Chapter 20: The One Who Rewrites

Silence filled the shaft after the hatch sealed.

Eros landed hard, shoulders scraping against the narrow metal as he caught himself mid-slide. He hissed under his breath but didn't stop. Couldn't. The shaft dipped, twisting sharply, the walls vibrating with a low mechanical hum—as if the entire corridor above was being overwritten in real-time.

He hit the end with a grunt, boots slamming against a grate.

He spun around.

"Prion!!!"

Nothing.

Only a sealed hatch.

Cold metal.

And the echo of a memory he didn't remember forming.

"You want the truth?"

That voice. That proximity. The way Prion had leaned close earlier—almost touching—before stepping back like he'd burned himself on the nearness.

Eros pressed a hand to the panel. It didn't open.

He could still feel Prion's touch on his shoulder—brief, commanding, but careful. Not the touch of a manipulator. The touch of someone trying to save something important. Him.

But the doubt still festered.

Eros stepped away from the hatch and pulled himself upright. The tunnel curved ahead—long, low, and steep. The blue emergency lights flickered overhead. His footsteps echoed as he began to move, slow and sharp, blade still unsheathed.

He didn't trust this.

Not the shaft. Not the fallback route.

And not himself.

That was the worst part.

Because deep inside, something was changing. Not memories exactly—but the way he felt when Prion looked at him. Familiar. Bruised. Like an echo he hadn't caught up to yet.

And that terrified him more than the override team chasing them.

After a few minutes of running, he found the second hatch. This one was cracked open—ajar, like it had been forced. His breath stilled. He approached slowly and pushed it open.

What greeted him was… unexpected.

Not the cold corridors of the lab. Not another trap. But a space—a room.

Dark. Wide. Steel-lined with old data cores along the walls and floating screens flickering softly. A defunct control centre, sealed off from main access.

And there—half-sitting against one of the lower terminals—

Was Prion.

Still breathing.

But barely.

His head leaned back, hoodie damp with sweat, chest rising in sharp, shallow rhythms. One hand was gripping the console edge like it anchored him to existence. His other arm dangled, scratched and bloodied from a new wound he hadn't had before.

"Prion!" Eros crossed the room in seconds. He knelt beside him, grabbed his shoulder. "Why the hell didn't you follow?"

Prion stirred—slowly. His eyelids flickered open, unfocused for a second before locking onto Eros's face. "Because… they weren't after you."

"What?"

"They wanted me to run. So you'd leave me behind."

"You're not making sense—"

"I jammed the override," Prion rasped, voice broken but certain. "Intercepted it. That's why it hit me."

Eros froze.

"You mean that was meant for me?"

Prion nodded weakly. "They were trying to reset you mid-cycle. I took the feedback before it could breach your spine interface. That's… what tore me down."

Eros's chest tightened.

He remembered the voice from earlier.

"Anchor located. Terminate deviation."

They had come for him.

And Prion had intercepted it.

"You really are insane," Eros muttered, lowering his head. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"I told you," Prion whispered, "you always said you didn't want to lose me again."

His voice cracked. And something in Eros cracked with it.

A silence passed—different this time.

Not the tense kind. But the quiet that came when neither one could speak first.

Then, quietly, Eros reached out and touched the blood on Prion's arm.

His hand lingered—just a second longer than it should have.

"Why…" he asked again, barely above a whisper. "Why do you care so much?"

Prion's lips parted. A weak smile flickered—cold, distant, dangerous as always—but this one… softer at the edges.

"Because in every version of this," he said, "you always tried to protect me. Even when you couldn't remember why."

Eros didn't answer.

He couldn't.

Because for the first time, a sliver of him wanted to believe it.

And that was more dangerous than any override.

The silence didn't last.

Not in this place.

Not when time itself felt like it was watching them.

A soft click echoed through the walls. Not mechanical. Organic. A breath. Then another. Too even to be natural.

Eros's fingers tightened around the grip of his blade.

He stepped forward, placing himself between Prion and the entrance to the data room. "They followed?"

"No," Prion said faintly. "They were already here."

"What?"

He pointed—weakly—to the far wall. Beyond the floating terminals, just behind the collapsed row of inactive memory vaults, a faint red glow pulsed. Not power. Not a sensor. Something breathing through the circuit walls like a heartbeat.

"A failsafe?" Eros asked.

"No." Prion's voice grew colder. "A witness."

The wall hissed.

Then something peeled from it.

A humanoid form. Too smooth. Too symmetrical. No expression. No name.

Its body flickered in and out of the projection grid, wearing Prion's outline like a borrowed coat. But without the eyes. Without the soul.

It stepped forward.

And Prion—despite the pain—forced himself upright. His limbs trembled. His breathing hitched. But he stood.

Even now, frail and pale, one hand pressed to his side and the other curled with trembling defiance—he stood.

"What is it?" Eros asked.

Prion's eyes narrowed. "One of the original feedback ghosts. A constructed test memory. They used it to loop my reactions—emotional mapping."

Eros stared. "You mean it's—"

"It's what I was supposed to become," Prion finished. "Before I evolved past the script."

The thing tilted its head. Like it was listening.

Then it spoke.

Not in a voice.

But in Eros's voice.

"I told you not to break."

Eros staggered back, jaw clenching. "That's—"

"It's not you," Prion said quickly, grabbing Eros's wrist before he stepped closer. "It's just what they used to test me. Over and over."

"Why my voice?"

Prion hesitated. "Because I stabilized when your voice called me back. That was the pattern. That was their blueprint."

The projection flickered again. This time, it showed the memory chip—Echo-37—spinning mid-air in a loop. A mockery of what Eros had been given.

"Anchor incomplete," the entity intoned. "Subject failed integration."

Eros's grip on his weapon faltered for a split second.

Prion stepped forward. "You think that makes you right?" he whispered. "You think mimicking his voice will undo me now?"

The projection blinked—glitched—then lunged.

It didn't move fast.

It didn't need to.

But the moment it touched the centre of the room, the walls shifted. Panels reconfigured. The fallback space turned into a cage.

"No," Prion hissed. "It's trying to reset us again. Real-time overlay. Field-wide."

He moved toward the panel—but his knees buckled.

Eros caught him mid-fall.

"You're not doing this alone," Eros snapped. "Tell me what to do."

Prion's head pressed against his shoulder—just for a second. Just long enough to whisper:

"Override line B. Reboot signal sync. You'll feel it… if you remember where to touch."

Eros hesitated—but then dropped to the nearest console. His hands hovered over it.

His fingers didn't move.

They remembered.

Each movement felt… familiar. Like déjà vu laced into muscle.

The override ghost lunged again.

Eros struck the final key.

The entire room flashed blue.

Then silence.

The projection stuttered once. Froze.

And shattered into light.

When the silence returned, Prion had slumped forward again—exhausted.

But Eros was already beside him, kneeling, checking his pulse. Still there. Still steady—but weak.

"You're going to burn yourself out," Eros muttered.

"I was already burning," Prion said faintly. "But it bought us time."

Eros didn't speak.

Instead, for the first time, he reached up and brushed a line of blood away from Prion's temple.

He didn't know why he did it.

He didn't question it.

It felt like something he'd done before.

Maybe he had.

The lights above them dimmed, flickering as another memory wave pulsed through the corridor. Prion didn't react—not immediately. But Eros saw the tension in his jaw, the quiet tremor running down his spine.

"Don't move," Prion muttered. "Another ripple's coming."

Eros stepped back instinctively, not because he feared the surge, but because he saw it—how it hit Prion first. Like a blade, invisible but exact. His breath stuttered, hands bracing against the wall, as if anchoring himself to the moment was the only way to survive it.

"You're taking the hit again," Eros said under his breath. "It always costs you every time I remember something…"

Prion didn't answer.

Instead, he slid down the wall and sat—his hoodie soaked through at the shoulder where the blood had reopened. His face was too pale. Almost translucent in the emergency lighting.

"You never told me," Eros said quietly. "That it was you keeping the loop together. Not them."

"I didn't think you'd care."

"Prion."

The way Eros said his name—it wasn't soft. It wasn't kind. But it wasn't distant either.

"I told you that I should've died thirty-seven times by your hand," Prion said, voice barely audible. "I've watched you bleed out twice. And once—once, you begged them not to erase me. That was attempt seventeen. You scratched my name into your own arm before they wiped it."

Eros's throat tightened.

"You were never supposed to remember that."

"You weren't supposed to keep forgetting."

The silence between them stretched. For once, Prion didn't fill it with calculated words or mis-directions. He just sat there, breathing shallow, bones trembling with each inhale.

"You said something back there," Eros said slowly, eyes fixed on him. "About reliving pain."

Prion's expression didn't change. But the weight behind his voice did.

"Reliving the pain of thirty-seven resets—each one tearing through the same body, same bones, same mind…"

His eyes flicked up to meet Eros's.

"No one else survived the loop that long. They thought I'd break by attempt five. They hoped I would."

"Why?" Eros whispered.

"Because I wasn't supposed to remember you."

That hit harder than it should've.

Prion pulled his knees up, folding himself tighter. The wall hummed behind him—some old system stirring, like the facility itself was aware of their presence.

Eros crouched in front of him.

Not close enough to touch. But close enough that if Prion collapsed again, he'd catch him.

"I'm still not sure if I can trust you," Eros said evenly. "But I believe that you've suffered."

Prion gave a ghost of a smile. "That's almost the same thing."

"No," Eros replied. "It's worse."

He stood.

And for a second, he hesitated—then pulled the emergency medical strip from his belt and tossed it to Prion.

"Fix your shoulder. You're no use dead."

Then he walked ahead without waiting for a response.

Behind him, Prion stared at the strip.

And whispered, almost too softly for even the walls to catch:

"You said that before, too…"

The deeper they moved into the sublevel, the older everything felt.

Not neglected—preserved.

The walls weren't just metal; they were reinforced with layered tech no longer in circulation. Ancient protocols shimmered faintly under the surface—residual signals coded to a frequency that no current New Era unit should still be reading.

Eros stopped at one of the walls, brushing his fingers along the embedded seam.

"This place wasn't shut down," he muttered. "It was hidden."

Prion didn't answer.

His steps were quieter now, lighter, deliberate. Eros kept glancing back, just to make sure he was still upright. The med-strip had stopped the bleeding, but not the drain. He still looked like he was holding together by sheer will.

"Tell me something," Eros said without turning. "Why does this corridor look like it's expecting us?"

"Because it was made for us," Prion murmured.

The words sent a chill down Eros's spine.

He turned. "What do you mean?"

Prion didn't answer immediately. Instead, he moved past Eros and reached a sealed panel at the end of the corridor. There was no interface, no visible controls. But Prion simply placed his palm against the surface, and after a pause—it opened.

Inside, lights flared.

Not aggressively.

Gently.

Like they remembered him.

Eros stepped in behind him and froze.

The chamber was circular. Clean. Silent.

Screens flickered to life—holograms drifting like slow thoughts. And in the centre: a lone chair.

Restraints dangled from the arms.

"The original sync chamber," Prion said quietly. "Where they tested compatibility between subjects. Or tried to."

Eros's eyes narrowed. "Between you… and me."

Prion gave a small nod. "We were different from the start. They didn't understand why you stabilized me. You weren't compatible by their parameters. But the outcomes…"

He trailed off.

Eros moved toward the chair, glancing at the walls. Data logs were archived in layered code—unreadable unless you knew the right sequence. And beside the chair, a faint symbol glowed: Subject 7—Active Anomaly.

"They never deleted this?" Eros asked.

"They couldn't." Prion's voice lowered. "This room was part of the Fail-Safe Echo Directive. In case I ever destabilized too far to recover… they could rewind everything. Return me to this exact moment."

"Why didn't they use it?"

Prion hesitated. Then gave a tired, dark smile.

"Because I corrupted the source files before I escaped."

Eros turned sharply. "You did what?"

"I rewrote the fallback. Turned the fail-safe into a loop that only I could exit from. That's why they couldn't kill me permanently. That's why they started sending you—again and again and again."

He lowered himself into the chair—not out of symbolism, but because his legs trembled too much to keep standing.

Eros moved closer. He didn't touch him. But he stood close enough for the space between them to feel intentional.

"You made yourself unkillable?"

"No," Prion said quietly. "I made myself unerasable."

The hum of the chamber thickened.

One of the screens displayed a familiar name: "Anchor Designation: Eros."

Eros's chest tightened. "They built this entire protocol around you. But they put my name in it."

"Because without you," Prion whispered, "I was always going to break."

Silence fell.

Heavy. Electric.

Then Prion tilted his head slightly and asked, "You want to know the real reason I came back here?"

Eros met his eyes. "Enlighten me."

Prion's voice was nearly a breath. "Because even after thirty-seven resets… you're still the only variable they never managed to fully control."

That hit harder than any coded log or experiment tape.

Eros turned away, jaw clenched, heart stumbling in his chest.

And behind him, Prion closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to retreat from the weight of the loop he refused to fall into again.