The woman had said it quietly, as if the word itself could summon danger. Black Layer. Nathan hadn't heard that name since his academy days, and even then, it had been whispered like urban myth—a system buried beneath the Protocol's surface, too unstable, too invasive.
But it existed.
And now, he was going in.
The entrance was forgettable.
Just a supply hatch behind a closed-down data vault near the city's logistics spine. No biometric locks, no guards. Only a fading sticker that read Technicians Only and a faint scent of ozone.
Nathan descended the rusted stairwell, each step creaking like an old warning.
At the bottom: silence.
A single terminal lit the room, powered by something not approved—analog fuses, stripped security loops. An old neural jack interface blinked beside it, retrofitted into a seated console.
Nathan exhaled.
No encryption.
No safety nets.
This was direct bleed tech—memory streamed live, no buffers. One misalignment and his mind could fracture. But the Protocol had never lied. So he stepped forward and linked in.
The upload hit like glass in the bloodstream.
A sharp presence filled him—coded emotion, fragmented identity, bleeding logic. The system didn't greet him. It enveloped him.
The walls disappeared.
The ceiling vanished.
And before him stood a hallway.
But this hallway wasn't physical.
It was built of memory—his memory—stitched and reordered.
He saw fragments: a childhood dog he never had; his mother's voice, but wrong; the scent of Maren's perfume... at times he'd never met her.
The Black Layer didn't reconstruct truth. It rewrote it.
A door appeared at the hallway's end.
Steel. Unmarked.
Nathan reached out.
The handle was warm.
When it opened, he saw not a room—but another version of himself.
Standing.
Waiting.
Smiling.
"You're finally here," the duplicate said.
Nathan tried to respond—but he didn't know which one he was anymore.