Chapter 17: The Residual Code

The silence after the containment slammed shut was unnerving.

No more footsteps.

No echo of Z's synthetic voice.

Just breathing—theirs.

Shallow. Strained.

Eros leaned against the wall, blade still drawn, arm trembling with residual tension. His eyes didn't leave Prion.

Prion, who stood at the console like he'd done this before.

Planned this before.

"Is he trapped?" Eros asked, voice low.

"For now." Prion's answer was just as quiet. "That chamber holds residual simulation ghosts. Failed memory iterations. They'll keep him busy."

"You're using fragments of us to fight him?"

"No." Prion finally turned. "I'm using what they tried to overwrite us with. Let their perfection drown in its own rewrites."

The glow of the screen flickered against his pale skin. His hoodie clung to his sharp frame—damp with sweat, exhaustion pulling at his shoulders. But his eyes…

Still clear.

Still terrifyingly calm.

"How did you know he would follow?" Eros asked after a beat.

"Because he's not a person," Prion said. "He's a protocol. He doesn't think. He executes."

"But he's dangerous."

"So are you," Prion replied. "The difference is—you hesitate."

A tense silence followed.

It should've been an insult. But it wasn't.

Eros pushed off the wall, slowly sheathing his weapon. "We should keep moving."

"No."

Eros paused.

Prion wasn't looking at him now. He was staring at the far wall, the one scorched faintly with a faded serial code—barely visible unless you knew where to look.

"What is it?" Eros asked.

"That." Prion pointed at the wall. "That's where I carved your name once."

Eros froze.

"You don't remember," Prion said. "But you did it first. They wiped you. I came back here looking for traces. I found that."

A beat passed.

"Do you still think I'm manipulating you?" Prion asked, voice neutral.

Eros looked away. His mouth tightened.

"I don't know."

Prion didn't flinch.

He walked—slowly—until there was barely a breath between them.

"You want truth?" he said softly. "Then let me give you one."

Eros didn't move.

Prion raised a hand. Not to touch. Just close enough that Eros could feel the presence of it near his chest.

"I never stopped trying to find you. Even when they made you hunt me. Even when you forgot my name. Every time you aimed that blade, I still looked for you beneath it."

He dropped his hand. Took a step back.

"And you can think I'm lying. You can think this is all part of some game. But the reason I'm still breathing—the reason they haven't killed me—is because you always hesitated."

Eros swallowed. Something twisted in his throat.

"I don't know what to believe," he said finally.

"Then believe this," Prion replied, eyes steady. "If I wanted to use you, you'd already be dead or on your knees."

"And why am I not?"

"Because I'd rather die than rewrite you into someone you're not."

The words landed like a fracture in Eros's armour—silent, splitting, final.

Behind them, the distant hum of the containment unit flared—Z was still trapped.

But it wouldn't hold forever.

"Then let's get out of here," Eros said roughly.

Prion didn't argue.

They turned toward the hall—and walked together.

What they find next isn't a threat—but a memory Eros was never supposed to recover.

They moved in silence.

Each footstep echoed faintly through the abandoned corridor, the kind that once brimmed with purpose—engineers, scientists, handlers rushing between experiments, clipboards in hand, data trailing behind them like smoke. Now, only dust and ghosts remained.

Prion didn't walk fast. Eros stayed close, and not just for protection.

There was something off.

The air grew heavier, like it remembered too.

They turned into a narrow wing with flickering panels overhead. The digital signs on the wall were either dead or frozen in glitched loops. One read: Anchor Stability Test | Subject 7, then blinked, then reset.

Eros paused under it. "Subject 7. That's you, isn't it?"

Prion stopped. His voice was quiet. "That was the label."

"You're not denying it."

"Why would I?" A slow breath. "They made sure I'd never forget who I was to them."

"Anchor Stability…" Eros touched the faded sign. "Then what does that make me?"

Prion didn't answer.

Instead, he opened a door on the right and stepped inside.

The room was sterile. Small. A bench. A console. A chair with restraints burned black at the edges. One corner still bore the cracked mark of impact—a splatter of blood long dried and forgotten by everyone but the walls.

Eros followed him in. His breath caught in his throat.

"This is…" He turned slowly. "This is where they tested you?"

"One of the first rooms they brought us both into," Prion said. "Before they separated us into cells. You weren't supposed to be affected by me. They thought you could stabilize me through proximity. Thought it would be enough."

"And was it?"

"No."

Eros turned sharply. "Then what did?"

Prion stared at the centre of the room. "You spoke to me."

"What?"

"You were never meant to. You weren't supposed to remember me either. You were a clean slate asset. They warned you not to interact. But you broke protocol."

Eros took a slow step forward. "What did I say?"

"You asked if I was cold."

The silence hit harder than the words.

Eros's chest tightened. The faintest flicker of something—like warmth trying to reach through frost—tugged at his ribs.

"And then?"

"I didn't answer. I couldn't. My voice was gone." He gave a faint, bitter smile. "So you sat with me for seven minutes. In silence. And that was the first time I stabilized."

Eros leaned against the frame of the chair. His hand brushed the restraint.

Burn marks.

"Why are you showing me this?" he asked.

"Because the last time you sat in that chair," Prion said, "you carved something under the armrest."

Eros bent slowly. The lighting flickered again, revealing a faint line of jagged scarring beneath the panel.

He ran his fingers over the etched letters.

His name.

Not his name.

"Prion."

"You remembered," Prion whispered. "Even when everything was stripped away."

Eros's throat closed.

"I don't remember doing this."

"I know."

"And I don't know if I believe any of this."

"I know that, too."

"Then why?"

Prion's eyes met his, steady and strange. "Because I don't need you to believe me. I need you to remember who you were when they weren't watching."

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Then—

Suddenly—

The wall panel crackled to life.

A voice filtered through. Male. Calm. Familiar in the worst way.

"Subject 7 breach location confirmed. Partial override authorized. Resume containment. Replace failure with asset."

Eros turned, eyes wide. "They're still tracking us?"

Prion moved, swift and grim, hands flying over the control pad. "They've been waiting. Z was never meant to kill us—he was meant to slow us down. Delay us just long enough."

"For what?"

The door behind them hissed open.

And someone stepped in.

Not Subject Z.

Not a guard.

But someone Eros hadn't seen in any recovered memory.

"You left me behind," the figure said.

Prion's expression cracked.

Eros stepped in front of him, blade half-drawn.

But the figure raised no weapon.

Just a hand. Calm. Direct.

"Prion," he said, "tell him the truth."

The next visitor doesn't come to kill—but to reveal what Prion buried even from himself.

Eros stepped between them on instinct.

The moment that stranger said "You left me behind," something sharp coiled in the air—grief, maybe. Recognition. But it didn't come from Eros. It came from Prion.

He wasn't breathing right.

"Who is he?" Eros asked, blade raised but not striking yet.

Prion didn't speak.

The figure took another step into the blue-lit chamber. His movements were deliberate, unhurried. Not hostile. But not safe either.

He looked human.

Too human, in the same way Subject Z had felt like a mimicry.

But this one… wasn't a clone. His features were sharp, his gaze clearer. And the scar beneath his collarbone—just barely visible—was real.

"I'm not another subject," the figure said. "I wasn't part of your numbered failures. I was a test—before the test."

Eros frowned. "Then what are you doing here?"

"I came to see if the anomaly they feared was worth fearing." He paused, eyes flicking toward Prion. "I came for him."

Prion's jaw tightened. "They buried you."

"They buried both of us."

"You weren't supposed to survive."

"And yet," the man said, spreading his arms, "here I am."

Eros moved slightly closer to Prion, never taking his eyes off the new arrival. "What's his name?"

Prion didn't answer.

Because he couldn't.

The man tilted his head. "He doesn't remember me. Not fully. They erased too much too fast. Even he couldn't stitch it all back together. But I remember him."

He stepped closer to Prion, ignoring the blade Eros hadn't lowered.

"He's the one who rewrote the first override."

Prion's head snapped up.

The man smiled.

"That caught your attention."

"You were there," Prion said slowly. "At Site Theta."

"You called it a ghost loop. But it was me. The feedback you felt—that wasn't a bug. It was a message. From me."

Eros's eyes narrowed. "And what exactly do you want now?"

"I want what they always denied us," he said. "The truth. And I want to know if Prion still has the resolve to finish what we all started."

"I didn't start anything," Prion said, voice low. "They forced this on us."

"They did." The man nodded. "But you escaped. You rewrote your name into their fracture logs. You broke what they couldn't control."

His gaze darkened.

"Now it's your turn to decide what to be."

The lights buzzed again—longer this time. Something was destabilizing the local current. Eros caught it first, turning sharply toward the wall panel. The voice from earlier crackled again.

"Residual anomaly detected. Subject 7 not in containment. Immediate neutralization protocol authorized."

The stranger's eyes lifted to the ceiling.

"Looks like I drew too much attention." He glanced back at Eros. "This facility's about to collapse. They're wiping the local archive."

"What archive?" Prion asked quickly.

The man's expression tightened. "The original fracture logs. Including the one that proves you weren't the first success."

Eros's pulse spiked. "You mean—"

"I mean they lied to you, Prion," the man interrupted. "About who you were. About what came before. I was the precursor. The ghost iteration. You—" he stepped forward— "you were built off my failure."

The ground beneath them rumbled.

Eros grabbed Prion's wrist. "We need to go. Now!"

But Prion didn't move.

His eyes were locked on the man's—on the truth threatening to unravel everything he'd believed.

"Then why are you here now?" Prion asked. "If you were discarded—"

"Because you were supposed to be the last piece. The clean one. The perfect echo." A bitter smile. "And you weren't. You remembered. You felt. You bonded."

A pause.

"I never got that far."

The lights above sparked violently.

Then the alarms began.

"DATA WIPE IN PROGRESS. THREE MINUTES TO CORE DELETION."

The man stepped back. "Go."

"What about you?"

He just smiled. "You already escaped once, Prion. Don't let them rewrite you again."

And then he was gone—vanishing into the smoke and sparks as the ceiling above them began to groan.

Eros didn't hesitate. He pulled Prion by the wrist, dragging him toward the hall.

Prion stumbled—he was still too weak—but he didn't resist.

As the door sealed behind them, the corridor plunged into red warning lights.

And the world behind them began to erase.

What did Prion leave behind… and what truth did he almost remember?

The silence after Subject 4's departure was almost worse than his arrival.

They walked for a while without speaking, the only sound their footsteps against chipped concrete. The deeper they moved into the ruins, the colder it got—like the air hadn't been disturbed in years.

Prion didn't limp, but his pace had slowed.

He was pale again. Not the fragile sort of sickly pale—this was the colour of someone fading inwards. Burnt out from something unseen.

Eros watched him from the side, unsettled.

"You're still bleeding," he said quietly.

Prion didn't answer. He pressed his hand beneath his coat, as if only just noticing the wound stitched along his ribs.

It should've concerned him more. It didn't.

Eros looked away. His hand twitched. Part of him wanted to reach out, steady Prion like he had before. The other part couldn't forget what Subject 4 had said.

How much of this was real?

How much of Prion's vulnerability was deliberate?

"Say something," Eros said, voice rough.

Prion's eyes flicked up. "You want reassurance?"

"No," Eros replied. "I want the truth. Are you manipulating me?"

There. He'd said it.

The words hung between them like a loaded trigger.

Prion stopped walking. Turned slowly.

For a moment, he didn't speak. Just studied Eros with that same too-still expression, like he was calculating the damage and weighing whether honesty was worth it.

Then he took a step forward.

Eros didn't move.

Prion's voice, when it came, was soft. Raw.

"I didn't make you remember me. You did that on your own."

Another step. Close now. Too close.

"But I tried to protect the parts of you they kept erasing. The pieces that mattered. The ones that reached for me."

"Why?"

"Because every time they reset you, I broke a little more. You think I'm cold, Eros, but I remember every version of you that died without even knowing my name."

A breath caught in Eros's throat.

"Then why didn't you stop it?" he asked. "If you could rewrite, like Subject 4 said—"

"I didn't say I could save you," Prion interrupted. "I said I learned to rewrite. One loop at a time. At a cost. Every time you glitched, I lost something too."

He looked down at his hands.

"That's why I'm running out."

Eros couldn't speak.

He didn't step back. But he didn't reach out either.

Instead, he asked the one thing he hadn't dared to.

"Are you dying?"

Prion gave the faintest smile.

The dangerous kind.

The one that reminded Eros of why New Era feared him—not because of strength, but because of what lay behind the silence.

"No," Prion said quietly. "I'm evolving."

Then he turned and kept walking, as if the conversation hadn't just shattered whatever remained between them.

And Eros?

He stood still for a moment.

Remembering how that same smile had once meant something else.

But the deeper they descended, the more the ruins responded—lights flickering, systems awakening. And something watching. Something waiting for Prion to return.

If memory is rewritten and pain repeats—can trust survive the loop?

The slow-burn tension between Prion and Eros just cracked open further. What happens when someone breaks again—not physically, but emotionally? Subject 4 planted the seed. Prion didn't deny it. But is truth always manipulation when it comes from someone you can't forget?