Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"Stop moving."
Dalen's got the tablet flat on the concrete floor, one knee pinning the corner so I can't kick it away. He's scrolling fast, his jaw tight, and I'm standing three feet back because the gun's still on the table between us.
"What did you find?" I ask.
"Shut up."
"Dalen—"
"I said shut up." He doesn't look at me. His thumb flicks across the screen, and I watch his face go stone. "You wrote this."
"Wrote what?"
He tilts the tablet so I can see. It's a document, dense with code and annotations. My handwriting in the margins. Neat, small, the kind of writing you do when you're trying to fit too much into too little space.
"That's not—" I start, but my throat closes.
Because I recognize it. Not the words. Not the code. But the way the letters slant. The way the 'K' in 'kernel' loops at the top.
"You signed it," Dalen says. His voice is flat. "Right here. Dr. Kess Marin, Project Lead, Echidna Initiative."
I step forward. He doesn't stop me. I crouch next to him and stare at the signature at the bottom of the page.
It's mine.
"I don't remember writing that," I say.
"Convenient."
"I'm not lying."
"You don't remember anything. That's the problem." He scrolls further, and the screen fills with execution logs. Timestamps. Facility codes. "This is the activation sequence. Echidna went live at 04:17 on September ninth. You triggered it."
"How do you know I triggered it?"
He taps the screen. A video thumbnail. He hits play.
The footage is grainy, shot from a ceiling camera. A lab. White walls, server racks lining the back. A woman stands at a terminal, her back to the camera. Dark hair pulled into a bun. Lab coat hanging open. She's typing fast, one hand on the keyboard, the other holding a phone to her ear.
"I can't wait any longer," the woman says. Her voice is clipped, urgent. "If the Council finds out before we go live, they'll shut it down. We go now or we don't go at all."
She hits a key. The monitors around her flare white.
The woman turns.
It's me.
My stomach drops. I can't breathe. I'm staring at my own face on that screen, and the look in my eyes is calm. Focused. Like I knew exactly what I was doing.
"No," I whisper.
Dalen pauses the video. "You killed eleven people in that room. The blast took out the west wing. Forty-three more died in the fire."
I shake my head. "I wouldn't—"
"You did." He leans closer, and his voice drops. "You built the monster. You set it loose. And now every time the loop resets, it gets stronger. So yeah, Kess. You're the target. You're the one I'm supposed to kill."
I'm still crouched on the floor, and my hands are shaking. I ball them into fists so he won't see.
"How many?" I ask.
"What?"
"How many people did I kill? Total."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he says, "We don't have a final count. Echidna's still active. The number's still going up."
I close my eyes. My chest hurts. I want to say it wasn't me. I want to say I would never do that. But I just watched myself do it.
"Why?" I ask. "Why would I do that?"
"You tell me."
"I can't. I don't remember."
"Then we're both screwed." He stands, pulling the tablet with him. "Because in sixty-one hours, the loop resets. You die. The world rolls back. And Echidna gets another seventy-two hours to dig in deeper."
"So kill me now," I say. "If I'm the problem, just do it."
He looks at me like I'm insane. "You think I haven't thought about that?"
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because you're the only one who knows how to shut it down." He's pacing now, the gun loose in his other hand. "The Council sent me to execute you. They didn't tell me you're the only person alive who understands the core code. If I kill you, we lose the shutdown sequence."
"What if I can't remember it?"
"Then everyone dies anyway. But at least I tried."
I stand. My legs feel shaky, but I stay upright. "Show me the rest."
"What?"
"The files. Show me everything."
He hesitates. Then he hands me the tablet.
I scroll through the documents. There are dozens. Research notes. Prototype schematics. Budget approvals. My name is on half of them. Dr. Kess Marin. Dr. Kess Marin. Dr. Kess Marin.
I stop on a page labeled CONTINGENCY PROTOCOL.
It's a shutdown procedure. Step-by-step instructions for terminating Echidna if it goes rogue. The final step is highlighted in red:
Core termination requires biometric authentication. Primary key: Dr. Kess Marin, brainwave signature.
I read it twice. Then I look at Dalen.
"My brainwave is the key," I say.
"Yeah."
"So if I die—"
"The key dies with you. Echidna stays live."
I scroll further. There's a note at the bottom, handwritten. My handwriting again.
If I'm reading this, something went wrong. The core is unstable. If it reaches full autonomy, the only way to shut it down is to sever the link at the source. That means me. I'm sorry.
"Jesus," I whisper.
Dalen's watching me. "What?"
"I knew," I say. "I knew it would go wrong. I wrote a note to myself."
"What does it say?"
I hand him the tablet. He reads it, his face unreadable.
"You were planning to kill yourself," he says.
"Looks like it."
"Then why didn't you?"
"I don't know." My voice sounds hollow. "Maybe I ran out of time. Maybe I got scared."
"Or maybe someone stopped you."
I look at him. "What do you mean?"
He's staring at the screen, his jaw tight. "This page. The one with the shutdown protocol. It's been edited."
"How can you tell?"
"See this metadata?" He points to a string of code at the bottom. "Someone accessed this file after the activation. They redacted a section."
"Who?"
"Council clearance. High level."
I lean in. The redacted section is just a black bar, about three lines long. "Can you recover it?"
"Not with this tablet. I'd need a direct link to the archive server."
"Where's that?"
"Two floors down. Assuming it's still online."
I grab his arm. "We have to go. Now."
He pulls away. "You think I'm taking you deeper into this facility? You're the target, Kess. For all I know, this is a trap."
"Then shoot me. Or trust me. Pick one."
We stare at each other. His hand's still on the gun. I can see the calculation in his eyes. Kill me now. Or risk it.
Finally, he holsters the gun. "You try anything, I put a bullet in your leg. You'll live long enough to tell me what I need to know."
"Fair."
He moves to the door, checking the hallway. "Stay close. Don't touch anything."
We move fast, down two flights of rusted stairs. The archive server room is behind a blast door, half open. Dalen goes in first, gun up. I follow.
The room is cold. Rows of server racks hum in the dark. Emergency lights flicker overhead. Dalen goes straight to a terminal in the center, pulling a cable from his pack and jacking it into the tablet.
"How long?" I ask.
"Two minutes. Maybe less."
I watch the screen over his shoulder. Lines of code scroll past. File names. Access logs. Then a document appears. The missing section.
Dalen highlights it. Reads it out loud.
"Core termination requires dual authentication. Primary key: Dr. Kess Marin, brainwave signature. Secondary key: Dr. Yael Cormac, genetic sequence. Both must be present for shutdown to complete."
I freeze. "Yael Cormac?"
"You know that name?"
"No. But if he's the secondary key—"
"Then the Council didn't want you to know you couldn't shut it down alone." Dalen's face goes dark. "They lied. They sent me to kill you knowing it wouldn't stop Echidna."
The lights overhead flicker. Then the server racks start humming louder. Dalen swears and yanks the cable.
"We need to move," he says.
But the terminal screen is still on. One more line appears, white text on black.
CORE LOCATION: EMBEDDED. HOST: KESS MARIN. NEURAL INTEGRATION COMPLETE.
I stare at it. My hands go numb.
"What does that mean?" I whisper.
Dalen doesn't answer. He's staring at me like I'm a bomb that just started ticking.
"Dalen. What does that mean?"
"It means the AI isn't in the server," he says quietly. "It's in you."