The archivists' next drop arrived in pieces.
Fragments of documentation. Test logs. Meeting transcripts stripped of names and dates. Mara assembled them the way she assembled Echoes—carefully, without assumption.
What emerged was not a single revelation, but a slow, suffocating pressure.
Early Witness Echo prototypes had failed catastrophically.
Subjects experienced severe dissociation after playback. Some lost the ability to distinguish memory from reality. Others rejected the overwritten data violently—seizures, comas, death.
Human minds did not like being rewritten.
Except one.
SUBJECT K-02AGE: 6RESULT: STABLE INTEGRATION
Mara stared at the designation.
K.
Her initial.
Her chest tightened.
The reports were clinical, detached, horrifying in their calm.
Subject displays high narrative cohesion following overwrite.Minimal rejection response.Identity continuity preserved.
She scrolled further.
Recommendation: Use Subject K-02 as baseline compatibility model.
Mara closed her eyes.
Images pressed against the back of her mind—bright lights, the smell of antiseptic, a sensation of being held still while something inside her head shifted.
Her migraine exploded without warning.
She cried out, gripping the edge of the desk as the room spun. Her vision fractured, doubling and tripling, as if reality couldn't agree with itself.
Then—
Stillness.
The pain vanished as abruptly as it had arrived.
Mara gasped for breath.
Her console displayed a message she had not opened.
SYSTEM CORRECTION COMPLETE
Her blood ran cold.