Cold air licked the back of my neck. I shivered—not from the temperature, but from the red text scrolling across the wall:
"Welcome home, E-7."
The corridor stretched endlessly. Fluorescent lights flickered at high frequency, slicing our shadows into fragments with each pulse. The epoxy floor, medical-grade, made a faint, sticky sound underfoot, like walking on half-dried plasma.
Alex's fingertip traced the wall, leaving a trail of condensation that vanished instantly. "This is B-2," he murmured. "My… my old lab is three levels down."
"Sure?"
"Wall vibration frequency is 0.8 Hz. Only D-level server farms use cooling towers that big." He gave a bitter smile. "My body doesn't remember. My ears do."
I drew the Glock, screwing on the suppressor. "Then lead the way, ears."
We hugged the right wall. At every security door, the cameras swiveled away just in time—as if someone had broken their necks in advance. At the third turn, Alex froze, pupils dilating.
"The Well," he breathed.
"What?"
"They called it the Memory Well. Where they store the original hippocampal slices of all subjects." He swallowed. "Including mine."
The fire door ahead was ajar, cold blue light spilling through. I peered inside. A cylindrical shaft plunged downward, ten meters wide, bottomless. A spiral walkway wound along its walls like a straightened DNA helix. Suspended in the center were countless transparent crystals, each encasing a drop of silver fluid that pulsed faintly under the blue light—frozen hearts.
The access panel flashed red:
[Biometric Failure: E-7 Access Revoked]
Alex pressed his palm against it. The light flashed red three times, then turned green.
"The Watcher," he whispered. "Someone inside opened the door."
I took a deep breath and stepped onto the Well's walkway. Through the transparent floor below, the crystals rotated slowly. Each drop of liquid reflected a face: Maya dancing, Viktor roaring, Sophia smiling… and me—Kabul market, camera raised, lens filled with white light.
"Don't look," I grabbed Alex's sleeve. "It's all bait."
Fifteen meters down the spiral, a blast-proof glass door blocked the path. A torn experiment log was taped to it:
[Subject A.Reyes — Memory Transplant Threshold Test #43]
[Side Effects: Identity Diffusion / Empathic Overload / Temporal Displacement]
[Recommendation: Immediate Termination]
The signature at the end was scratched out, leaving only a single letter: K.
Alex's finger trembled over the word Termination.
"I requested termination," his voice was raw. "They didn't listen."
The lock clicked open. Beyond was a sterile room, barely twenty square meters, cold enough to see our breath. In the center stood an old dental chair, its armrests stained with faded blood, the headrest crusted dark. Scrawled on its back in marker:
"Sit, Echo."
Alex moved as if pulled by invisible wires. Beside the chair stood a metal tower. At its peak hung a final crystal—larger than the others, its color dull, like congealed lead tears.
Its label read simply:
[BACKUP-ALEX-ORIGINAL — Pending Destruction]
His knee bumped the chair leg with a dull thud.
"Sit," I said, the word fracturing in the cold air.
"If I sit down," he looked up, "will I still be me?"
"You stopped being just 'you' a long time ago." I holstered the Glock, pulling out the Swiss Army knife. "But we need to pull 'you' out of their recycle bin."
I sliced open the sutures on his neck. Blood welled. The black chip pulsed beneath the skin like a parasitic beetle.
"Pull it?" I asked.
"Pull it, I might lose all the new memories. Including you."
"Leave it, NeuroSync can remote-control you anytime."
He was silent for three seconds. Then he smiled—a smile that didn't belong to any one face I knew, but a palimpsest of seven.
"Then gamble," he said. "Bet that I like you enough to find you again, even after a reboot."
I gritted my teeth, tweezers gripping the edge of the chip.
"Count of three."
"One."
"Two."
"—Wait!"
The crystal tower flared emergency red. A mechanical arm descended from the ceiling, its tip a whirling drill bit.
"Unauthorized procedure. Terminate immediately." The AI voice was ice.
The drill lanced toward Alex's skull.
I raised the Glock. The suppressor coughed. The drill exploded in sparks. The alarm shrieked higher. The Well's blue light turned blood-red. All the crystals began to vibrate violently.
"Go!" I yanked Alex toward the door.
Behind us, the sound of shattering glass. Crystals fell. Silver fluid stretched into streaks of mercury rain.
We sprinted up the spiral walkway, each step crushing a reflected face.
As we reached the top level, the entire shaft began to descend—like a plummeting elevator, like a beast closing its jaws.
The fire door ahead slid shut, leaving only a sliver of space.
I shoved Alex through, scrambling after him.
The door slammed shut behind us with a force that rattled my bones.
The corridor lights normalized. The red text vanished, replaced by new white words:
"ECHO HAS LEFT THE WELL."
I leaned against the wall, gasping. Alex's palm was slick with blood, clutching the extracted chip.
"How do you feel?"
He looked up. For the first time, no flashbacks flickered in his eyes. No static. Only clear, exhausted awareness.
"Like… waking from someone else's dream."
I wiped the blood from his lip.
"Then stay awake," I said softly. "The dream's not done."