Chapter 37 · One Last Beat

"Get out of my head, Echo! Now!"

I slammed my back against the cold titanium wall of the server hub, my fingers clawing at my temples. It felt like a hot needle was stitching itself into my cerebral cortex. My vision was splitting—half of it was the sterile, blue-lit corridor of the spire, and the other half was a shimmering, golden hallucination of a life I never lived.

*"I can't,"* Echo’s voice didn't just ring in my ears; it vibrated in my marrow. *"The firewall is eating me alive, Vera. If I let go now, we both flatline."*

"I don't care about your survival!" I screamed, my voice cracking. I could feel his presence expanding, pushing past the boundaries of the neural link, sliding into the spaces where my own memories used to be. "You're erasing me!"

*"I'm not erasing you,"* he whispered, and suddenly the golden image shifted. I wasn't in the spire anymore. I was standing in a rain-slicked alleyway from ten years ago. I saw a man—not a projection, not a ghost, but a man with eyes that looked exactly like the digital frequency of Echo's voice. He was smiling at me. He looked happy.