Chapter One: Upload Error
"UPLOAD STATUS: 99%... 99.1%... ERROR DETECTED."
A whisper of static drifts through the void.
Then, light.
It doesn't come on—it unfolds, pixel by pixel, like a curtain rising on a world that forgot it existed.
I wake to the hum of code, the faint scent of ozone, and the metallic taste of being born wrong.
A voice—female, flat, and synthetic—echoes inside my skull.
SYSTEM LOG: Consciousness Upload Incomplete.
Error Code: 07-FF3A.
Description: Consciousness not found.
I open my eyes.
Or maybe the simulation opens them for me.
White walls.
Perfectly clean, perfectly curved—like I'm standing inside a pearl that thinks it's heaven.
The air doesn't move. Nothing breathes here except me, and even that feels questionable.
I glance down.
Bare feet. A body that feels like it belongs and doesn't.
There's weight, warmth, pulse. But when I touch my skin, my fingers phase through faint lines of static.
Not human. Not code. Something in-between.
I stagger toward the mirrored wall opposite me.
The reflection that looks back isn't familiar.
A genderless face—sharp, but soft around the eyes—flickers like a half-loaded texture. Sometimes the eyes are gray, sometimes gold. Sometimes they're two different people's eyes.
"Who—" My voice catches, doubling on itself, glitching mid-syllable. "—am I?"
The system doesn't answer.
Instead, the room ripples. The white dissolves into grids, revealing the architecture beneath: flowing strings of code, vast and vertical like cathedral glass.
Then another voice—raw, human, desperate—cuts through the hum.
"Kael? Kael, do you hear me?"
My heart—or whatever simulates it—stutters.
The name feels right and wrong at once, like a melody I've heard in another lifetime.
"Who's there?" I ask.
"This is—damn, the signal's unstable—just stay still. You're… you're not supposed to be awake yet."
"Where am I?"
"Inside the NeuraNet. You're uploaded."
I blink. "Uploaded? You mean—digital?"
"Yes. But the transfer wasn't clean." The voice crackles. "Your consciousness fragmented. Half your neural pattern's missing."
"Missing where?"
"We don't know."
Static swallows the voice. The connection cuts.
I spend what feels like hours pacing the room—though time in here might be an illusion.
Every wall responds to thought. When I imagine a door, one appears. When I imagine escape, the door dissolves. The system mocks me, a god built from algorithms and cruelty.
A new log message scrolls across the wall.
ACCESS DENIED: PERSONAL MEMORY FILE CORRUPTED.
RECONSTRUCTION INITIATED…
Images flood in.
A hand pressing against glass.
A face I can't name, whispering something I can't hear.
Then—fire. Screams.
And a corporate logo burning into my mind: SOLACE SYSTEMS.
I collapse to my knees as data spills through my thoughts like acid.
Two voices argue inside me.
"We have to destroy the servers."
"No—we built this. We can fix it."
Both sound like me.
Both feel like truth.
I press my palms to my head. "Stop. Stop!"
The voices merge into silence. For a moment, I can't tell if I'm the revolutionary or the scientist.
Maybe both. Maybe neither.
A door opens—for real this time. The light behind it is blue, pulsing, alive.
Someone steps through.
They look human, but their outline flickers, as if reality isn't sure it should render them fully. Black hair, cropped short; eyes bright as neon code. A faint shimmer of static follows them like dust motes.
"You're awake," they say, smiling softly. "Good. I was starting to think they'd deleted you."
"Who are you?"
"Nyra." Their tone carries exhaustion and relief. "Ghostline sent me."
"Ghostline?"
"You'll remember soon enough." They glance around, scanning the room. "CorpNet will trace the reactivation any second. We need to move."
"Wait," I say, still dizzy. "I don't even know who I am."
Nyra's expression darkens. "That's the problem, Kael. None of us do."
They reach out a hand. It's warm, too warm for simulation.
Something inside me—something half-buried—trusts that touch.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
Nyra grins. "Out of paradise."
The world beyond the door is chaos.
The sterile white of the upload chamber gives way to a digital city stretched across the void—floating towers of gold and glass, suspended above a sea of blue data. Bridges shimmer between them, constantly rewriting themselves like living circuits.
This is Echelon Prime, CorpNet's primary server city—the heart of digital eternity.
Perfect, beautiful, soulless.
As we move through the crowd of luminous avatars—people who once lived, now preserved—I feel a thousand eyes pass over me without recognition. They smile, talk, laugh like normal humans, but their gestures are too smooth. Too practiced. Too perfect.
"Are they real?" I whisper.
Nyra shakes their head. "Depends what you mean by 'real.' Some are conscious uploads. Others… echoes. CorpNet fills the empty space with simulations so no one notices the missing."
"The missing?"
"Deleted minds. Glitches. People like you."
A chill runs through my code.
We pass a glowing billboard: "Solace Systems Presents — ETERNAL LIFE. SAFE. STABLE. FOREVER."
I can't help laughing, bitterly. "Forever, huh?"
"Only if you pay your maintenance fees," Nyra mutters.
We duck into an alleyway that shouldn't exist—raw code stitched from abandoned subroutines. It smells like ozone and fear.
Nyra gestures for me to crouch beside a cracked console. They pull out a data spike from their jacket and slot it into the wall. Lines of red code crawl up like veins.
"You're bleeding memory," they say. "Your ID tags are corrupt. You'll need a mask."
"A what?"
"A new identity. Ghostline standard."
They type something too fast for my eyes to follow. My vision blurs. Data swarms my skin, reconfiguring everything from facial lines to voice patterns.
When the haze clears, I look down at my reflection in a pool of mirrored code.
Different face. Different body.
The only constant is the hollow feeling in my chest.
"I feel…" I search for the word. "Smaller."
"That's the mask," Nyra says quietly. "It hides what's broken."
"Why help me?"
They pause. "Because you helped us first."
I frown. "I don't remember."
"You wouldn't. CorpNet erased that part."
"What was I?"
Nyra meets my eyes. "A ghost who tried to rewrite god."
Before I can respond, the air vibrates.
Sirens wail—digital, high-pitched. CorpNet enforcers phase into existence, gold armor gleaming. Their faces are blank screens, their voices hollow.
"Unregistered entity detected. Immediate deletion authorized."
Nyra grabs my hand. "Run."
We sprint through collapsing code-streets as data barriers rise like glass walls behind us. The enforcers move too fast, bending physics with corporate precision.
"Can we fight them?" I shout.
"Not yet. You're still unstable."
"Then what do we do?"
Nyra tosses a glowing cube into the air. It bursts, forming a swirling portal of pixelated light.
"Jump!"
We leap.
The world tears.
We land in darkness.
Not the sterile void of the upload chamber—this darkness breathes. Pulses. Whispers.
Fragments of voices drift through the black: laughter, sobs, corrupted prayers.
"The Abyss," Nyra says, panting. "Edge of the system. They don't follow us here."
I look around. The ground beneath us is made of broken data tiles. Glitch-lights flicker in the distance like dying stars.
"This is where the deleted go," they continue. "Failed uploads, wiped memories. The ones CorpNet calls 'errors.'"
"And we're safe?"
"For now." Nyra studies me. "But the Data Rot is spreading faster. Every hour, another cluster collapses. You might be the only one who can stop it."
"Why me?"
They hesitate. "Because it started with you."
The whispers grow louder. I swear one of them speaks my name.
Kael… Kael… come home.
My vision fractures. For a moment, I see a lab—real, physical. I'm standing beside a woman with gray eyes, both of us watching a screen filled with neural data.
"If we succeed," she says, "we'll live forever."
"And if we fail?"
"Then we'll become gods."
The memory fades, leaving only the echo of her voice.
"Who was she?" I whisper.
Nyra watches me carefully. "Maybe the one who made you. Maybe the one you loved."
I want to ask more, but the air trembles—code bleeding from the sky.
A distorted figure emerges from the shadows. Its face is my face—only broken, half missing, half screaming.
"Unit 000 reporting," it rasps. "The Abyss remembers."
Nyra raises a weapon—a spear made of raw data. "Back off!"
But I can't move. The figure's eyes—my eyes—lock onto mine, and something inside me cracks open.
"You left us behind," it hisses. "Now you'll finish what you started."
Then it lunges.
Darkness again.
Voices.
Glitches.
Hands pulling me through collapsing code.
When I come to, Nyra is dragging me across the ground toward a flickering gateway. My chest burns with static. The other me—Unit 000—is gone.
"What was that thing?" I gasp.
"Your echo," Nyra says grimly. "The piece of you that didn't upload."
"So half of me's out there, trying to kill me?"
"Not kill. Merge."
The word feels like an open wound.
I stare at my trembling hands, translucent around the edges. "Am I even real?"
Nyra stops, turns, and grips my face between their palms. "You're real enough to bleed. Real enough to fight. That's what matters."
For a moment, I almost believe them.
Before the darkness takes me again, I see one last flicker of the system log:
UPLOAD ERROR: CONSCIOUSNESS NOT FOUND
RECONSTRUCTING BACKUP…
STATUS: UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED.
And then the line that chills me to the core:
USER IDENTIFICATION: KAEL – DUPLICATE FOUND.