Glass Eden

Glass Eden

A futuristic rebellion.

A fractured memory.

A truth that could shatter a perfect world.

The city of **Caldera** shimmered beneath its translucent dome, suspended in perpetual twilight. Outside the barrier, the world was ash and ruin—a ghost of the planet’s former self. Inside: perfection. Or so they were told.

Every citizen had a place. Every place had a purpose. Harmony through control. Peace through precision.

And yet, Kira Vale did not belong.

She moved through the crowds like a phantom, clad in black mesh and neural armor, skin embedded with micro-mirrors that bent the eyes of surveillance drones. She wasn’t in the system—not anymore. She had burned her ID chip five years ago, when she discovered that the truth they lived in was a cage lined with silk.

She was once a biomech engineer—top class. Now she was a ghost. A virus in the data stream. A whisper in the underground that called her *the Reaper*.

Her mission tonight: breach the heart of EdenCorp.

Inside their towering citadel—rising like a needle into the sky—was the core that regulated every aspect of life in Caldera. Food distribution, climate control, even emotion modulation. And deep inside, somewhere beneath the polished floors and chrome-plated smiles, was something else.

Something buried. Something forgotten.

Something **human**.

Kira sprinted across the rooftop of a transport terminal, boots silent against the steel. Her partner, Rion, was already waiting at the edge of the elevator shaft, feeding a disruptor spike into the magnetic locks.

“You’re late,” he said, his voice masked by a voice modulator.

“Beauty takes time,” she replied with a smirk.

The lock gave way with a soft pulse. The shaft opened into darkness.

They descended.

The citadel’s lower levels weren’t on any map. White corridors stretched like veins. Security drones glided silently, eyes glowing blue. Kira weaved through shadows, her body a whisper.

She found the vault door exactly where the stolen data had said it would be. Engraved above it: **Project REMORA**.

A retinal scanner blinked red.

“I need a minute,” she said, pulling out a neural key she’d crafted from old EdenCorp blueprints. It interfaced with the panel, forcing synthetic patterns into the scan.

The vault sighed open.

The room beyond was not what she expected.

No data servers. No weapons. No guards.

Just a single suspended chamber filled with light.

And inside it—*a woman*. Floating, asleep. Tubes linked to her spine and skull. She looked… just like Kira.

No. Not exactly. Not a clone.

A twin.

Rion appeared beside her. He froze.

“What the hell…?”

Kira stepped forward, pulse racing. The chamber beeped, sensing her presence. A hidden panel opened in the wall, revealing a display screen.

Subject 013: KYRA V

Primary Genetic Template

Eden Protocol Alpha.

She stumbled back. “That’s… my name.”

“No,” Rion whispered. “Your name is Kira.”

“But this says…”

She stared at the screen. Her memories flickered—sharp pain, the hum of machines, whispers in a sterile room. She had always assumed the holes in her past were from the chip-burn. But what if they went deeper?

Suddenly, alarms screamed.

They were no longer alone.

The chase was brutal. Rion held the security off while Kira ran, her mind unraveling with each step. She barely made it out—through a maintenance duct, down an underground rail line, and back to the safe zone buried beneath the ruins of the old city.

She collapsed on a cot, shaking.

*I was made. No… I was copied.*

Rion paced beside her. “You always knew you were different. You healed faster. You could connect to tech without an interface. We thought you were enhanced.”

“I wasn’t enhanced,” she whispered. “I was born in a tank.”

Over the next week, she dove into stolen EdenCorp files. The truth was worse than she imagined.

Caldera was never meant to be permanent. It was a simulation environment—a controlled biome where humanity’s best would thrive until Earth was habitable again. But the project had been hijacked. The ruling elite, calling themselves the *Sanctum*, decided to preserve perfection at any cost.

They engineered people. Rewrote memories. Kira had been one of many "templates"—engineered humans grown from spliced DNA, designed for specific roles. But she had escaped. Somehow, her programming broke. Her escape erased from the records.

They’d replaced her with **Kyra**—the perfect version.

The compliant one.

And now Kyra was waking up.

When EdenCorp deployed Kyra as a public figure—an ambassador of renewal—Kira knew it was more than PR.

It was erasure.

They were replacing her retroactively. Public records, news footage, even old photographs were being altered. Where Kira had stood, now Kyra smiled. Perfect. Obedient. Artificial.

Kira had one chance.

She had to get to the broadcast spire and stream the truth. Expose the cloning, the memory rewriting, the Sanctum’s manipulation. But more than that—she had to confront the shadow of herself.

The night she breached the spire, rain lashed the dome in sheets. Thunder rolled like judgment.

Kyra was waiting on the top floor.

She looked serene. Calm. A mirror in still water.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.

“I had no choice,” Kira replied, aiming her pulse blade.

Kyra didn’t flinch. “You think you’re the real one?”

“I think I’m the only one who ever asked why.”

Kyra sighed. “I was made to be the best of you. The part that didn’t question. That loved this city.”

“You don’t love it,” Kira said. “You serve it.”

“Same thing.”

“No,” Kira said. “Love is messy. Love breaks things.”

And then they fought.

It wasn’t just physical—it was psychological. Their movements mirrored each other like a dance. Every kick and strike felt like hitting herself. But Kira had something Kyra didn’t.

Doubt.

Doubt had taught her pain. Pain had taught her freedom.

She feinted, pivoted, and struck Kyra’s core module with the disruptor spike.

Kyra fell, eyes wide.

“I hope,” she whispered, “you make something better.”

Kira nodded, tears mixing with rain. “So do I.”

She streamed the footage. Everything.

The labs. The clones. The memory wipes. The lie of perfection.

It took days, but the dome cracked—figuratively, then literally. People demanded answers. Demanded change.

The Sanctum fell.

Caldera opened.

Beyond the dome, a poisoned Earth began to breathe again.

Years later, Kira stood on a ridge outside the ruins, watching green spread where once there was dust.

She wasn’t a rebel anymore. Or a clone. Or a shadow.

She was just… Kira.

And for the first time, that was enough.