The dream came just before dawn.

Ayane stood alone in a dark corridor. Flickering emergency lights. Screams in the distance. The scent of smoke and burning synthetics filled the air. She clutched something—a small data shard—tight to her chest, her hands trembling. Her lips moved, whispering a name she didn’t recognize.

Ren.

A beam of violet light sliced the hallway behind her. She turned—and then everything shattered into static. Just before it dissolved, a single word burned across her vision like a scar:

[LOOP UNSTABLE]

Ayane jolted upright in her bunk, drenched in sweat.

She clutched her chest, breath hitching.

"What the hell was that...?"

Across the dome, Ren was already awake.

He'd been up for hours, unable to sleep. Not from nightmares. From calculation.

The System's last alert still echoed in his head:

[DOMINO EFFECT INITIATED. MONITOR CLOSELY.]

The moment he offered to train Ayane, something fundamental had shifted. He could feel it. Not just in his gut, but in the subtle way the world resisted. As if time itself was pushing back.

His eyes drifted to the watch embedded in the ceiling above his cot. Training call would sound in two minutes. The same drill from his first life. The same day he'd once ignored a cry for help in the food corridor because he was too tired to care.

Today, he’d be there early.

The cafeteria buzzed with morning noise. Synthetic eggs. Powdered protein. Weak tea.

Ren scanned the room as he ate, watching for patterns. Who sat with whom. Who watched him too long. Who kept their backs to the wall.

It wasn’t paranoia. It was instinct. And instinct told him something had already changed.

A camera on the back wall panned slowly. It stopped. Then jerked slightly—resetting. Almost like it had been watching him.

He saw Juno enter.

Her hair was shorter. Her uniform pressed. She laughed easily, slapping a fellow trainee on the back. Nothing about her screamed "traitor."

Yet.

She caught Ren's eye and smiled. A little lopsided. Friendly.

Same smile she wore the day she betrayed me.

He nodded back, neutral.

[SYSTEM ALERT: OBSERVATIONAL FLAG DETECTED. SUBJECT: JUNO]

[DATA THREAD: 14.7% MATCH TO CLASSIFIED PROTOCOL: BURNED ONE]

Ren nearly choked on his tea.

He pushed the tray aside and stood. Before he left, he tapped twice on the tray—an old canteen code among orphans that meant “Not safe.”

Ayane spotted him. "Hey! You said we were starting training tonight. Don't ghost on me."

He paused a beat too long.

Ayane squinted. “Are you okay? You look like you saw something weird.”

Ren smiled, faint but real. "Did you ever wake up feeling like you left something behind in a dream?"

Ayane blinked. “Yeah… weird, right?”

He nodded. “Happens to me too.”

She watched him go, puzzled.

Down in the archive stacks—long-forgotten basement levels beneath the orphan dome—Ren stood before a rusted terminal.

He remembered this place. A tech relic. One the instructors thought broken. But in his past life, it had revealed something the System never did: a hidden folder labeled "Echo Fragments."

He plugged in a cracked slate. Entered the passphrase his older self had once carved into a desk.

The folder opened.

Six files. All corrupted.

One barely readable: The Burned One.

Lines flickered into place:

SUBJECT: JUNO KAZURA
STATUS: PARTIAL ECHO HOST / FAILED SYNC
SYNC LEVEL: 48.2%
EFFECT: UNSTABLE VARIANCE. EXTREME COGNITIVE DUALITY.
NOTE: SURVIVED INITIAL LOOP TERMINATION. RETAINS MEMORY IMPRINTS IN DREAM STATE.
FILE NOTE: BURNED ONES WERE FLAGGED FOR MEMORY DETERIORATION. SOME SURVIVED. MOST… DIDN’T.

Echo Fragment #2: Subject [REDACTED] – STATUS: ACTIVE SEARCH

Ren stepped back.

She wasn’t just a betrayer.

She was an Echo survivor.

Like him.

Later, during the evening drills, Ren couldn't stop watching her.

Juno moved effortlessly. Fast, precise, confident. She disarmed two cadets with the kind of fluidity only a seasoned soldier should have.

"Someone's been practicing," an instructor muttered.

But Ren saw something else. A half-second pause after her final move. A flicker in her eyes—not recognition this time, but doubt. Like part of her didn’t trust what she just did.

Ren caught her eye. For a moment—just a moment—he saw it. A flicker.

Recognition.

Not present recognition. Future recognition.

She knew him.

That night, as Ren left the sim chamber, a ping echoed in his head.

[ECHO SYSTEM MESSAGE: INCOMING TRANSMISSION - ENCRYPTED]

[MESSAGE: "MEET ME AT THE WATER TOWER. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE."]

The System hesitated. For a full three seconds, no other messages followed. Then—

[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED NETWORK ACCESS DETECTED. SOURCE UNVERIFIED.]

Ren stared at the message.

Was it a trap? Another Echo? Or something worse?

He didn’t know.

Then, slowly, he smiled.

Someone else was awake.

And maybe—just maybe—they remembered him, too.