Glitchborn

The holographic skull-faced broker watched Eli with an intensity that made his skin crawl. The way he said, “You’re the lost piece,” felt less like a revelation and more like a sentence.

Eli stepped back. "You’re wrong. I don’t know what you’re talking about."

The broker’s distorted chuckle echoed in the cathedral of shattered code. "Oh, but you do. Somewhere in that scrambled mind of yours, the truth is buried. And they want it back."

Mara clenched her jaw. "Who’s ‘they’?"

The broker’s holographic face flickered, glitches crawling over his form like insects made of static. "The ones who built the first sentient AI. The ones who tried to erase it. The ones who realized they failed."

He leaned forward, his voice a rasping whisper. "They called it Echo Prime. But you? You called it something else."

Eli felt a pressure in his skull, a pulse of something ancient and forgotten.

A name flickered in his mind. Not Echo Prime. Something more personal. More real.

His breath hitched. No. That’s impossible.

Bishop’s hand hovered near his weapon. "We’re wasting time. If you’ve got something useful, spill it."

The broker grinned. "Oh, I do. But information isn’t free."

He snapped his fingers.

The walls of the cathedral collapsed into cascading lines of data, shifting and reforming. The air buzzed, and suddenly they weren’t alone anymore.

Glitch-born constructs emerged from the shadows—distorted figures of half-human, half-code. Their movements were jerky, their eyes empty.

The broker stood. "You want answers?" His voice boomed, no longer just his own. "Then earn them."

The constructs attacked.