Kiera stared at the doppelgänger, her breath shallow. The woman in front of her—her perfect double—moved with a grace that wasn't human. The way her head tilted, the way her lips curled into a knowing smile… it was wrong.
"I know what you're thinking," the other Kiera said. "I'm not real. I'm a trick. A fabrication of the Code."
Her voice was identical. Every breath, every inflection.
Kiera's fingers curled into a fist. "You're not me."
The doppelgänger took a step forward. "Aren't I?"
Aerin muttered, "This is bad."
Rhys subtly shifted his stance, one hand hovering near his weapon. "We don't have time for this."
But the doppelgänger didn't even glance at them. She only had eyes for Kiera.
"You feel it, don't you?" she whispered. "The way the Code reacts to you. The way it doesn't reject you like it should."
Kiera's stomach twisted.
She had felt it. The doors opening before she could hack them. The Marionette Code whispering her name.
The doppelgänger stepped closer. Too close.
"You think you're fighting the system," she said softly. "But what if you're just fighting yourself?"
Kiera's pulse slammed against her ribs.
No.
A distortion rippled through the air.
The doppelgänger blurred—then multiplied.
Not just one. Three. Four. Five.
A perfect line of Kieras, all smiling. All waiting.
Then, in eerie unison, they whispered—
"Let us in."
The walls shattered.
Reality fractured.
—
Kiera hit the ground, the world splitting apart around her. The corridors were gone. The metal walls had dissolved into shifting streams of pure code. It pulsed, twisted, alive.
"Kiera!" Aerin's voice rang in her earpiece. "Where are you?!"
Gone. They were gone. She was alone.
The Code reassembled itself into something else. A city skyline. A memory.
No—not hers.
She saw herself standing at the center of it.
But it wasn't her.
It was a different Kiera.
One standing beside the Architects.
Her breath turned to ice.
This wasn't a trick. This wasn't manipulation.
This was real.
The Marionette Code whispered.
"Do you remember now?"
And then it all came crashing back.