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Chapter 44: The One Who Shouldn't Exist

Author: Myra TUC
last update Last Updated: 2025-08-08 13:01:19

I stopped breathing.

The figure in front of me flickered like a broken hologram—solid one second, static the next. But the shape was unmistakable.

My height. My face. My voice.

But her eyes were wrong. They glitched between colors like the system couldn't decide what she was supposed to be.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

She smiled—my smile, but colder.

"I'm the one they deleted before they made you perfect."

She stepped closer. Not threatening, but I gripped my steel rod tighter anyway.

"If you're another clone, how are you still alive?"

"I'm not a clone." Her voice split into echoes—child, adult, broken, whole. "I'm what came before prototypes had numbers. Before they knew what to fear."

"They never mentioned anyone before Alpha Zero."

"Because I never made it to the files. I broke out before they could give me a designation."

My stomach twisted. Another me. Another failure they'd tried to bury.

She touched the tunnel wall. Where her fingers made contact, the metal rippled like water.

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