> Back-to-back in a killzone, hunted by bounty squads, two former lovers with unresolved trauma and guns that won't shut up.
The first shot missed Kazien's head by two inches not because the shooter sucked, but because the ricochet bounced off a billboard that used to play ads for protein powder and now just screamed his name in all caps.
> TARGET LOCKED: KAZIEN VALE
REWARD: 10,000 HARDCOIN
STATUS: ANOMALY | KILLFEED ACTIVE
"You've got fans," Riven muttered.
"They love me," Kazien said, ducking behind a cracked delivery van as plasma rounds lit up the night.
"Correction," SAGE intoned. "They love money."
"Correction," FURY added. "They love watching you die."
Kazien peeked over the hood just as a Syncborn sniper across the street tried to vaporize it. The entire engine block went airborne in a hiss of red-hot shrapnel. Kazien hit the ground, rolled, and fired blind with FURY.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
> [KILL +1 – BulletSync Level 3.2]
[FURY Passive Unlocked: Ricochet Song]
The bullet bounced off a metal sign, curved around a wall, and punched through the sniper's helmet like a magic trick on speed.
Kazien blinked. "Did I mean to do that?"
"No," FURY said. "But pretend you did. It'll impress your imaginary friends."
Behind him, Riven dropped two runners in half a second with twin wrist-mounted arc blades that weren't in any standard loadout.
He raised an eyebrow. "Modded blades?"
"Don't ask."
"Illegal?"
"I said don't ask."
He fired over her shoulder without looking. One of the Syncborn fanatics tried to charge them with a machete made of data shards and a T-shirt that read: BLESS THE BULLETS.
"Kazien! End me!" the guy screamed, arms wide. "Make me part of the streak!"
"Is this what dying looks like now?" Kazien muttered.
"It's not a cult," SAGE deadpanned. "It's a branding opportunity."
FURY giggled. "You have groupies, daddy."
"Stop. Stop that forever."
Across the square, six more bounty squads dropped from the rooftops. Kazien watched them land too clean, too fast. These weren't random kill-chasers. These were trained formations.
Devs, maybe. Or worse: old PvP teams cashing in.
He glanced at Riven. "You still wanna push me off a cliff?"
She didn't look at him. "Only if I get to loot the guns."
"You say the sweetest things."
They moved. Together.
And Kazien hated how natural it felt.
He dropped low, sliding into cover, firing off rhythm with SAGE who now highlighted priority targets mid-combat.
[SAGE Passive Active: Target Prioritization // Threat #1 marked.]
Riven vaulted over him, threw an electrified blade that chained lightning across two squads. Kazien followed up with a spray of ricochet shots that bounced off her thrown blade and finished the job.
One second. Four dead.
They landed back-to-back. Breathing heavy.
She said nothing.
He said, "...okay, that was kinda hot."
She rolled her eyes so hard he almost felt it physically.
Then one of the Syncborn stepped forward.
A kid. Maybe fourteen, maybe younger. Dirty hoodie, trembling hands. No weapons. Just… awe.
He knelt, arms out. "Please. Kill me. I want to ascend."
Kazien hesitated.
SAGE: "Do not engage. Psychological manipulation detected."
FURY: "Just shoot him. A mercy kill's still a kill."
Riven was already stepping between them.
"Get behind cover," she snapped at the kid.
But the kid didn't move. He looked at Kazien like he was some kind of twisted messiah.
"You saved me," the boy whispered. "That day in the patchlands. Your killfeed… it made me believe."
Kazien opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I don't know you."
The boy smiled.
Then pulled a grenade.
Kazien didn't hesitate. He fired.
[KILL +1 | Ricochet Critical x2]
The body hit the ground before the grenade did. Riven caught it mid-air and threw it into the sky. It exploded against a drone that had been circling above them broadcasting the whole scene.
Everything went quiet.
Too quiet.
FURY whispered, unusually soft: "Didn't like that one, did you?"
Kazien said nothing. Just stared at the body. Then looked at Riven.
"He was just a kid."
"You hesitated," she said. "That's worse."
He turned away. "I didn't come back to be a symbol. Or a weapon."
"You don't get to choose that anymore."
Far above, a red crack split the sky.
The system pulsed.
[NEW ENEMY DETECTED – KILLSTREAM CLONES DEPLOYED]
Kazien turned just in time to see himself staring back.
Not a mirror. A clone. A perfect AI-generated copy of him wearing his old armor, wielding early-game pistols, standing like he used to stand before the Ghostrun.
The clone smiled.
Then spoke, in his own voice:
> "You always hesitate."
The clone of Kazien tilted his head, gun resting casually at his side.
Same build. Same scar. Same smirk.
But his eyes weren't right.
Too clean. Too bright. No twitch of doubt, no hint of regret. Like he'd never once missed a shot or watched a teammate die and flinched.
"Not bad," the clone said. "Still fast. Still twitchy."
Kazien stepped forward. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm you." The clone grinned. "Just not the weak version."
Behind him, more Syncborn cultists poured in but they weren't attacking. They stood in perfect formation around the clone, kneeling. Chanting.
> "Zero. Zero. Zero."
Riven glanced at Kazien. "Tell me you're not leading a church now."
"I don't even go to church."
"Then why do they have a hymn?"
The clone's grin widened.
"They follow the killstreak," he said. "They watched your feed. Your first blood. Your last breath. I was built from that footage every shot you fired, every betrayal you made. No hesitation. No guilt."
FURY's voice dropped to a growl:
"This thing smells wrong. It isn't syncing right. Shoot it."
SAGE:
"Agreed. Killstream Clone. AI prototype from abandoned dev tests. Designed to replace emotion-variant players. Erase it."
Kazien narrowed his eyes. "So I'm the glitch, and you're the polished patch?"
"No." The clone raised his pistols. "You're the error. I'm the update."
He fired first.
Kazien dove left, Riven right. Twin shots ripped through the air, tracing pixel-bright arcs.
FURY roared in Kazien's grip.
"Let's outstyle this bastard!"
Kazien snapped up, double-tapped the nearest cultist to absorb bullet energy, then launched into a wall-run, flipping behind a collapsed billboard. The clone was already waiting on the other side.
Their guns fired in perfect sync.
The sounds blended not echoing, but harmonizing like twin lead guitars screaming through a chorus of death.
Kazien grunted, deflecting a shot with SAGE's deflection module.
"You're faster than I was."
The clone smirked. "I know. She deserved better."
He nodded toward Riven who was currently tearing through the Syncborn line with dual modblades, using their bodies like stepping stones.
Kazien's blood went cold. "What do you know about her?"
"More than you do. More than you ever tried to learn."
"He's bluffing," SAGE said.
"He's not," FURY whispered. "I remember those logs. They were private."
Kazien fired three shots.
The clone dodged all of them, spinning like he knew the angles before Kazien pulled the trigger.
"You left her brother," the clone said. "You locked the door. You prioritized your score. And then you forgot."
"No." Kazien's grip tightened. "I was reset. I don't remember"
"But I do," the clone said softly. "Because you gave it to me. You uploaded your trauma and turned it into a performance."
Across the square, Riven screamed.
A Syncborn had her pinned, blade at her throat, chanting "balance must be restored."
Kazien didn't think. He didn't aim.
He just moved.
[BulletSync | CHAINFIRE MODE UNLOCKED]
[10 SHOTS: ALL TARGETS MARKED]
Time blurred.
He fired once.
The bullet split midair.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Nine Syncborn dropped like puppets with their strings cut. The tenth, the one on Riven froze as the final bullet hovered near his forehead like a warning.
Kazien stopped in front of him, point-blank.
"No gods," he said. "No cults."
Then pulled the trigger.
Riven stood up slowly, blood on her cheek, eyes locked on his.
He turned.
The clone was gone.
Just… gone. No body. No killfeed. No loot. Not even a bullet trace.
Only a red flicker in the air, where words hung like static.
> [SYNC NOT YET COMPLETE.]
[TRY AGAIN.]
Kazien stared at it.
Then at Riven.
"You okay?"
She didn't answer right away.
When she did, her voice was flat. "You saved me."
"You don't sound thrilled."
"I'm wondering how many more of you I'll have to kill before this is over."
The Killstream Clone is building memory and learning
Kazien just created his own evolving rival.
Overhead, the sky crackled. The next zone began to shift.
A voice neutral, system-coded, female echoed through the shattered city:
> [NEXT ZONE: ECHO MAZE – ENTER OR BE ERASED]
The ground trembled.
A data-tunnel opened behind the last cultist corpse.
Riven stared at it.
"Maze run?"
"Unless you want to stay here and sign autographs."
She didn't smile.
But she grabbed his arm this time.
Not to drag him.
To pull him forward.
> [ZONE TRANSFER COMPLETE: ECHO MAZE]
[WARNING: Memory Interference Detected]
[Cognitive Stability Sync Required: 45% Minimum]
They landed mid-sprint boots slamming onto fractured marble tiles arranged in a nonsensical spiral. The sky overhead was black static. The walls weren't real, just flickering polygons that tried to become places Kazien recognized and failed.
A corridor twisted ahead, full of half-built rooms: one flickered into the shape of his old squad's barracks; another became the stairwell from the Ghostrun tournament tower.
Kazien's pulse spiked. "This isn't a maze. It's a goddamn memory virus."
"That's the point," SAGE replied. "It's not meant to test your reflexes. It's meant to see if you can survive your own conscience."
"Cool," FURY added. "I always wanted to watch your breakdown in 4K."
Riven scanned the hallway. "No maps. No safe zones. Just echoes."
"Of what?"
"Us."
They walked.
Every ten meters, the maze twisted.
A door would appear. Open. Show them something they didn't want to see.
In one, Kazien saw himself making a killshot in slow motion over and over again. A highlight from a championship. Only now, the announcer's voice had been replaced with a woman screaming.
In another, Riven paused outside a door labeled with her brother's gamer tag: SOLIS.EXE
She didn't go in.
She just stood there.
Kazien wanted to say something. But didn't.
Because the moment he reached out
[NEW THREAT DETECTED: KILLSTREAM CLONE – VARIANT: GHOSTRUN]
A shape stepped out of the wall.
Humanoid. Burned. Blurred.
It looked like Kazien. But with old armor, a cracked helmet, and red energy leaking from its wrists. Its gun was jagged and covered in glowing cracks like it had been rebuilt after dying.
Riven gasped. "That's…"
The clone turned.
When it spoke, it didn't use Kazien's voice.
It used her brother's.
> "You left me behind."
Kazien froze.
So did Riven.
"That's not possible," he said.
"It's not him," she whispered.
"But it knows things."
The clone raised its weapon.
"Run," Kazien muttered.
They did.
The maze warped around them as the clone fired a single shot that curved around space like it knew where they were going to be.
Riven flipped over a shattered column. Kazien dove into a collapsed stairwell. The bullet followed. Glitched. Refused to stop.
Kazien turned mid-fall and shot it out of the air.
It detonated in a burst of raw memory. Sound. Smell. Emotion.
Suddenly, Kazien could hear himself laughing. Not the real him, the version of him from a killstream years ago. Cocky. Arrogant. Unstoppable.
Riven covered her ears. "Make it stop!"
"I can't"
[Cognitive Stability Dropping – 39%]
Then the clone appeared in front of them. No warning. Just standing there. Like it had never moved.
It raised its gun.
Kazien aimed back.
But his hand shook.
"Say it," the clone said, using her brother's voice. "Say you locked the door."
"I didn't."
"You did."
"I DIDN'T!"
[SYNC LEVEL SPIKE – EMOTIONAL SURGE DETECTED]
[UNLOCKED: Dual Trigger Shot – Emotion Override Variant]
Kazien fired first.
Riven fired with him.
Two shots, two guns, two directions both slamming into the clone from opposite angles.
It screamed not in pain, but in rage as its body broke apart into glitch fragments… and disappeared.
Kazien panted. Sweating. Heart racing.
Riven turned away from him.
He wanted to say something. Anything. But the system beat him to it.
> [Warning: Killstream Clone is reconstructing.]
[Voice Profile: SOLIS.EXE – Preserved]
[Reappearance Expected: 3 Zones Ahead]
Riven's fists clenched. "It's not done."
"No."
"He's still in the system."
Kazien didn't answer.
He just looked up at the next hallway.
Where the walls had already begun changing into his childhood home.