tensed. "We walk in, we don't walk out."
"We don't walk in to survive," Jack said. "We walk in to finish this."
Lena nodded. "I'll prep gear. Bring everything analog. If they've got AI defenses, we'll need to stay dark."
"What about her?" Ezra asked, nodding to Amina.
"She stays," Jack said. "She's done enough."
Amina looked up at him, surprised. "You believe me?"
"No," he said. "But I believe you're not lying anymore."
Ezra smirked. "That's the closest thing to forgiveness you're going to get."
Kael opened the weapons crate near the wall and tossed Jack a sidearm.
"Let's go break into hell."
Jack caught the sidearm without looking at it.
The weight settled into his palm like something inevitable.
Amina pushed herself up again despite Lena's protest, eyes clearer now—still fragile, but focused.
"You can't just storm it," she said. "The water plant isn't just storage. It's filtration."
Kael paused mid-check on his rifle. "Filtration for what?"
"For memory," Amina answered. "They don't just store echo data there. They refine it. Strip contradictions. Remove emotional spikes. Anything that destabilizes the overlay."
Jack stepped closer to her.
"So that's where they're draining Elara."
Amina nodded once. "The lower chamber. It's built into the original reservoir. Cold. Isolated. No outside signal bleed. They pump memory streams through conductive water arrays to stabilize pattern drift."
Lena frowned. "Water as a buffer medium… that's insane."
"It works," Ezra muttered.
Jack ignored him.
"How long?" he asked Amina.
She hesitated.
"If the deletion cycle resumed after the Hollow House collapsed… hours. Maybe a day."
Jack's jaw flexed.
"And Rhea?" Lena asked.
Amina's eyes flickered.
"She won't let them finish."
Silence.
Kael scoffed lightly. "You just said she's an echo."
"She is," Amina said. "But echoes evolve. The more of Elara they poured into her, the more friction they created. You can't replicate love without inheriting conflict."
Jack felt that land somewhere deep and unwelcome.
Ezra watched him carefully. "You think she's unstable."
"I think," Amina said, voice steadier now, "she's choosing."
The lights in the safehouse steadied. The low vibration from earlier had faded, but no one relaxed.
Lena finished packing her analog kit—fiber cutters, signal scramblers, old-school detonators.
"We go quiet," she said. "No digital footprints. No remote feeds."
Kael chambered a round. "And if the custodians are there?"
"Then we don't hesitate," Jack replied.
Amina reached for his wrist again before he turned away.
"Jack."
He looked down at her.
"If you see her—if you see the real Elara—don't talk to her about the past."
His brow furrowed. "Why?"
"Because they've been feeding her altered versions of it. If you contradict the wrong memory at the wrong time, it could fracture what's left."
The room went still.
Ezra exhaled softly. "Emotional demolition."
Jack absorbed that.
Then nodded once.
"Then I won't argue," he said. "I'll remind her."
Amina studied his face like she was trying to memorize it.
"Of what?"
Jack picked up his coat.
"Of who she was before any of this."
Kael opened the door.
Cold night air rushed in.
The old water treatment plant waited somewhere across the city—dark, forgotten, and humming with ghosts.
Jack stepped out first.
This time, they weren't chasing an echo.
They were going for the source.