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“I do,” I said, surprised to realize it was true.

The corridors narrowed, the moss giving way to tiles so clean they looked freshly mopped. We passed through a set of double doors—still functional, still humming with the electromagnetic aura of a world that thought it could save itself with more electricity. Inside, the lab spread out in two directions: to the left, a row of workbenches, equipment still neatly lined up as if awaiting a second shift; to the right, a corridor ending in a reinforced door, windowless and marked only by a single blue LED.

Kang went left. Maven hesitated, then followed. I drifted right, drawn by the LED, the way it pulsed in perfect counterpoint to my pendant. The corridor dead-ended at the reinforced door. I reached out and touched the panel. The blue went white, then flickered back to nothing.

Behind me, Maven’s voice. “You sure you want to go in first? Last time we followed your gut, we nearly died.” I shrugged. “If I die now, at least it’ll be for science.”

Kang was already at my side, weapon unslung but pointed at the floor. He scanned the door, the ceiling, the moss. “I’ll breach.”

“Not necessary,” I said, and pressed the Echo Sphere fragment from my pocket against the seam.

There was a hiss, a brief sizzle, and then the door slid aside. Cold air hit my face, carrying with it the sweet rot of formalin and the sharper tang of ozone. The space inside was nothing like the decay of the outer wings. This was pristine: floors gleaming, benches polished, equipment covered with plastic that had never been breached.

In the center, a single computer terminal blinked, its screen alive with the jittery light of an emergency boot. The glow painted the ceiling, strobing the moss in time with the drive’s struggle to read itself. Kang surveyed the room, then nodded. “All clear.”

Maven took a step forward. “How the fuck is this still running?”

“Backup grid,” I said, moving to the terminal. “Isolated. No outside comms.”

I wiped a film of dust from the keyboard and sat. The keys felt right under my fingers—more than right. I watched my own hands as if they belonged to someone else, flying through commands, bypassing error screens, stacking up requests like I’d written the protocols myself.

“You seeing this?” Maven whispered.

Kang hovered over my shoulder, the tension in his posture shifting from suspicion to something else—admiration, maybe, or dread. He didn’t speak.

The first screen flickered to life. The background was a grainy Authority logo, but the interface was something I recognized: a diagnostic from the pre-Zone era, running on code I hadn’t seen in years. I typed in a few phrases, and the shell cracked open, revealing a buried directory labeled “Protocol 79-A.”

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the file I remembered.”

Kang’s voice was softer now. “Open it.”

I did. The screen filled with data, columns of numbers, graphs, then a series of video files. The thumbnails showed a sequence of experiments: rats, then monkeys, then—humans. Each file dated, each one logged with the same three-letter tag: D-K.

My initials.

I stared at the screen, trying to process the sudden vertigo. I had been here before. Not in this building, maybe, but in a place just like it. The protocols, the experiments, the failures—my hands remembered all of it, even if my head had locked it away.

I clicked on the first video. The screen flickered, then stabilized. It showed a lab like this one, only brighter, more crowded. Rows of cages, each one filled with animals wired to sensors, their brains mapped in real time. The voiceover was mine, younger, sharper.

“…project goal: neural adaptation to extreme electromagnetic fields. Phase two, subject viability at 17%.”

I fast-forwarded. The next video: a human subject, the face blurred, but the hands unmistakably mine. I was fitting a pendant—identical to the one at my throat—around the neck of a woman strapped to a gurney.

Kang leaned in. “You did this?”

I couldn’t speak. I watched the next clip: the woman convulsing as the pendant lit up, then going perfectly still. The EEG spiked, then flatlined.

Maven drew back, face gone gray. “You were one of them. The people who started all this.”

I shook my head, but the denial was weak.

The last file: me, on the screen, explaining the failure of the test to an Authority officer with no face, only a badge. The video cut out mid-sentence.

I slumped back, hands trembling.

Kang reached out, fingers grazing my shoulder. “You knew. Even if you didn’t remember, you knew.”

I closed my eyes. The blue of the pendant was burned onto my lids. “It’s not just me,” I whispered. “It’s everyone out there. The Zone rewires people. It’s meant to. I was just…phase zero.” At lease i think… Maven looked away, anger and pity knotted together. “If you’re the prototype, what happens when they finish the job?”