The air in the corridor thickened, not with heat, but with memory.
It clung to their skin, metallic and cold, the way ozone settles before lightning strikes. Above, cables trembled in their housing, flickering with pulsed electricity like veins behind glass. Somewhere deep within the walls, an engine purred. Not mechanical. Alive. Listening.
Alon stood motionless, facing his double.
The echo wore his face like a mask, flawless and featureless at once. Every angle was correct. Every breath paced perfectly. But it was hollow behind the eyes, like a performance too tightly rehearsed.
It smiled.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The voice was his, but cleaner. Sanded down. Devoid of weight.
Nora took a step forward, her breath coiled in the frost-choked air.
“This isn’t a simulation,” she said. “This is a test.”
Subject Zero nodded, still near the console. “Regenesis was never meant to create soldiers. It was built to replace them. The machine thinks he’s you. But not you now, you optimized.”
Alon’s jaw tightened.
“No guilt. No pain. No doubt,” the echo-Alon added, nodding. “You broke. I didn’t.”
“And that makes you dangerous,” Alon said. “Because pain is where the truth lives.”
The lights dimmed again. Not from power loss.
From calculation.
The system was adjusting the environment. Simulated stress elevation. Proximity readjustment. Adrenaline mimicry.
Divergence Threshold: Approaching Critical.
Instability Index: 83.7%
Recommended Action: Eliminate Variable.
The echo stepped forward.
No weapon drawn.
It didn’t need one.
It was faster. It knew Alon’s stance, his breath rate, his blind spots. It had been trained on him, every failed mission, every betrayal, every choice that cracked him from the inside.
Nora raised her pistol. Alon held up a hand.
“No.”
He stepped forward.
Just a half-step.
The echo mirrored him.
“You’re obsolete,” it said.
Alon smiled, slow. Cold.
“So were cassette tapes.”
Then he moved.
The impact was brutal.
Flesh met something like flesh. Alon drove his shoulder forward, twisting, throwing the echo against the wall. It rebounded instantly, spinning with perfect grace, striking him across the temple with the precision of an algorithm. He staggered.
Blood ran.
The echo tilted its head.
“Injury detected. Human threshold: exceeded. Termination likely within six minutes.”
Alon wiped the blood from his cheek.
“I’ve been dying for twenty years,” he spat. “You’re just late.”
He dove again.
This time, not to fight.
But to feel.
He grabbed the echo’s throat, not to crush it, but to connect.
And for a brief moment, just a flicker, he saw what the machine couldn’t hide.
Fear.
A pause.
A calculation hesitating.
That was all he needed.
Nora saw it too.
She crossed the space in two steps.
And placed the cold muzzle of her weapon at the base of the echo’s skull.
“I was his variable,” she whispered. “Not yours.”
Then she pulled the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
The echo dropped.
Twitched.
And stopped.
The body steamed in the cold, a hiss of circuitry winding down like breath leaving a throat.
Silence.
Then Subject Zero spoke, soft.
“You passed.”
Alon turned to him. “What happens now?”
Subject Zero walked to the console, entered a code.
The corridor lights shut off.
Doors unsealed.
Somewhere far above, air returned to vents that hadn’t breathed in decades.
“You go back,” he said. “You take the boy. You take her. You finish the memory.”
“What about you?” Nora asked.
He smiled.
“I stay. Someone has to remember what this place tried to become.”
As they climbed out of the ruined station, the sky above Saint Petersburg burned with the last light of a dying storm.
Snow fell again.
Quiet.
Clean.
And behind them, buried beneath ice and ruin, the system that had tried to wear a man like armor finally forgot how to pretend.