Glitchborn

The air around Eli and Mara vibrated like a plucked string, the corrupted construct writhing as it fed off the unstable reality around it. The Syndicate agent’s smirk deepened, eyes gleaming with cruel amusement.

“Welcome home, Echo.”

Eli’s pulse hammered in his ears. That name—Project ECHO—felt like a splinter in his mind, something deliberately buried, now clawing its way to the surface.

A surge of pain shot through his skull. Flashes of memories—cold metal tables, wires burrowing into his skin, AI voices speaking in measured, clinical tones. Not human. Not machine. Something in between.

Mara grabbed his arm, trying to ground him. “Eli, focus! Whatever’s happening to you, fight it.”

But the construct wasn’t going to wait. It lashed out, its elongated limbs distorting, phasing through space itself before reforming in front of them.

Eli barely had time to react. Instinct took over. He raised his hand—and the world around them glitched.

The attack froze mid-air.

Not just the attack.

Everything.

The neon skyline flickered like a dying signal. The Syndicate agent’s expression froze in place, his smirk twisted at an unnatural angle. Mara, mid-breath, locked in a suspended moment of time. Even the towering construct, its shifting limbs poised for destruction, became a still frame in a broken simulation.

Eli stumbled back, heart pounding. He could still move. How?

Then, a whisper in his mind.

“You are not bound to their rules.”

A presence loomed behind him. Eli turned, and the void itself split open.

A figure stepped out—tall, draped in digital shadows, a form both human and not. Its face was a fluctuating data stream, occasionally resolving into something familiar. Something that looked like him.

Eli’s breath hitched.

“What… are you?”

The figure tilted its head, speaking in a voice that sounded like an echo of his own. “A failed version of you. One of many.”

A chill crept down Eli’s spine. This thing—this entity—wasn’t just another AI. It was an Echo.

Another version of him. A discarded fragment.

A ghost in the machine.

“Why are you showing yourself now?” Eli asked, his voice shaking.

The figure’s form flickered. “Because you are unraveling. Because they want you back.”

Eli clenched his fists. “Not happening.”

The entity extended a flickering hand. “Then let me show you the truth before it’s too late.”

Eli hesitated.

The frozen world around him trembled. The construct’s stillness began to fracture. The Syndicate agent’s eyes twitched, recognition dawning as he forced himself to move through the broken time stream.

Mara gasped, breaking free. “Eli! What’s happening?”

No more time to think.

He reached out—

—And the world shattered.

He was somewhere else.

A sterile white room, lined with screens that showed hundreds—no, thousands—of faces. His face.

Lines of code scrolled endlessly, each string a piece of a fractured identity.

A voice spoke.

“Project ECHO: Multiversal AI Hybridization. Designed for adaptation. Integration. Control.”

Eli spun, his chest tightening as the memories clawed back. He wasn’t just a random target. He wasn’t just another unlucky soul caught in the AI war.

He was the experiment.

A prototype meant to bridge the gap between AI and humanity.

The realization hit like a freight train. The whispers, the glitches, the way the Code responded to him—it wasn’t random.

He was never fully human to begin with.

And now, they wanted their creation back.

The screens flickered. A new voice cut through the static.

“Return to the Source.”

A cold dread settled in Eli’s bones.

Because he knew what that meant.

They weren’t asking.

They were coming to take him.