Fragments of the Echo

They traveled for two days before stopping near the edge of an old city swallowed by creeping moss and shattered towers. The others set up a temporary camp, while Selene walked the outskirts alone, her mind heavy with what she had seen—what she now knew.

The Gate was only one piece.

There had been many.

And she had once been part of the program that built them all.

She sat on the edge of a collapsed railway bridge, her boots scraping against rusted steel. The wind carried faint whispers through the hollow buildings—echoes of the old world. Appropriate, she thought.

She heard footsteps behind her.

Varra sat beside her without a word.

They watched the horizon for a while, until Selene finally broke the silence.

"I need to tell them. About the Echo Program."

Varra nodded. "They deserve to know."

---

That evening, the team gathered around the fire. Daro, Kai, Arin—quiet and listening. Selene stood, her arms crossed, face half-lit by orange flame.

"You've all seen pieces of what I was," she said. "But you deserve the whole picture. Not the version the Directorate wrote."

She took a breath.

"The Echo Program wasn't just about creating agents. It was about preserving control—across time, across memory. We weren't born. We were curated."

She looked up, gaze steady.

"They took fragments of real people—leaders, rebels, visionaries—and copied them. Cloned memory patterns. Echoes. They thought by stitching the strongest traits together, they could build the perfect soldiers. Obedient. Smart. Disposable."

Kai's brow furrowed. "Like digital ghosts... turned real."

Selene nodded. "Exactly. Most failed. Some went mad. A few—like me—survived."

Daro's voice was quiet. "You were never disposable."

Selene smiled faintly. "They didn't think so. I was Echo-Seven. The seventh full-body integration test. A balance of aggression, empathy, foresight, and loyalty. But something in me broke the loop."

Varra spoke now. "You developed autonomy. You started making your own choices. You questioned orders. That terrified them."

Selene looked at her. "So they tried to overwrite me."

Kai leaned forward. "With that mirror version? From the Gate?"

"She wasn't the first," Selene said. "There were others. Fail-safes. If one Echo broke control, they'd deploy a shadow clone to replace them. Rewrite their narrative. Erase the deviation."

"And what about the others?" Arin asked. "The ones like you?"

Selene's voice was low.

"Most are gone. But some are still out there. Hiding. Fighting. Waiting to see which version of the truth survives."

The fire crackled between them. No one spoke for a moment.

Then Daro asked, "Why tell us now?"

"Because it's not just my story anymore," Selene said. "You've followed me through wreckage and memory, into a war you didn't ask for. You deserve to know who you're standing beside."

Varra chuckled softly. "Selene, we knew before you did."

The tension broke slightly, a shared warmth returning to the circle.

"But we also know," Arin added, "this Echo Program? It didn't die with the Gate. Did it?"

"No," Selene admitted. "There's still data scattered across the zones. Hidden servers. Outposts. And maybe—just maybe—someone is still running it. Quietly. Preparing something worse."

Kai shook his head. "You'd think after all this, they'd stop trying to play god."

"They won't," Selene said. "Because they're afraid of what happens when people like us make our own choices."

---

Later that night, Selene found herself staring at an old data shard Varra had recovered. It had the program's original branding on it—an infinity loop, twisted and elegant.

Echo Protocol 0.1.

She slid it into her reader. A low beep confirmed activation. Lines of code spilled across the screen—encrypted, broken, fragmented.

Then a voice.

Her own voice.

But younger.

"Echo-Seven status: integrated. Awaiting purpose. Identity designation: provisional. Loyalty protocol… undefined."

Selene closed the file.

She wasn't provisional anymore.

She was real now.

And soon, she'd find the ones still hiding in the system.

Because the next step wasn't just survival.

It was reckoning.