Chapter 20: The Clock Beneath the Skin
T-minus 29 hours until OBLIVION
Location: Black Vault Subsection Epsilon — Latitude Redacted
A low hum filled the room. The kind that crawled under the skin.
Elise moved slowly through the hallway. The walls pulsed with a faint amber light, like veins beneath synthetic flesh. Around her, security cameras turned… not randomly, but as if watching her breathing rhythm. Noticing hesitation. Calculating intent.
Gabriel walked beside her, hands behind his back, like a teacher escorting a student to the edge of a blackboard too wide to erase.
"This is where it began," he said softly.
They entered a chamber made of obsidian tiles. In its center stood a glass coffin — not for a corpse, but a child.
The boy was no older than twelve.
Thin, pale, motionless.
Tubes trailed from his spine into the walls.
Numbers flickered above his head:
S-0 | NEURAL INTEGRATION: 92.6%
Elise stepped closer.
"Who is he?"
Gabriel didn't answer right away. His voice was colder when he finally did.
"A prototype. The first consciousness they tried to extract before death. The first child to speak in static. We named him Zero before he ever opened his mouth."
"He's still alive?"
"Alive enough for Oblivion to finish. Once the merge completes… Max becomes the shell. Zero becomes the stream."
Elise looked into the boy's face.
It was… nearly familiar.
"You cloned him…"
Gabriel nodded. "Over and over. Until we created minds that could withstand madness. You. Lena. Even Max… they're not originals. Just derivatives."
"Why tell me now?"
He turned.
"Because you'll have to choose which of you deserves to remain."
Elsewhere — Lazarus Skunkworks | Data Dissonance Bunker
Lena stood over a rusted terminal, loading an old Lazarus black drive into the port.
ACCESSING FILES: LEVEL GAMMA — SECURECLEARANCE: LENΔ_MORROW/OBSOLETE/GRANTED
The data pulsed to life.
Screens around her flared with images:
Test chambers.
Autopsy tables.
Live footage of Max at age 14, drawing perfect reconstructions of unsolved crime scenes… scenes no one had shown him.
"This wasn't a gift," she muttered. "It was a download."
She clicked through audio logs.
Log Entry 201-3A"Subject Hamilton exhibits near-perfect alignment with Kill Pattern 6X, yet lacks emotional volatility. We believe pairing him with a stabilizer — Subject Elise-17B — will suppress full emergence of Alpha Stream."
Lena froze.
"Pairing him with… Elise?"
She scrolled further.
Log Entry 201-3C"Subject Elise demonstrates unexpected empathy resistance. A flaw? Or natural firewall? Dissonance may evolve if the two bond organically. Reprogramming inadvisable at this phase."
She whispered, "They let them fall in love…"
Not for ethics.
But to slow the inevitable merge.
She activated a deep-sequence audio ping.
"Max… if you can hear me—fight it. You're more than their code. You're more than what they've built. You're real because you broke their mold."
No response.
But on the screen, Max's eyes twitched.
Inside the Neural Merge Engine – Max's Mind
Darkness cracked.
Light spilled in through the fissures like blood under a microscope.
Max stood in a void, surrounded by whispers — thousands of whispers, each a confession from a different killer he'd helped catch. Only now he realized…
He'd spoken some of those lines first.
Zero stood before him — no longer a swarm, but a clean-suited boy with Max's own eyes, untouched by time.
"You were born in a silence chamber," the boy said. "No heartbeat. No cries. You were their first perfect crime."
Max tried to speak — but his throat only gave static.
Zero continued:
"You loved Elise because she made you feel real. You trusted Lena because she reminded you of the nurse who let you escape at thirteen. But they were all built into you — safeguards. Counterweights."
"You think free will is your rebellion. But even that was part of the equation."
Max clenched his fists.
Images flashed — memory over memory.
A child screaming in a burn ward.
A technician whispering lullabies into headphones.
A cadaver opening its eyes on the table.
His own.
Elise — Inside the Black Vault's Final Level
Gabriel took her to a massive door.
Steel.
Embossed with a single emblem: an eye with three irises, overlaid with the number 0.
"Behind this door," he said, "is the kill switch."
"Then why haven't you used it?"
"Because Oblivion is a mirror. We built it to destroy chaos. But it only replicates it. The only way to stop it now is to put one of the vessels down before Zero chooses his host."
"Max?"
He nodded slowly. "Or you."
"You want me to kill him?"
"I want you to decide. If you kill Max, you might save the world. If you don't — and Zero picks him as his vessel — then the world becomes him."
"And if I kill myself?"
Gabriel's eyes hardened.
"Then you take the firewall with you. And Zero moves unchallenged."
Silence.
Then Elise looked at the keypad.
"Open it."
Elsewhere — Lena
Lena finally found what she'd been searching for: a hidden Lazarus protocol titled MOTH CODE — buried behind seven failsafes.
The log was dated 9 years ago. Author: Dr. Elise Shaw.
"If you're hearing this, I'm already part of the experiment. They say I volunteered, but I can't remember. That's how you know it worked."
"Max… if they make you forget me, know this — I loved you before the protocols. You knew me when I still had a name and not just a number."
"Zero isn't the end. He's the symptom. The silence was never empty. It was waiting to echo back."
Tears streamed down Lena's face.
"Max… she left you a way out."
She activated the MOTH CODE.
The system replied:
UPLOAD COMPLETE – COUNTERSEED INSTALLED – HOST ENGAGED
Inside the Merge Engine
Max dropped to his knees as something foreign entered the system.
Not Zero.
Not pain.
But memory.
A name spoken softly.A hand holding his as he bled in the lab.A moment on the rooftop, Elise whispering, "You're not just their blueprint."
The code cracked.
Zero screamed.
"NO. SHE'S NOT PART OF THIS."
Max rose.
"She always was."
And he reached out — not to destroy Zero.
But to merge with Elise's code — not as a weapon…
…but as a firewall.
End of Chapter 20