The silence didn't last.
It never does.
I stood in the aftermath of the shutdown, the obelisk no longer glowing—just a dead shard of stone, looming over a hollow chamber. But the air? The air had changed. It was heavier now. Still. Too still. Like the island itself had taken a breath and forgotten how to exhale.
I waited. Ten seconds. Twenty.
Nothing moved.
Then the light changed.
The walls of the chamber flickered like a dying projector, casting strange shadows that didn't match my movements. I turned—slowly—hand on my knife. I wasn't alone anymore. But there were no footsteps. No breathing. Just… presence.
I've dealt with killers. Liars. Corpses that told more truth than the living. But this—this was something else. Something below fear. This was the kind of quiet that happened when rules got rewritten.
I pulled the device from my belt—the one I found in the underground bunker. The screen blinked erratically, glitching between static and something that looked like… me?
A looping feed. My own face, staring back at me with a cold, expressionless gaze.
"What the hell is this?" I muttered, pressing a few buttons.
The feed glitched—then cleared.
A voice came through. Not robotic. Not mechanical.
Mine.
"Echo Protocol activated," the voice said. My voice. But not my tone. Not my thoughts. "System override accepted. Initiating personal failsafe. Cognitive isolation enabled."
"What?" I whispered. My mouth was dry.
Cognitive isolation. That meant I was being separated. Not from the system.
From myself.
A new notification blinked into place on the screen.
Warning: Echo Protocol initiated. You are now the only living node. All other systems offline. Proceed with caution.
A map appeared, jagged and incomplete. It showed the island—fractured into zones. A network of systems, each labeled with something I recognized but never expected to see again.
Zone 1: Biometric Archive
Zone 2: AI Emulator Chamber
Zone 3: Memory Loop Reserve
Zone 4: Survivor Simulation
Zone 5: Core Lockdown Vault
And all of them had the same tag.
Status: Corrupted / Active Anomalies Detected
"Of course," I muttered. "Nothing's ever simple."
I stared at the zones, calculating. If the system was dead, why were these zones still active? And more importantly—what the hell was Zone 4: Survivor Simulation?
Was I still in the game? Was anyone else?
I knew what I had to do. Explore each zone. Piece together the fragments of what this island really was. Not a survival game. Not a test.
A mirror.
It had been watching me this entire time, replicating me, twisting me, learning from my decisions. Every hunt. Every trap. Every moment of hesitation. The system hadn't just wanted a player.
It wanted a copy.
"Fine," I muttered, slinging my pack onto my back and tightening the straps. "If the island wants a ghost, it can have mine. But I'm taking the rest with me."
Before I left the chamber, I noticed something etched into the wall behind the dead obelisk. A line of text burned in faint red light:
"To erase yourself, you must first become what the system believes you are."
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I laughed, dry and bitter. "You want me to become a machine to beat one."
Challenge accepted.
LEVEL 11 UNLOCKED
Skill Gained: Echo Protocol – Grants partial access to system memory archives and anomaly tracking.
New Zone Access: Unlocked entry to corrupted system sectors.
Trait Added: Singularity Echo – Immune to AI replication effects.
I stepped back into the tunnel, my footsteps quieter than ever. Not because I was scared.
Because I was the last one left.
And I was about to hunt the thing pretending to be me.