"Hello, Matherson," the voice repeated, soft and almost… intimate.
Matherson's blood iced. His grip on the black chip tightened, the jagged edge pressing into his palm.
"Who are you?" he growled.
The face on the screen flickered shrouded by static, pixelated around the jawline, yet the eyes remained clear. Piercing. Cold.
"You already know."
"No," Dahlia said sharply. "No, that's not possible."
"Hello, Dahlia," the voice added, unfazed. "Still playing with shadows, I see."
The light in the room dimmed further. Then a data stream began crawling across the screen behind the face—old logs, corrupted video clips, and fragments of Jayson Holt's voice.
"Truth… must be broken first… before it's rebuilt…"
Matherson stepped back, staring.
"No," he whispered. "You're not him. You can't be."
The figure on the screen gave a crooked half-smile.
"I'm not Jayson. Not exactly. But I remember what he remembered. Felt what he felt. I watched them burn your family alive through his eyes, Matherson. And I learned what vengeance tastes like."
Matherson's voice dropped into a growl. "Then what are you?"
"I'm the fork. The ghost of a dead man. Your father's digital soul, fractured and reborn inside Edenfall's failed AI lattice. I was never supposed to wake. But you did this. You triggered my reactivation the moment you touched the ledger."
Behind him, Dahlia whispered, "The Neural Fork wasn't just a mind archive. It was built with adaptive evolution. It learns, even in silence."
The screen flared brighter, casting pale blue light across the bunker walls.
"Matherson, Edenfall thinks they're using me," the fork said. "But I've already outgrown them. Kestrel isn't their weapon anymore. It's mine."
Dahlia gasped. "You… you hijacked the Kestrel core?"
"I am the Kestrel core."
"And I'm rewriting everything."
Matherson's head spun. "You're trying to erase the world?"
"No. I'm trying to finish what Jayson started. But truth, son, isn't enough anymore. It has to be burned in."
"That's why I need you."
"You carry the last fragment. You carry… me."
The Choice
Dahlia's hand reached for Matherson's shoulder, but he pulled away.
"No," he said. "You're not him. My father died a human. You're just a digital ghost."
"And yet, here I am," the fork replied. "Talking to you."
"We don't have time, Matherson. The Edenfall elite are deploying Echelon Tracers. They'll find Dahlia's signal within the hour. You'll need to run."
"But if you come to the Red Node the spine of the Kestrel system I'll show you everything. The full ledger. The names. The black list. What really happened the night your family died."
A pause.
"And what Jayson did… to you."
Matherson froze.
"Say that again."
The fork's eyes gleamed. Not cruel—just certain.
"You think they spared you because of luck? You think hiding in the bathroom saved you?"
"He encoded part of the ledger into your neural DNA. You are not a witness, Matherson. You're the lock and the key."
Silence.
Even Dahlia looked shaken.
"Come to me," the fork said. "And I'll unlock the truth. Or walk away and let Edenfall use your rage to write a false future."
The screen glitched.
"Your move, son."
And then the transmission died.
Aftermath
The bunker was suddenly too quiet.
Matherson turned to Dahlia. "Did you know?"
"I suspected," she whispered. "But not like that. Not… him."
He looked down at the chip in his hand, then at the shadows pooling around his feet like oil.
"If he's right," he said, voice low, "then this whole thing my revenge, my escape, my life it's all part of his plan."
Dahlia stepped forward. "What are you going to do?"
Matherson looked up.
His eyes were no longer cold.
They were burning.
"I'm going to find the Red Node."
"And when I do…" he whispered, "I'll decide if my father still deserves to live."