Liam hated the desert.
Not for the heat, or the sand, or even the way every dune looked like it wanted to stab him in the eye with a thousand microscopic needles. No, he hated the silence. The kind of silence that pressed into your ears and made you hear things that weren't real.
Like second heartbeats.
Or voices that sounded like your own but just a little… wrong.
He crouched behind a rusted Vector transport wreck, sweat trickling down his spine under the high collar of his stealth suit. The heat shimmered off the sand like the air itself was glitching. Ahead, rising like a broken fang, was the Mirra Spire, a long-dead research outpost now crawling with corrupted tech and leftover Wane data ghosts.
Nova's voice clicked through the comms, hushed and cautious.
"Perimeter breached. You're clear to enter. But Liam…"
"Yeah?"
"Be careful. This place messes with perception."
"Define messes."
"Like… hallucinations, memory fractures, seeing your own funeral."
"Cool," he muttered. "Sounds like my last birthday party."
He moved quickly, sliding into the Spire's entrance. The inside was even worse—walls cracked open like jagged teeth, broken screens flickering with dead code, and mirrors. Dozens of them. Some hanging, some shattered, some embedded into the floor like the world was trying to reflect itself and failing.
Each one warped the light differently.
Each one whispered when he passed.
He paused at one tall mirror, half-smashed, the remaining surface rippling like liquid mercury.
In it, his reflection didn't mimic his movement.
It watched him.
And smiled.
"Not creepy at all," Liam muttered, raising his arm to snap a scan.
The reflection raised its arm too but instead of a scanner, it held a blade made of blue light.
Liam barely dodged in time as the mirror shattered and his own image stepped out of it, fully formed, slightly younger-looking, and absolutely unamused.
"Oh come on," Liam said. "What is this, evil twin Tuesday?"
The reflection attacked without a word. Fast. Fluid. Brutal.
Liam blocked the first strike, sidestepped the second, but the third grazed his arm pain flaring sharp and real. This wasn't just a projection.
This thing could hurt him.
"You're just a glitch," Liam growled.
The reflection didn't respond. It just moved faster.
"Nova," Liam snapped into the comm. "The mirrors are weaponized. I'm fighting myself."
There was a pause, then Juno's voice came through.
"Are you winning?"
"Not really the time."
"Copy that. I'll send Rhea in. She loves reflective surfaces. Something about it being poetic."
Liam parried another strike, finally managing to catch the reflection's arm and slam it into the wall. The glass cracked and hissed, and the copy blinked rapidly, glitching for just a second.
He didn't waste it.
He slammed his fist into its chest once, twice and the thing exploded into shards of light and static.
The mirror shattered completely.
"Status?" Nova asked.
"I just punched myself so hard I exploded. Emotionally and physically."
"Yup," Juno said, "definitely your ex."
Liam moved deeper into the Spire, past the mirror corridor and into the central archive vault. The walls pulsed faintly with Vector code. Blue veins ran along the circuits like blood in metal. He stepped onto the central pad, and the console lit up with a single word:
HALDRAN
He didn't touch it.
Didn't breathe.
He didn't have to. The system responded to his presence like a child recognizing its creator.
A voice echoed from the core one he hadn't heard since the day the Haldran Facility burned.
"Hello, Liam."
He turned slowly.
Another figure stood behind the console. This one didn't step out of a mirror. It didn't flicker. It wasn't a ghost.
It was real.
It was Eira.
But something was off.
She looked the same. Almost.
But colder. Sharper. Like someone had sanded down her soul and replaced the warmth with chrome.
"You again," Liam said, tension creeping up his spine.
She tilted her head. "Still brooding in the dark?"
"I liked it better when you were trying to kill me. Less complicated."
Eira stepped closer, slow, deliberate. "I told you they'd come for you."
"They tried. I ran."
"You think you're free?"
"I think I'm bleeding from the arm I punched myself with, so no, not really."
Eira didn't laugh. "They've activated the Singularity Subchain. You have about two weeks before the next stage kicks in."
"And what stage is that?"
"You become a living rift."
The silence that followed wasn't human.
Not even the air dared to move.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Because despite everything," she said, voice suddenly low, "you still matter to me. Even if the version of me that did love you died in a fire two years ago."
"I was in that fire too."
"I know," she said. "And it changed both of us."
They stared at each other, past the pain, past the snark, past the battlefield.
Then Eira reached up and touched his cheek gently. Not with power. Just… touch.
"I didn't come here to kill you," she whispered.
"Then why?"
"To remind you what you are."
And just like that she stepped back into the shadows and vanished, leaving behind only silence and the faint smell of scorched glass.
Liam stood in the center of the archive vault, the word HALDRAN still pulsing on the screen.
His reflection was gone.
But the fire inside him was not.