He exhales through his nose. Hard.
“They’ll kill for this.”
“I know,” I say. “So we don’t give them the chance.”
He looks at me—really looks—and something in his face softens.
“You’re not just surviving this,” he murmurs. “You’re fighting it.”
“Damn right I am.”
Because for the first time, I understand.
This was never about me.
It was about theideaof me.
And now that I’ve seen what they’re doing—what they’rebuilding—I know who I am.
I’m the threat they didn’t plan for.
The one who remembers.
And I’m not going anywhere.
Tatek doesn’t speakat first.
He just stands there, his reflection caught in the smooth black of the datapad screen like a ghost—silent, carved in tension. I wait. Let him absorb it. There’s no right way to break the world twice in one day.
The projection stars above us flicker, and I swear the air shifts, like the sim chamber knows something’s changed. That something sacred just shattered under the weight of truth.
“I decrypted it down to the marrow,” I say softly, voice the only thing moving. “It’s not just memory scrubbing. Obol’s rewriting people. From scratch.”
He drags a hand over his face. Slow. Rough.
Then he reaches for the pad.
I pass it to him without a word.
He doesn’t scroll. Doesn’t flip through the data stream like I did. He just stares at the still image I left open—the clone schematic. His own face, rendered with clinical precision, labeled with biometric codes and psycho-behavioral mod tiers.
He breathes once.
Twice.
Then sets the pad down like it’s got a bomb wired to the back.
“This isn’t war anymore,” he says, finally. Voice low. Grounded. Dangerous.
I meet his eyes. “No. It’s worse.”
He paces. Not far. Three steps and a turn, the controlled radius of a soldier keeping himself from boiling over. His fists open and close at his sides.
“They’re manufacturing obedience,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Not just wiping people. Not just data deletion. They’re designing replacements. Plug-and-play human shells, trained to fill a social role.”
His eyes snap to mine. “That’s what you were flagged for.”
I nod once. “They weren’t going to reprogram me. They were going tocopyme. Replace me.”
