White Eyes
The resistance safehouse was buried beneath a collapsed metro station, its entrance hidden behind a rusted transport frame and overgrown with relic ivy.
Kael brushed aside some leaves. "You're sure this is it?"
Nyra nodded slowly. "I remember this place. Not from missions… from before."
BITS hovered over a rusted platform. "Confirmed: low-power relic signatures, encrypted walls, probable memory insulation. Also, one dead raccoon."
Kael looked at Nyra. "Ready?"
She stared at the sealed door, her voice low. "Not even slightly."
Then she kicked it in.
---
Inside, the room was dark and dry, dust swirling through a shaft of broken ceiling light.
The air smelled of oil, ash, and old electricity.
Scattered relic fragments littered the floor—obsolete memory cartridges, cracked datapads, even a prototype Starkey buried beneath a pile of faded coats.
Then they saw it.
Carved into the wall in uneven strokes, possibly by knife:
> "REMEMBER ME WHEN THEY RESET YOU."
Nyra froze.
"That's what she said," she whispered. "In the dream… in the memory. Before they wiped me."
Kael stepped beside her. "You think this was for you?"
Nyra nodded.
"It was me."
---
They moved deeper into the room, lighting their way with Kael's Starkey and BITS's ambient glow.
The safehouse was still mostly intact—abandoned, but not decayed.
Someone had kept it clean. Until recently.
BITS beeped. "Heat signatures detected. Residual only. Someone was here about three hours ago."
Kael tightened his grip. "Hostile?"
"Possibly. Possibly emotional. Possibly both."
They reached the inner chamber.
And froze.
---
In the center of the room stood a data terminal. Active.
But more importantly—there was a girl standing beside it.
She had snow-white hair, pale skin, and eyes the color of cold flame.
She turned.
And Nyra whispered, "You."
---
The girl stared at her, expression unreadable.
Then, softly: "I told you not to forget me."
Kael stepped forward. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head. "I was Subject M-34. She was M-33. We were... twins. Once."
Nyra's breath caught. "I don't remember any of that."
The girl—M-34—smiled sadly. "They made sure you wouldn't."
---
The conversation that followed felt like falling down stairs made of glass.
M-34—who now called herself Eirin—explained everything:
> "We were part of the Echo Project. Not born. Created. They fused us with relic fragments that held fractured memories—souls, maybe. They wanted to build a soldier who could be anyone."
> "Nyra adapted. She became stable. They feared what that meant."
> "So they erased her. Over and over. Until only the parts they wanted remained."
> "But I remembered. I wrote messages on every surface I could reach. Hoping one day… she'd find one."
Nyra couldn't speak.
Kael reached for her, but she stepped away.
"I'm not who I thought I was."
Eirin nodded. "Neither am I. But we're still here."
---
BITS finally spoke. "Heartwarming, traumatic, and laced with tragic symmetry. I rate this reunion a strong 8.5."
Kael gave him a look.
Nyra sat heavily on a relic crate. "So what now?"
Eirin walked toward her. "I've been gathering what they tried to bury. Memories, names, coordinates. I know where the next piece is. I know who's still trying to reboot the program."
Kael raised a brow. "The Council?"
"Worse," Eirin said. "The ones who replaced them."
---
The lights flickered.
Kael's Starkey pulsed.
He blinked—and suddenly he wasn't in the room.
He was in a vision.
The Core flared.
---
He saw:
Nyra, surrounded by fire, screaming a name he couldn't hear.
Eirin, suspended in a containment pod, eyes wide with light.
Himself, bleeding out, looking up at a third figure—
Another clone?
A shadow?
Or... the original?
---
He staggered, gasping, as the vision ended.
Nyra and Eirin were beside him instantly.
"Kael?" Nyra asked.
He shook his head. "The Echo Core… it's reacting to all of this. To you. To her."
BITS beeped. "It's syncing to ancestral code. We're triggering deeply embedded relic threads. We're close to something big. And probably unpleasant."
Kael stood.
"I saw someone. Someone who looked like me. But older. Meaner."
Eirin's face darkened.
"I've seen him too," she said. "He calls himself the First Memory. And he wants us all back in the system."
---
Outside, thunder cracked.
Inside, three relic-linked souls prepared for a future written long before they were born.
And in the shadows, far below Solara—
> The First Memory opened his eyes.
---
💬 Author's Note — Kazuki Rei
You survived a full lore drop, sister reunion, AND another brain-melting vision?
Pat yourself on the back.
Things are heating up. Who is the First Memory? What happens when relics remember too much?
👉 Next: Chapter 21 — Reboot Protocols or Kael Goes Rogue?
Or should Nyra and Eirin train together before what's coming?
Vote, laugh, spiral —
— Kazuki Rei