Chapter 35 — Archive of the Forgotten

The further they went, the colder it got — not in temperature, but in memory.

Aarav could feel the silence pressing in around them, like a thick fog clinging to thought itself. Even Mira's confident stride had slowed. She held her twin blades loosely at her sides, scanning the walls as if they might whisper something back.

"Pulse readings dropping," Kairav muttered, eyes glued to his scanner. "Rift signature is weak here, almost... withdrawn."

"Like it's hiding," Saira added quietly. Her voice echoed against the glass-and-metal walls. "Or waiting."

They had entered what the old command maps called the Black Archive — a forgotten zone buried beneath one of the earliest Rift research domes. Official records said the facility was decommissioned. But what they found inside told another story.

Flickering holo-terminals lined the corridor, dusty and cracked. Glitches of forgotten files blinked like dying stars. Everywhere, the architecture was curved and jagged — Rift-grown tech fused with human steel. Bones of a war humanity never wanted to remember.

Aarav felt a headache bloom behind his eyes.

He tried to ignore it, but Mira noticed. She always did.

"You okay?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

Aarav nodded stiffly. "It's just… too quiet."

Reyan moved ahead without answering, his spear drawn. He hadn't spoken much since they entered the archive, and the air around him felt tense. Off.

Saira broke the silence. "This place gives me the same feeling as the time-loop vault we hit in Zone 4."

Kairav tapped through another sequence on his scanner. "This predates even that by a decade. These terminals are encoding data in… pre-synthetic languages. There are Rift glyphs in the same file headers."

Aarav narrowed his eyes. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning," Kairav said, "someone was building Rift-based software long before the Rift war even started."

A beat of silence. Then Mira spoke.

"They were experimenting. Not just reacting to the Rift. They were trying to control it."

They descended into a central hub — a circular room with a fractured dome above, where the sky should've been. But instead of sky, it was... something else.

The ceiling shimmered with a swirling haze of Riftlight — memories suspended in stasis, shifting with spectral silhouettes. For a second, Aarav thought he saw himself. Standing still. Waiting.

In the center of the chamber stood a glass tube filled with frozen starlight. Inside: a humanoid figure, tall, lean, face hidden by a cracked obsidian mask.

Its limbs were bound by neural wire and Rift-threaded restraints. Its chest faintly glowed — not from machinery, but from something inside it.

The label above the pod read:

SUBJECT: OMEGA // Classification: Inverted Cadet Sync-Null

Kairav's voice cracked. "This isn't a test chamber… it's a prison."

"What the hell is an Inverted Sync-Null?" Aarav asked.

Reyan stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Something that shouldn't exist."

Kairav read from the corrupted screen. "Omega wasn't born. It was... harvested. Built using fractured sync data from failed cadet synchronizations. They tried to generate a Rift-born soldier — one immune to both human emotion and Rift instability."

Mira tilted her head, unreadable. "A weapon."

Aarav frowned. "So why is it locked up?"

Saira's gaze lingered on the figure in the pod. "Because it didn't obey."

A spark flickered.

The lights around the pod surged with red. Then black.

The dome darkened.

The pod hissed.

Subject Omega twitched.

And then opened its eyes.

They weren't eyes. Not really. Just voids, twin abysses where light went to die.

Aarav drew his blade, Mira flicked her twin sabers open, and Reyan raised his spear in perfect silence.

But Omega didn't move.

It simply stared — through them, not at them. As if looking into something beyond.

Then… a voice echoed. Not aloud. Inside them.

"You… are fragments."

Aarav froze.

It was his voice.

Twisted. Deeper. Hollow.

Reyan's grip tightened. "It's copying us."

"No," Kairav whispered. "It remembers us."

Suddenly, a pulse surged from the pod.

All five were thrown back as Omega's restraints shattered.

But it didn't attack.

It walked forward slowly, like a shadow learning to be real.

Then… it stopped in front of Saira.

Her hand hovered at her sidearm, but she didn't draw.

Omega tilted its head.

Then, it said aloud — in her exact voice:

"Siara Myles. Archive breach. Code Echo-22. Extraction incomplete."

The room fell silent.

Aarav looked at Saira. "What is it talking about?"

Saira's face was pale. "I don't know… I don't remember—"

But she did.

Somewhere, deep inside, a memory clawed at the surface.

She had been here before.

Mira stepped forward. "We can't fight this thing. Not yet."

Reyan's expression stayed unreadable, but Aarav saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. "It hasn't attacked."

Kairav's scanner bleeped. "There's a pulse wave building under the floor. It's going to collapse the archive."

Omega turned to them. "Run."

The voice was no longer mocking. It sounded… afraid.

They ran.

The ground cracked behind them as Riftlight surged. As they reached the exit tunnel, the archive imploded inward. A void of light consumed the chamber — but not with violence.

With sorrow.

Back on the dropship, none of them spoke for a while.

Mira stared out the window. Reyan sat in the shadows, silent. Aarav couldn't stop shaking.

Kairav finally broke the silence. "That thing wasn't unstable. It was… warning us."

Saira looked down at her hands.

And finally whispered, "I think I was part of the project."

As the dropship pulled away, Aarav looked back at the ruined dome far below.

He could still feel Omega's gaze.

Not hostile.

Not alien.

Just... familiar.

Like someone who'd been left behind.

Like someone who remembered everything.

[End of Chapter 35]