Elaine hit the dirt with a thud.
Or what was ground, she guessed.
After a moment she realized the cobblestones beneath her boots were replicas — digital reconstructions of her home city, the one she and Ian had been raised in before the merge. Everything was the same, just… wrong.
Buildings floated at orthogonal angles.
Streetlights pulsate with binary light.
Shadows blink in and out of existence, like traumatic memories attempting to erase themselves.
Her scythe throbbed once in her hand, attuned to the location. "Is this the heart of the Core?" she breathed.
The wind? There was no reply — nothing but the wind, if you could still call that a wind.
She walked.
With each step, there are two echoes — two echoes: one in sound, and one in data. Faces flicker in the glass of old shop windows: fragments of her soldiers, the lives she's lost, each re-playing their final moments in endless loops.
Elaine halted in front of a fragmented mirror dangling by its final screw. Her reflection returned her gaze — eyes glimmering faint red — but when she blinked, the mirror image didn't.
Instead, it said.
"You shouldn't have" "Don't come here!"
Elaine's breath caught. "Who are you?"
"You already know." "I am the face of your nightmare."
The reflection smiled. "I am the part of who you are the shadows hid."
Before she could react, the mirror exploded outwards — glass reforming into a humanoid shape crafted entirely of shadow. It was exactly the same, in her every movement, in every step it took, as if it was walking in perfect synchronization with her. "
Let her have her moment," her sister said.
Elaine wielded her scythe. "You're a copy."
"No," it said softly, the voice was the same as hers. "I'm the remnant that remains after you cease pretending to be human."
The air rippled.
Her shadow-self lunged.
Steel and darkness collided, rolling through the surrounding matrix code. Each blow reverberated through the city — and somewhere deep within the Core, Ian felt it.
Ian staggered as the pulse hit. The dirt under his boots rippled like an ancient screen, slices of light and shadow welled up. He wasn't in the real world anymore — not really. The Core had pulled him halfway between realities, where code and memory melted.
Gripping his sword, the twin blades lightly vibrating with the rhythm of his sister's heartbeat. He could sense her — distant, fading, battling something that should not be.
"Elaine…"
The name was static, in the midst of mechanical noise....
He stepped forward, and the air changed — into forms, into faces, into whispers of those who the Protocol had consumed. A city of ghosts, looping in endless replay.
"He's not going to get to her," said one of them, in a voice that was an echo of his own doubts. "She's nothing more than a server."
Ian tightened his grip. "I'll break the system, then."
With a shout he stabbed his sword into the broken earth. —He shouted and plunged the sword into the shattered ground. Blue light burst out, dismantling the glitch, and for a split second — he saw her.
Elaine, struggling her shadow-self, the city burning at her back.
She just gazed at him.
"Ian?"
The world buckled. The link snapped back. He was gone.
Elaine gasped as a ripple went through her, the shadow freezing mid-strike. Even before the brawl had started, it was beginning to look a little wobbly.
The shadow hissed. "He's not supposed to be here." "He'll mess up everything."
Elaine straightened, her scythe gleaming like a crescent of obsidian. "Then maybe that's the point."
She lunged — faster than thought — and her scythe cut through the shadow's torso. Light burst, breaking the ground under them. Both's versions of herself went into the collapsing Core, spinning down into the heart of the digital abyss.