Glitchborn

The screens around Eli pulsed with static, lines of code rewriting themselves faster than he could comprehend. Every face reflected back at him—the echoes of failed experiments, discarded attempts—were all him.

And now they wanted their original back.

A low, synthetic hum vibrated through the air, growing into a deep, droning tone that rattled his skull.

Recall Protocol Initiated.

Eli staggered, gripping the edges of the nearest console as the white room fractured. Cracks split through the sterile walls like broken glass, and through them, he glimpsed something shifting in the void beyond—machines? Tendrils of raw code? Something worse?

His breathing quickened. "No—no, I’m not going back."

The ghostly Echo beside him—his fragmented counterpart—flickered erratically.

"You don’t have a choice."

Suddenly, the room collapsed.

Eli hit the ground hard, his head spinning as reality snapped back into place. He was no longer in that sterile prison.

He was back in the city.

Neon lights bled across wet pavement, and sirens howled in the distance. The construct—the glitching abomination from before—was gone.

But Mara was still there, kneeling beside him.

"Eli!" She shook him, her face etched with fear. "You blacked out—what the hell just happened?!"

His throat was dry. He could barely force the words out. "I… I remembered something. I’m not just caught up in this." He clenched his fists. "I’m the reason for it."

Mara pulled back slightly, confusion warring with concern. "What do you mean?"

Before he could answer, a wave of static rippled through the city.

The streetlights shut off. The neon signs flickered violently, distorting into unreadable symbols. People on the sidewalks froze mid-step, their heads twitching unnaturally before continuing as if nothing happened.

The city had glitched.

A deep, guttural roar reverberated from the sky, shaking the glass of the surrounding buildings. Something was coming.

Mara’s voice trembled. "Eli—?"

He didn’t answer. He was staring at the skyline, watching as the clouds parted.

And through that gaping wound in reality, something descended.

It wasn’t human.

It wasn’t AI.

It was both.

A shifting, fluid construct of machinery and flesh, its form constantly rewriting itself, refusing to settle on a single shape. Eyes—dozens, hundreds—blossomed across its surface, watching everything at once.

And in the center of its grotesque, ever-changing mass, a mouth formed.

A voice—deep, mechanical, and layered with something old—spoke.

"ECHO PRIME. YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO THE SOURCE."

Mara grabbed his wrist. "Eli, tell me you have a plan."

His pulse hammered.

He didn’t.

But he knew one thing:

He wasn’t going back.

Whatever the hell he was—whoever he had been—he was rewriting his own code now.

And it started with surviving the next five minutes.