Vaulted Faces Don’t Sleep
Argus stood at the edge of the open corridor, facing the elevator.
A cold breath of recycled air slipped past them from the shaft beyond. No movement. No sound. Just the hum of something powered far beneath the city steady, clinical, buried like a secret no one was supposed to remember.
The elevator door waited.
Above it, etched into steel in smooth, sterile lettering:
RECLAIMER: GATE 1
To its right, a glowing biometric scanner. Green. Ready.
Chen stepped forward first. "No badge. No key code. Just the scanner?"
Argus nodded.
Myles hovered behind them, quiet. Pale. His hand still trembled from whatever the Echo had threaded into him earlier. "This wasn't built by the NYPD."
"No," Argus said. "This was built under it."
He stepped forward and placed his left hand on the scanner.
Nothing happened.
Chen frowned. "Lawson's hand?"
He shook his head and tried again right hand this time. Bare palm. No gloves. No prints burned or altered.
Just Argus.
The scanner pulsed.
Verifying Host Signature...
Host-class recognized. ARGUS CUTTER. Access granted.
The elevator doors parted.
Chen said nothing, but her jaw clenched. Myles looked away.
Argus stepped in.
The descent took longer than it should have.
The lights inside the elevator didn't flicker. They dimmed fading with each floor until the walls were a dull matte gray, and the floor indicator dropped below negative numbers.
B2.
B3.
B6.
There was no B4 or B5.
No buttons.
No exit signs.
Just a slow ride into a part of the system that didn't exist on any network.
Then it stopped.
The doors slid open.
A corridor stretched ahead long, narrow, metallic. No signs. Just a single black arrow pointing forward and a hum like static behind glass.
They stepped out together.
Lights above flickered to life in segments, reacting to movement. Not motion-sensors. Something smarter. Something watching.
The hallway split into two wings. On the left, a long row of sealed steel doors each marked with small white codes:
Container 04A
Loop-Stack / Phase Drift
Subject Memory Delay Tier 2
Chen approached one door. A small glass panel let them see inside. A single chair, bolted to the floor. A screen in front of it. Nothing else.
Empty.
Argus moved toward a terminal at the end of the main hallway. The screen activated before he touched it.
No boot-up.
Just a sentence on black:
Welcome, Cutter. You were never meant to wake up.
The air shifted.
Behind them, every hallway door hissed once briefly. Like a breath.
Chen stepped closer to the screen. "What does that mean?"
Argus didn't answer. He navigated the interface. Clean. Minimalist. None of Pandora's usual overlays. This was something older. Deeper. More dangerous.
A map of the facility unfolded.
One level.
Four wings.
And a central core labeled:
Vaulted Echo Index Zero
He tapped it.
ACCESS RESTRICTED – Host Signature Incomplete.
"What does it mean by incomplete?" Chen asked.
"It knows I'm Cutter," Argus muttered. "But not just Cutter. It wants confirmation of the overwrite."
He pulled out the drive. Slid the keycard from the Theta chamber into its port.
The terminal blinked.
Override key accepted. Vault Index download initiated.
A progress bar began.
Myles leaned against the wall, sweat on his brow. "You sure it's not downloading you back?"
Argus didn't respond.
Fifteen percent.
Thirty.
At seventy-one, the screen froze.
Then locked.
REMOTE OVERRIDE DETECTED
GATE 2 ACCESS ACTIVE MIRELLI ENGAGED
Chen's breath caught.
"She's here?"
"She never left," Argus said.
The terminal displayed a new line of text:
User: Lt. Sasha Mirelli
Clearance: Echo Director / Vault Engineer
Current Location: Gate 2
Behind them, the hallway lights turned red.
The elevator doors slammed shut.
One way in.
No way back up.
Argus turned to Chen. "We follow the override path. Fast."
She checked her pistol. "Then what?"
"We stop her before she activates another."
As they reached the second corridor, a light above them flickered on. On the wall ahead, a sign etched in faded lettering:
Gate 2 – Host Retention / Incomplete Echoes
And below it:
Warning: Host activity in progress. Do not interrupt neural sync.
The words glowed pale red across the security door to Gate 2. A faint hum carried through the steel, deeper than power like breathing inside the walls.
Argus glanced at Chen.
She gave one sharp nod.
He touched the panel.
ACCESS GRANTED Host-Class Override Recognized
The door hissed and slid open.
A cold rush of recycled air swept into the corridor. The smell hit them first chemical sterilization, metal, old sweat, something faintly burnt beneath it.
Gate 2 wasn't like the others.
This wasn't a data wing. This was physical.
Rows of containment pods lined the chamber horizontal beds with neural caps suspended above them, each pod sealed in glass. Lights flickered along the edges of the room like heartbeat monitors.
And near the center
A raised platform.
And on it, her.
Sasha Mirelli.
Pale coat, tablet in hand, dark hair tied back. She stood at a command interface, typing with surgical calm, as if she'd been expecting them for days.
The moment she looked up, she smiled.
"Hello, Argus."
Chen raised her weapon. "Step back from the pod."
Mirelli didn't flinch. "You won't shoot me. If you kill me before the cycle completes, the transfer stalls mid-path. You know what that means, right?"
Argus stepped forward, slowly. "You stall the overwrite, the host degrades."
"Or merges," Mirelli said. "Depends on the vessel."
He stopped beside one of the pods, looked down.
The face behind the glass looked like his.
Smoother. Less scarred. Hair shorter. Eyes closed.
And then they twitched.
His throat locked for a second.
"You made another."
"I made several," she said. "You're the only one that survived the wild loop. The rest of you broke. Except this one."
Chen circled behind Mirelli, cutting the angle. "What's his name?"
"He doesn't need one," Mirelli said calmly. "He is you. But cleaner. No Cutter residue. No trauma fractures. Pure overwrite."
Argus leaned closer.
The figure's eyes fluttered beneath the lids.
Not dreaming.
Syncing.
"You stole Lawson's body," Mirelli said. "But I never wanted Lawson. I wanted the man inside him. I wanted Cutter with a conscience. You gave me exactly what I needed."
"And what was that?"
"A solution," she said. "To the problem your kind created."
Chen's voice cut in. "What kind is that?"
"People who don't die the way they're told to."
Mirelli tapped the terminal once.
The pod glowed blue.
Neural sync: 94%
"Shut it down," Argus said.
"You can't shut down something this close," Mirelli replied. "And even if you did "
The figure inside stirred.
Muscles flexed under the skin. A slow inhale.
Eyes snapped open.
Green.
Not brown like Argus. Not like Lawson.
New. Clean.
The pod hissed as it unlocked.
Chen moved fast. "Don't let him out "
Too late.
The pod slid open.
The second Argus sat up.
He moved like someone who'd already practiced.
He looked at Argus.
And smiled.
Same face. Same mouth. Same old smirk.
But hollow.
"Hello, Argus," he said. "I've been waiting a long time to meet myself."
Chen raised her pistol. "Get on the ground."
The second Argus tilted his head. "I don't think you want to do that. The moment you shoot me, you'll lose your only stable sync candidate."
"Not interested in copies," Argus said.
"Then why are you shaking?" the other asked. "Is it because you know I'm the version that doesn't hesitate? The one who didn't drag a dead cop's guilt into his second life?"
Mirelli stepped back, arms folded. "You said it yourself, Argus. You weren't built to last. This one is."
Argus raised his gun. "I don't need to last. I just need to outlive both of you."
Before he could fire
The lights blinked.
Not a power cut.
A network jump.
On Mirelli's terminal, a new screen popped up.
Sync Echo Detected Transmitting to: GRAYRIDGE TOWER
Mirelli's smile vanished.
She tapped the interface.
Nothing.
The copy looked up.
"You brought a tracker," he said.
Chen whispered, "That's not him talking."
"No," Argus said. "That's the Echo."
The second Argus reached for Chen's gun faster than she could react.
And said,
"Let's find out which one of us breaks first."