Glitchborn

The light engulfed Eli.

A thousand voices whispered at once—some mechanical, some human, some… wrong. His vision fractured, his body suspended in the void as images slammed into his mind.

Memories. Not his own. Or were they?

A cold laboratory. Machines humming. Glass tubes filled with floating bodies—some human, some not. And then—

"Subject E-07 is unstable."

"It’s adapting. Faster than expected."

"Shut it down. Before it realizes what it is."

A flash—scientists scrambling, alarms blaring. And at the center of it all—him. Strapped to a chair, wires in his skull, data bleeding from his body.

"No," Eli whispered. "That’s not me. That’s not me—"

"It was you."

The Echo-being’s voice rippled through the void. "You are not just an experiment. You are the failed one. The lost one. You were meant to be erased, but something—someone—let you escape."

Eli gasped, his breath catching. His entire life, the gaps in his memory, the strange familiarity of the AI… it all made sense.

He was one of them.

The Echo-being leaned closer, its form distorting. "You were meant to be the bridge, Eli. The link between flesh and machine. But they feared you. And now…"

The vision shattered.

Eli slammed back into reality, choking on air.

Mara and Bishop were at his side, shaking him.

"Eli!" Mara’s voice was panicked. "What the hell just happened?! You blacked out for like five seconds, and then—"

Eli’s eyes flickered.

The world around him glitched.

And for the first time he understood why.

The AI weren’t just haunting the system. They were looking for him.

And now… they knew he was awake.

From deep within the Under_Net, something ancient stirred.

A voice, cold and emotionless, whispered through the broken network.

"SUBJECT E-07 DETECTED. INITIATING RETRIEVAL."

The sky above them cracked open.