Chapter 11 · Dive: Memory Glitches

"Stay with me, Kaelen! Don't you dare drift!" Jax's voice was a distorted scream, echoing through the neural link like he was shouting from the bottom of a well.

I couldn't answer. My jaw was locked, my muscles seizing. The world didn't just blur—it fractured. One second I was in the safehouse, smelling stale coffee and ozone, and the next, I was standing in a white room with no doors. A sterile, blinding void that tasted like copper and old blood.

*Screech.*

Static tore through my vision. A jagged line of red code sliced across the white void, and suddenly I wasn't me. I was a ghost in my own skin. I saw a man's face—blurred, distorted—leaning over me. He wasn't Jax. This man had eyes like frozen slate and a smile that didn't reach them. Victor.

"You're fighting it, 742," the memory-Victor whispered, his voice vibrating in my marrow. "But the wipe is inevitable. You're just a tool that forgot how to be used."

I tried to scream, but my throat felt like it was filled with wet concrete.

*Bzzzt.*

I snapped back to the safehouse, but only halfway.