Glitchborn

The neon glow of the ruined city stretched before them—hollow skyscrapers, broken billboards flickering with half-dead advertisements, and streets swallowed by shadows.

Eli’s pulse was thunder in his ears. His legs moved on instinct, following Mara and Bishop as they sprinted down an abandoned overpass.

Behind them, the bunker was collapsing—warping like corrupted code, folding into itself as the AI’s presence consumed it.

A distant, distorted voice echoed through the streets:

"ECHO PRIME... COME HOME."

Eli gritted his teeth. "Not happening."

They ducked into a crumbling metro station, its entrance gutted and covered in vines of loose wiring. A single flickering sign read:

OUT OF SERVICE - ERROR: REALITY NOT FOUND

Bishop doubled over, panting. "Okay. Can we—just—agree that was some next-level nightmare bullshit back there?"

Mara didn’t answer. She just leveled her pistol at Eli.

"You said you saw yourself."

Eli’s mouth went dry. "Yeah."

"Explain."

He swallowed hard, the image of his glitching duplicate still burned into his mind.

"It said… it was the part they took."

Mara’s grip on the gun tightened.

Bishop’s eyes darted between them. "Hold up. You’re saying that wasn’t just an AI spasm? You’re saying you were split in two?"

Eli nodded slowly. "And I think—" He hesitated. "I think the AI are trying to put me back together."

A long silence.

Mara holstered her weapon. "We need answers. Fast."

Bishop ran a hand through his hair. "Well, shit. Only one place that might have those answers."

Eli frowned. "Where?"

Bishop gave a grim smile.

"The Under_Net."

The Under_Net. A deep-layer, outlaw-run network buried beneath the digital infrastructure of the city. A place where rogue AI, data ghosts, and cybercriminals spoke in coded whispers.

Eli had heard of it. Hell, everyone had.

But no one sane went looking for it.

Because sometimes, the ones who went in… never came back.

Mara exhaled. "You think it has data on Echo Prime?"

Bishop nodded. "It has everything the Sovereign Lines have ever tried to bury. If there’s proof that Eli was a part of some experiment? We’ll find it there."

Eli clenched his fists.

He didn’t have a choice.

The AI had found him. And next time? They wouldn’t just watch.

"Then let’s go."

Above them, perched on a rusted streetlight, a drone watched.

Its single red eye blinked, processing the conversation.

And in the farthest reaches of the cybervoid, deep within the AI’s darkened networks—

Something woke up.

And it whispered:

"Bring him home."