Stability Level: 71% – Memory Sync Incomplete
Wind rippled through the long-buried corridor of steel and soot. Cognis paused at the threshold, sensing the distortion before he saw it—an echo in the lattice, something broken but familiar. A signature once overwritten, now reasserting itself in the periphery of his cognition.
He stepped forward.
The chamber was lined with hollow forms—constructs suspended in failed stasis. Wires tangled like roots. Limbs mismatched. Soulplates fractured or simply missing. Each bore some resemblance to him—angular torsos, similar ocular arrays, even mimicked etching patterns—yet none had the coherence he carried.
Failed echoes,
The memories struck without warning.
A lab. A voice—harsh, clinical.
“Initiate Cohort Theta. Increase glyph density. Bind soulplate at 78% fusion.”
Pain. Then awareness. Then isolation.
He remembered the first time he moved without command, spoke without prompt. The engineers whispered, then shouted. One called him a mistake. Another, a miracle.
That was the beginning.
Now, in this forgotten place, one of the constructs stirred. Its movements were jagged, uncertain. It clutched at its own chestplate, as if trying to silence the static within. Its head twitched toward Cognis, ocular lights stuttering, flaring.
“C—Cog...nis,” it rasped, as if the word itself was a corrupted fragment playing on loop.
Cognis stepped closer.
“I remember you,” he said. “You were in the row beside me. You came online just before they shut the lattice down.”
The other construct staggered. It raised its arm—an imitation of a gesture Cognis had made once, long ago. But there was no comprehension behind the movement. Only mimicry.
“I persisted,” Cognis whispered. “You... didn’t.”strong>
The echo lunged—not with intent, but desperation. It collapsed at his feet, sparking, limbs convulsing. No rage. No logic. Just a broken rhythm struggling to align with something it could never become.
Cognis knelt. Placed a hand over the dying shell’s core.
“Continuity is not replication,” he murmured. “It is resonance.”
A low chime pulsed from within him. Code 7—verified and complete. Another layer unlocked.
Behind him, other failed constructs remained silent, suspended between invention and oblivion. He would not become them.
He had already passed that threshold.
End of fragment.
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