The Echo Protocol

The sky above Neo-Kyra was stained with static — a pulsing aurora left behind by the memory surge.

Three weeks had passed since the broadcast.

Maya stood alone atop the shattered remnants of the Phoenix Spire. Below her, the city tried to remember how to live again.

They called it "The Reckoning." Streets renamed themselves. Monuments to lies were torn down by bare hands. People cried in public and didn't apologize for it.

But underneath it all — fear.

Without control, would chaos follow?

A soft chime buzzed on her wrist. Incoming transmission — no sender ID.

She tapped the screen. The message read only:

"South Dock. Midnight. —E"

She stared at the letter.

He was alive.

Maya arrived at the South Dock just before midnight. The air was damp, the neon lights flickering like they were remembering something too.

A figure stepped out from the shadows — not quite Ethan. Older. Hardened. But the eyes were the same.

"You really are alive," she said.

He nodded. "Not for long if you keep showing up on unencrypted lines."

"You sent the message."

"I sent the warning."

He handed her a data shard. "The Echo Protocol. It's the failsafe I built before the Chair. Before Gideon. Before I lost myself."

She frowned. "Failsafe for what?"

Ethan looked toward the dark sea.

"For what comes next. When the ones who built Phoenix realize what we did… and come to take it back."

Fractures

The Echo Protocol wasn't just a file. It was a map. A memory lattice — millions of threads crosslinked across stolen minds, encrypted under Phoenix's failed utopia.

Maya studied the shard on her portable console. Each thread pulsed faintly, a heartbeat of forgotten truth.

"You said this was a failsafe," she said. "For what?"

Ethan didn't look up. "For them."

"Who are they, Ethan?"

A pause.

"Cortex Syndicate," he said finally. "The architects behind Phoenix. Phoenix was their beta test. They wanted control, not salvation."

Maya clenched her jaw. "And you built the Chair for them?"

"I built the Chair to fix people," Ethan said. "They turned it into a weapon."

He turned to her, eyes dark and hollow.

"They're coming to restart it."

Meanwhile — Elsewhere

In a vault beneath the Arctic ice, far from any map, a man in a white coat stood before a massive screen. His name was Director Halden, and his voice was soft and surgical.

"Echo has been activated."

Behind him, rows of android-like figures stood charging — human-shaped, but too still.

A woman with obsidian eyes stepped forward. "Ethan Holt survived."

Halden didn't flinch. "Of course he did. He wrote the seed code. He is the lock… and the key."

She smiled coldly. "Shall we begin phase one?"

Halden nodded. "Deploy the Reclaimers."

Back in Neo-Kyra

"They'll erase the truth again," Ethan said. "Not digitally — physically. No more mindwipes. This time, they're coming for every carrier."

Maya stared at the shard. "Then we have to move."

"We can't run," Ethan said. "We need to find the original carriers. The first ten minds Phoenix tested on. If they're still alive, they might hold memory sequences even Echo couldn't restore. They're the roots."

Maya's voice dropped. "Do you know who they are?"

"I was one of them," he said.

She froze.

"And another," he continued, "is Vance."

Ethan and Maya must now track down the remaining original ten carriers before the Cortex Syndicate can erase them — or worse, use them to rebuild Phoenix under a new name.

Her next target: Vance — but he's gone dark since the flood.

The race begins.