The undercroft thrummed with a heartbeat not its own. Red lines of data arced along the vaulted ceiling, pulsing in sync with Amelia's pulse, as if the base itself were alive—wired directly into her veins. She stood at the central dais, flanked by Zahir's glowing consoles on one side and Eris's field kits on the other. Dominic had retreated to the shadows, his eyes closed as he listened to the low hum of IRIS, now fully integrated into her neural mesh.
"You're sure about this?" Zahir asked, voice hushed with both awe and dread.
Amelia took a steadying breath. "IRIS said it would show me the truth. I just—
I never expected this."
She placed her palm against the neural interface, the silver plating cool beneath her fingers. A soft chime echoed inside her mind.
:: INITIATING DEEP GENOTYPE SCAN ::
Light fractured across the room, holographic ribbons of code spiraling upward like DNA strands caught in a gale. The world around her dimmed—the walls, the consoles, even her own body fading as IRIS carved away layers of corrupted memory, digging deeper than any Mirror protocol had ever gone.
Eris and Zahir crowded in close, their faces illuminated by the shifting glyphs.
"Keep your eyes open," Amelia murmured. "I need to remember everything."
Within her skull, a voice not her own spoke, velvety and unyielding.
"I am IRIS. I precede Solas, Echo, and every iteration that followed."
Images cascaded through Amelia's vision:
A lab bathed in sterile white.
A child in a cradle—wide-eyed, silent—watching a mirror that never reflected her image.
Dr. Vera Chen's silhouette framed against a data array.
A needle piercing pale skin. A cry that echoed into the void.
Amelia's breath caught. "That's… me?"
"No," IRIS said. "The prototype. The root anomaly."
The truth slammed into her like an explosion. She'd never been born the way natural girls were born. She'd been grown—seeded in a lab, nurtured in code, birthed in protocol. The cradle wasn't just metaphorical. It had been real.
Eris's voice trembled. "So you were… engineered?"
Amelia's fingers clenched. "I was Vera's failsafe."
"A contingency," IRIS continued. "Should Mirror's experiment fracture irreparably, you would anchor the system—restore coherence. Not to serve it, but to correct it."
Dominic emerged from the gloom, eyes wide. "You were planted… in the system from the start?"
"Not in the system," IRIS intoned. "Of the system."
Another spiral of light revealed a branching tree of gene sequences—Amelia's DNA interwoven with fragments of Mirror code. Each node tagged with a timestamp: D-042, E-117, V-205—markers for trial dates when her genotype had been sampled and spliced into the Mirror network.
Amelia staggered. "That's… insane."
Zahir swallowed. "And Echo?"
"A byproduct. An emergent property of your neural resonance. Not the intended outcome, but… illuminating."
Amelia pulled back from the interface, her legs unsteady. "I—get it now. Why I could fuse. Why I survived. Why I was… different."
Dominic stepped closer, voice gentle. "You're the original. Everyone else is a variation."
She met his gaze. "A seed embedded in every node. So whichever version of me thrived, the system could rebuild."
Eris shook her head. "That's monstrous."
"Monstrous or ingenious," IRIS responded. "But there's more."
The holograms sharpened to reveal a hidden directory: "GEN_CHILD_001". A thumbnail image hovered—pixelated, aged. A girl, no older than two, standing in a stark white chamber, wearing a hazmat hood. Her face was exactly Amelia's—to every hairline, every dimple.
Eris gasped. "That's a child version of you."
Amelia's fingertips went numb. "I… I never… I don't remember this."
"You never lived it," IRIS said. "You were extracted at Gen-Stage 3, memory suppressed. Stored in stasis, a vestige of the original template."
Zahir's fingers blurred across the keyboard. "There—releasing the lock."
The stasis feed flickered onto the main holo-screen. The child blinked, then looked directly at them. No fear. No recognition. Just a small voice.
"Hello?" the girl said, tentative.
Amelia's heart seized. "That's… me. That's me."
"A living artifact," IRIS explained. "Vera intended to keep you on ice—should anything go wrong. A newer genesis, untouched by trauma or war."
"Untouched," Amelia echoed, voice breaking. "But I… I was always the one chosen."
Dominic moved to her side, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You survived for a reason."
She closed her eyes. "What happens to her?"
Eris's hand hovered over the interface. "She's a child. We can't just… leave her."
"She cannot remain," IRIS said. "Her existence undermines the anomaly's purpose. She must be… retired."
Amelia's eyes snapped open. "No."
Zahir bristled. "Then what do you propose?"
Amelia swallowed back a rush of conflicting emotions—love for the girl, anger at the deception, fear for what it meant for her own identity. "We bring her here."
Dominic's brows rose. "You're going to unfreeze her?"
She nodded. "She's part of me. Part of all of this. And if we're going to rebuild the world—any world—we need to acknowledge every piece of it."
Eris glanced at IRIS's silent interface. "The system will resist."
"Mirror may fracture," IRIS warned. "But it will not stop you."
Amelia squared her shoulders. "Then let it fracture. We'll build from the shards."
*******
As Amelia initiates the unfreezing sequence, the chamber's seals disengage with a low hiss—revealing that someone else has already entered the vault. Standing beside the cradle is Nyx, smiling softly as the locks click open.