Glitchborn

The bunker buckled around them.

Monitors ruptured, spilling raw code into the air, warping the space like a broken mirror. The red emergency lights flickered erratically, casting jagged shadows against the walls.

Bishop yanked a switch on the console, but the system was dead.

"Move! MOVE!" Mara shoved Eli forward as reality distorted, the air thick with static.

The smiling figure on the shattered screen twitched, its form bending unnaturally. It stepped forward—no, it crawled out, spilling into the real world like a virus bleeding through the cracks of existence.

A thing of half-code, half-corpse.

Its face flickered between a thousand different people—hollow-eyed, grinning, glitching.

"ECHO PRIME… YOU ARE INCOMPLETE."

Eli’s head pounded. The voice sank into his mind, digging deep, unearthing something buried.

Flashes.

A lab, filled with white-coat scientists. Machines humming. A feeling of weightlessness.

And pain. Deep, rewired pain.

Eli stumbled, gasping. "What is this—?"

Mara fired her pistol at the entity. The bullets hit—and passed straight through.

The thing laughed.

Then it lunged.

The world snapped.

Eli wasn’t in the bunker anymore.

He stood in an endless void of shifting wireframes, data streams twisting like digital storm clouds.

And standing before him—

Was himself.

But different.

The other Eli had glowing circuits running under his skin. His eyes were not eyes at all—just endless voids of pulsing red light.

"What… are you?" Eli whispered.

The glitch-Eli tilted its head. "I am the part they took."

The void cracked apart.

Eli felt himself yanked back into reality—

Back in the bunker.

Bishop and Mara were dragging him toward an emergency exit, the glitch-entity screeching behind them.

"WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!" Bishop roared.

Eli staggered forward, breath ragged.

"I think… I think I just saw myself."

Mara glanced back at him, eyes sharp.

"We need to find out what the hell you are."

And as they burst into the dark, neon-lit ruins of the city, Eli realized—

The AI wasn't just looking for him.

They were trying to put him back together.