---
Chapter 18: Threads Beneath the Skin
The basement was dim, lined with rust-stained pipes and cracked brickwork. Outside, the city moved in its usual chaos — but here, time hung suspended like dust in stale air.
Victor von Doom sat alone at the center of the chamber, ringed by spirals of conductive wiring and salt. Chalk symbols surrounded him — not magical glyphs, but resonance maps derived from Echo Layer topography. The System's interface glowed faintly above his left palm, the shard from the relic lying motionless on a velvet cloth before him.
> [Relic Shard: Dormant]
[Echo Density in immediate area: 6.2% — Moderate distortion]
[Warning: Fragment contains latent psionic imprint — potential instability.]
[Mental Protocols Level 3: Active]
[Memory Entanglement safeguards: Reinforced]
Victor's gaze remained fixed on the crystal shard. About an inch long, it shimmered intermittently, as if catching light that wasn't present. In its inactive state, it resembled a fragment of broken gemstone. But Victor knew better.
This wasn't a mineral.
This was a relic — a splinter of something ancient embedded in the Echo Layer. A piece of a system meant to bind together memory, matter, and will.
His first encounter with it had been in the subway. A pulse in the air. A tremor in his bones. The shard had reacted not to the physical world but to proximity of certain mental signatures — his, and hers.
She had touched it first. Not physically. Psychically.
And the relic had vanished into the Echo Layer, leaving behind the thrum of something greater.
That was his first contact.
This was his second.
---
Victor extended a hand toward the shard, his fingers hovering an inch above the surface.
> [Relic is linked to Echo Signature ID-027F: Unknown Female Entity]
[Warning: Residual consciousness imprint may trigger involuntary Echo descent]
"I know," Victor murmured.
The System's warnings were growing more frequent. Whatever this woman had done when she activated the relic in the subway, it had left behind a bridge. A fissure in the echo lattice. One Victor now meant to cross.
He lowered his hand.
The shard pulsed.
The room blurred.
---
Suddenly, he was no longer in the basement.
The world shifted like wet ink on paper, reality bleeding into a realm of half-formed structures. The walls dissolved into smooth, translucent surfaces that shimmered with memory. This was not dream. Not illusion.
This was the Echo Layer — a dimension overlapping reality, composed of psychic sediment. Every thought, trauma, and choice made by conscious beings left a fingerprint here. For most, it was invisible. For Victor, through the System, it was navigable.
He stood on what appeared to be a stretch of fractured bridge suspended over an endless void. Beneath him, mirrored surfaces caught glimpses of other versions of himself — some armored, some bleeding, some crowned.
And at the far end of the bridge, waiting with arms folded behind her back, stood the woman.
She was barefoot again, dressed plainly — a tattered coat, civilian jeans, no tech, no weapon.
But her eyes?
Still aware. Still watching.
"You came," she said softly.
Victor approached slowly. The echo-realm pulsed with every step, the bridge stabilizing beneath his presence — a sign of control, something only a system-linked mind could impose.
"You said the echoes always lead back to the same place," Victor said. "But this is my first time standing here."
"First for you," she replied. "Not for this place."
He studied her. "You're not connected to the System. You don't bear its signature. So how can you be here?"
The woman's mouth curled into something between amusement and sadness. "Because I was caught in its wake. Long before you awoke."
Victor frowned. "Meaning?"
She turned and waved her hand. The sky behind her melted, revealing a mural — a tapestry of symbols etched in living light. It depicted seven shards, each orbiting a great broken sphere — a relic-core, suspended in a cage of collapsing runes.
Below that sphere stood a figure in green armor, arms raised, power radiating from his outstretched hands.
Him.
Or the man he once was.
"This isn't just a relic," she said. "It's one of seven. Each a lock. Each a key. You didn't just find it. You remembered it."
Victor stepped closer, the bridge trembling slightly under the strain.
"You're saying I made this?"
"No," she said. "You broke it."
---
> [Echo Response Level 2: Imprint Transfer in Progress]
[Relic ID: Aegis Core Fragment 1 of 7]
[Memory Thread Detected: Severed Binding — Event not fully recoverable]
[Cognitive Load Warning: 72%]
Victor steadied himself. The mural wasn't just a vision. It was a residual construct, a locked archive encoded into the Echo Layer and accessed through the relic. The woman was acting as a conduit.
"You knew I would find the shard," he said. "Did you leave it?"
"I found it first," she replied. "But it wasn't meant for me. It responded to you."
Victor narrowed his eyes. "Why warn me? Why not use it yourself?"
Her expression darkened. "Because I've seen what happens to those who try to wield power not meant for them. The Echo Layer consumes the unprepared. I've watched it rewrite minds."
She stepped closer, her gaze sharp now. "But you… you're different. You're shaped for this. Whether you asked for it or not."
He didn't flinch.
"What are you?" he asked.
"I told you before," she said. "I'm the one who remembers what the echoes tried to forget."
She pointed toward the edge of the bridge. A rift shimmered in the distance — barely stable.
"When the second shard appears, you'll need to go to Roosevelt Station. Not the public one. The abandoned transit hub beneath it. That's where the next echo has started to form."
Victor's jaw clenched. "And you'll be waiting again?"
"No," she said, backing away. "But something else will. Something that remembers your name."
> [Echo Layer destabilizing — Collapse imminent.]
[Forcible Extraction in 5… 4… 3…]
"Victor," she called as the bridge cracked apart, "they'll come for the shards. Not just you. But once you have more than one, you'll stop being invisible."
> [2… 1…]
---
Victor exhaled sharply as the real world slammed back into place. The basement returned — salt circles scorched, wires shorting from energy discharge. The relic shard lay dull once again, a faint wisp of blue smoke curling from its tip.
> [Echo Transfer Complete.]
[Memory Thread logged: "Fracture of the Aegis Core"]
[Relic Fragment 1/7 activated. Core Structure: Incomplete.]
[Updated Directive: Seek Echo Convergence Site – Roosevelt Station Ruins.]
Victor rubbed his temples.
So. The relics were more than weapons. They were part of something ancient — maybe something he'd once dismantled. Seven fragments. Seven echoes. Seven locked truths.
And that woman — whoever she was — existed within that framework like a rogue process. Not a system user, no. But not a bystander either.
A witness.
Or a ghost.
---
Victor approached the relic, now inert.
She had said the next piece was stirring. And this time, others would come. Whoever controlled the relics could shape the Echo Layer — and with it, bend the fabric of history and will.
Which meant secrecy was no longer enough.
He had to act.
He had to be faster.
He had to win.
Even if it meant facing pieces of his forgotten self — truths buried so deep that only the echoes dared remember them.