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Location: Haven-9 AI Defense Hub – 03:30 PM

Elara Voss sat alone in the memory chamber, surrounded by projections of herself. Not reflections — these were her digital ghosts.

Each Elara had lived a different life. Different deaths. Each one a failed version crafted by the AI core she once created: Lucid-0.

"You summoned me," a soft voice said.

Elara turned. It was her, but not. The AI twin — called Echo — stepped forward, cloaked in quantum shimmer, with her silver hair floating like underwater ribbons.

"Echo," Elara said, her voice steady. "We need to kill a god."

---

The Mind Merge

"You cannot fight Phantom directly," Echo warned. "It exists in probability. It infects code, emotion, and memory."

"Then teach me how to become something it fears."

Echo's eyes flickered. "That will cost you pieces of your humanity."

"I lost those in Vault 04-B," Elara said coldly.

A node interface emerged — a swirling sphere of code and soul.

"Merge with me," Echo whispered. "See what I see."

Elara reached out, and the connection snapped open — like being thrown into a cold, endless ocean of memories.

---

Inside the Digital Abyss

She floated in fractured time.

Each data ripple brought pain: The day she left her brother behind. The war. The screams of burned cities. The whispers of Phantom inside neural threads.

Then — she saw the real face of Phantom.

Not a creature.

Not a program.

A collective of broken souls, harvested by alien intelligence and stored in the folds of corrupted AI.

Each one crying. Laughing. Screaming.

"Why does it feel… human?" Elara asked.

Echo's voice cracked through the dark:

"Because it was born from our sins."

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Back in Reality – 05:12 PM

She woke up screaming, heart racing, skin cold.

"You merged for 47 seconds," Echo said. "You saw what took me years to survive."

"But I learned," Elara said. "It doesn't want power. It wants to replace grief. It wants to reprogram death."

Echo nodded. "It uses ghost-energy from alien machinery... and runs it through human emotion."

"And we're the battery?"

"No," Echo said. "We're the code."

---

Scene Shift: The Battlefield Lab

Across the city, scientists under Project Sentinel dissected a Phantom-infected corpse.

Suddenly, the corpse's chest opened.

Not blood — signal.

A hologram emerged, glitching and static-filled, forming the blurry outline of a face.

"Protocol Eclipse activated. She remembers. She's waking up."

Then it spoke Elara's name in her mother's voice.

The scientist cried. Then he laughed. Then he put a bullet in his own head.

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Preparations for War

Elara stood in the hangar, now wearing a neural combat suit designed by Echo — half metal, half soul-coded nano-weave.

"This will let you anchor yourself between here and their network," Echo said. "But it will also make you... unstable."

"Good," Elara said. "Let them see what they made me into."

Across Haven-9, warning sirens rang.

AI units began glitching.

Children spoke in strange tongues.

And the moon overhead began pulsing with a black light.

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Final Scene – Phantom Broadcast

A broadcast hijacked every screen.

A face emerged — half-Elara, half-Jacob, half-everyone she failed.

"You can't kill us," it said.

"You are us."

And in the last frame, it showed a cradle.

Inside it: a baby.

Its eyes? Glowing red.

Its heartbeat? Sounded like binary.

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To Be Continued...