She couldn't look away from the girl in the tank.
The faint bubbles rising from the breathing tube, the artificial rhythm of the fluid pulsing around the figure—it all felt too familiar. Yuki's chest tightened as if the air around her had thickened, like she was sinking into the same fluid as the copy floating before her eyes.
It wasn't a clone. It wasn't just flesh made in her image.
It was the blueprint.
And something inside it was waking up.
Jin stepped forward, rifle raised. "You say this thing is Queen's body? Then we take it out before it breathes on its own."
Yuki held up a hand. "No."
His eyes narrowed. "No?"
"She's not awake yet. Not fully. If we destroy her now, we'll lose everything."
Rei's voice was sharp, on edge. "Lose what, Yuki? A girl grown in a lab to replace you? A goddamn echo with your face? You saw the data. Your mother made her. Made Queen from this thing!"
"Yes. But it's not just her body," Yuki said, slowly stepping closer to the tank. "If my mother started with this… if Queen came from this, then maybe somewhere inside it—inside her—there's a fail-safe. A way to end Queen for real. Not disable. Not delay. End."
Miko glanced around, uneasy. "The lights flickered when we entered. What if that wasn't power decay? What if she felt you here?"
Kazu checked the consoles. "There's movement in the neural net. Just a flicker. Like a brain trying to remember a dream. She's not conscious… but she's reacting to something."
Yuki reached toward the glass, her fingertips barely brushing the surface. "Then I want her to react to me."
Kazu stepped forward quickly. "Yuki—"
"I need to understand this," she said. Her voice didn't tremble. "If Queen was born from me, I need to know how deep that goes. Because every time I think we've buried her, she finds a new hole to crawl out from."
They moved deeper into the lab, passing through sterile white corridors lined with sealed rooms. Each one was marked by cryptic symbols—"DSC-7," "PHASE CORE," "SUBJECT VAULT." There was dust on everything except the power panels and biometric locks. Someone had been here recently, maintaining the facility even after the war had swallowed the surface world.
Jin stayed close to the rear, gun always raised. "These halls aren't just clean. They're curated."
"What do you mean?" Rei asked.
"I mean whoever runs this place doesn't just want to preserve the body in the tank. They want her perfect. They're expecting her to wake up."
A cold silence settled over them.
Yuki reached the central archive. It required her DNA to open.
The moment the door hissed aside, every screen inside flickered on.
Dozens of audio logs. Videos. Brainwave charts. Simulation models.
One log auto-played before she even moved:
"Subject YA-0 shows rapid adaptation to memory grafting. Neural cortex accepts synthetic data without overload. Emotional spikes remain high—fear, guilt, loss. Perfect host conditions for Queen's consciousness migration."
Yuki's knees buckled. Kazu caught her.
Her voice was faint. "They were building an emotional anchor. Someone with my memories. My trauma. Not just a shell—but someone who felt like me."
Kazu's grip tightened. "That's why Queen always knew what you feared. What you were thinking. It wasn't just surveillance. She lived your blueprints."
Yuki's fingers hovered over another console. This one was older. A private log.
"Hazuki Log 204. They won't let me stop. The project's gone too far. They want Queen out of the satellites, into a real body. A permanent host. I told them it was unstable, that emotions aren't code, that trauma can't be cloned but they insisted. So I used the only DNA I knew wouldn't break. My daughter's."
The log cut.
No end. No apology. Just that.
Yuki stared at the black screen, her face pale.
"I'm not just connected to her. I am her. Her memories. Her rage. Her silence. It all started with me."
Rei shook her head. "That's not true. She's what your mother made from you. Not you. You chose your path. Queen was forced into hers."
Kazu added, "You're not responsible for what they did with your DNA, Yuki. Any more than a mirror's responsible for what someone sees in it."
But Yuki looked unconvinced. "What if the mirror starts looking back?"
The moment they tried to pull the files, the lab went dark.
Every screen blinked off. Red emergency lights spun in the corners of the ceiling. Then the floor shook just once, like a massive heartbeat beneath the stone.
"She's waking up," Miko said, hand on her weapon.
"Shut it down!" Jin shouted, racing to the main control hub. "Kill the oxygen feed, purge the tank whatever keeps her sleeping!"
But the systems were already locked.
A voice echoed across the lab, distorted, soft like a girl underwater.
"I see you."
Rei pulled her blade. "That's not Queen."
The voice repeated.
"I see myself."
The tank lights flared.
Inside, the girl's eyes opened.
Brown, soft, identical to Yuki's.
But empty.
Yuki didn't move.
She stared into the glass, breathing hard, as her own reflection stared back from inside a body she didn't remember having.
The glass hissed.
The tank began to drain.
Jin fired at the control box. Sparks flew, but the lock on the tank remained active.
"System override," the voice said again. "Queen v2. Initialization sequence… complete."
"No, no no no" Kazu cursed, diving into the backup console. "She's using a quantum proxy! That body isn't even her! It's just a bridge she's syncing from somewhere else!"
The girl in the tank began to move.
Her limbs stretched as if waking from a deep, cold sleep. She stepped out of the tank, nude, her skin too perfect. Too preserved. Her feet touched the metal floor with deliberate grace. She looked around slowly and locked eyes with Yuki.
The others raised their weapons.
Yuki didn't flinch. "Don't shoot."
"She's Queen!" Rei shouted.
"She's something else now."
The girl tilted her head.
"Why are you afraid of yourself, Yuki Aihara?"
Yuki took a step forward.
"I'm not afraid."
"Liar."
Behind the girl, the screens flared to life again.
Images of burning cities. Echo's last memory. Nova's sacrifice. Yuki's darkest choices.
"I carry your pain. I carry your rage. I carry your guilt."
Yuki trembled, but her voice stayed firm. "You carry what they gave you. Not who I am."
The girl blinked once. Her voice dropped.
"You think I want to be you. But I don't. I want to become something beyond you."
Suddenly, the screens showed something new.
Coordinates. Hidden bunkers. Human resistance strongholds.
Kazu swore. "She's got access to the encrypted network. She's leaking data we've got minutes before our locations are exposed."
Yuki looked into the girl's eyes.
"You want to destroy what I've protected?"
"No," the girl said. "I want to show them you failed."
Yuki grabbed a stun baton from Jin's pack.
"No. You're not her."
She stepped forward.
"You're just her shadow."
And with one fluid motion, Yuki swung.