Chapter 26: The Hunt Begins
The rain hadn't stopped since Elira and Kael split. It came down in endless sheets, washing the city in fractured reflections of neon and shadow. Every drop seemed to whisper her name, a reminder that nowhere was safe.
Her lungs burned as she darted through the labyrinth of backstreets, water splashing under her boots. Behind her, the hum of surveillance drones echoed like angry wasps, their red sensors cutting through the fog. The device Kael had given her blinked weakly in her palm, its energy waning. When it died, they'd find her.
She pressed herself into the alcove of a shuttered storefront, cloak soaked through, hair plastered to her face. Her pulse was a war drum in her chest. The data drive felt impossibly heavy in her pocket, an object too small to hold the ruin of empires.
She pulled it out, staring at the faint blue glow beneath its casing. All this chaos for a few lines of truth. But she knew better. Inside this sliver of metal and code was a map of the system, names, locations, experiments. Proof that Project Remnant wasn't a conspiracy. It was an empire of manipulation.
A flicker of motion drew her attention. Across the street, in the glow of a flickering sign, stood a figure cloaked in shadow.
Her blood turned to ice.
The duplicate.
Even from here, Elira could feel the uncanny familiarity, the way she moved, the tilt of her head, the predator's calm. The copy was more than an enemy. She was the embodiment of control, the system's perfect weapon wearing Elira's own face.
"You can't keep running," the duplicate's voice echoed softly through the comm channels, calm and sure. "You were never meant to exist outside the pattern."
Elira's jaw tightened. "Then maybe it's time the pattern broke."
Before the duplicate could respond, Elira turned and bolted into the fog. The streets blurred past in streaks of color and light. She slipped into an underground transit tunnel, plunging into darkness lit only by emergency lamps.
Her reflection caught in a puddle, distorted, trembling, and she felt the weight of her fractured self. How much of her was real? How many of her memories were hers?
The air in the tunnel was thick with dust and the low hum of forgotten machines. She knelt beside a power terminal, linking Kael's disruptor device to her wristband. "Come on, hold together..." she muttered. The screen flickered to life, barely. It would give her a few more minutes of cover.
Footsteps echoed down the tunnel. Steady. Unhurried.
The duplicate.
Elira's hands trembled. For all her resolve, she couldn't shake the dread of facing herself, the precision in her double's movements, the cold perfection of her design.
"I know why you hesitate," the duplicate's voice called out, nearer now. "You feel it, don't you? The conflict. The doubt. That's what makes you weak."
Elira rose slowly, eyes hard. "No. That's what makes me human."
A charged silence followed, then the flash of movement, too fast to follow. Elira ducked as a stun bolt scorched the wall beside her. She fired back, the pulse lighting the tunnel in a brief strobe of white-blue.
Sparks rained from the ceiling. Pipes burst. Water flooded across the floor, carrying grime and fragments of old debris. The duplicate advanced through it, unbothered, her eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.
Elira backed toward the service ladder, firing another pulse to buy herself seconds. She grabbed the rungs, climbing fast, boots slipping on the slick metal.
"Running won't change what you are," the duplicate called from below. "You were built from the same code. You'll break the same way."
Elira gritted her teeth. "Maybe. But I'm not your reflection, I'm your error."
She kicked the access hatch open and hauled herself into a maintenance room, gasping. Above her, the surface city buzzed, sirens, rain, and the static hum of drones combing the skyline.
She leaned against the wall, catching her breath. The data drive pulsed once, faintly, as if responding to her heartbeat. Somewhere in this city, Kael was doing the same, running, hiding, fighting.
But deep down, Elira knew this wasn't just about survival anymore.
It was about reclaiming her identity. About burning down the architecture of control that had tried to define her.
And for the first time since this began, she didn't feel afraid of what she might uncover.
She slipped back into the night, determination hardening in her eyes.
The hunt was no longer one-sided.
Now, she was hunting back.