The surveillance room was quiet. Too quiet.
Elias stared at the grainy, enhanced footage frame by frame of Athena's retreat. A glimmer of hesitation. A look. Something familiar behind her eyes, not rage but... recognition?
He didn't sleep that night.
The Next Morning Draxon Tower, East Wing
"Jude," Elias called.
The ever-sharp assistant stepped in, tablet in hand. "Morning, sir."
"I want everything we have on Project PRIMIS. Not just the stored data. Dig deeper. The deleted archives. The redacted stuff. Everything."
Jude frowned. "We could be breaching the Founder's Code. Only the original Board had access"
"I am the Board now," Elias snapped. "Get me those files."
Meanwhile Magritte's Apartment, Magritte stepped out of the shower, hair dripping like midnight silk, when her screen lit up with an encrypted call.
It was from someone she hadn't spoken to in years.
"Silas?" she whispered.
The man on the screen was older, scarred, his right eye mechanical.
"They're waking up," he said. "You need to leave him, Mags."
"I can't."
"Then he needs to know. He's not just PRIMIS. He's Zero."
Valerie Dexter stood before seven chambers six now glowing green.
"Awaken them," she ordered the technician.
"But Director Dexter, they've not completed reformation. One is still unstable."
"Do it anyway. If Elias is Zero, they'll respond to his presence."
A hiss of steam. A groan of ancient metal.
One by one, the clones emerged each a version of Elias.
But one... One did not resemble him at all.
"I found it," he said, laying a thick black file on Elias' desk.
The cover.PRIMIS, GENESIS//ENTRY-ZERO
Inside were files Elias never knew existed.
Test results, combat logs. Psychological reports.
And a chilling video feed of a child with his face, screaming, locked in a medical pod.
Elias stared, unmoving.
"What... am I?" he finally asked.
"More than man," Jude whispered. "But not quite machine."
Magritte Arrives,She burst into his office, hair still wet from the rain, coat clinging to her.
"You need to hear me out."
"I just found out I might not even be fully human," Elias said, voice hollow.
"That's not the worst part," Magritte said, crossing to him.
She took his hands.
"You were never just PRIMIS. You were designed to control them."
His eyes widened.
"You're not the weapon, Elias. You're the failsafe."
In a separate lab, the clone that didn't look like Elias moved differently fluid, reptilian. It turned its head toward the camera and whispered:
"Zero has awakened. I must return to him."
"Subject-7 is speaking," the lab tech noted.
"No," Valerie corrected. "Subject-7 is remembering."
Jude's Revelation that night, Jude met in secret with Lewis at a discreet warehouse.
"He can't know everything," Jude said.
"You lied to him?" Lewis asked, voice sharp.
"I had no choice," Jude replied. "If Elias ever finds out who designed PRIMIS, he might destroy all of Draxon and himself."
Lewis leaned in.
"Then we make sure he never learns the name... Dr. Calder."
Elsewhere Athena's Inner Circle, Athena reviewed the footage of Elias's speech again.
"He's slipping," her second-in-command said.
"He's ascending," Athena corrected.
"Then why does he look afraid?"
She turned to the screen. "Because for the first time... he's starting to remember me."
Closing Scene The Rooftop of Draxon Tower, Elias stood alone, city lights stretching like veins of fire across the skyline.
He touched the neural patch at his neck. His heartbeat slowed.
A voice his own echoed from the data drive Magritte had brought:
"Project Zero: Designed to lead, built to resist, destined to break or conquer all others."
Behind him, Magritte stepped into the wind.
"Tell me you're still you," she said softly.
"I don't know anymore," Elias whispered.
And far below them, a limo pulled up.
Inside sat Subject-7. Watching.
Smiling.
The city didn't sleep that night, and neither did Elias Thorne.
He had dismissed the board early, skipped the usual security debrief, and walked alone through the vaulted corridors of Draxon Tower. Something inside him stirred like muscle memory igniting in a body he hadn't yet grown into.
He wasn't just Elias anymore. And the world? It wasn't what it used to be either.
The conference table shimmered with holograms: markets, war zones, and surveillance grids blinking across continents.
Jude stood at attention.
"Sir, we've received a communication someone claiming to be *you* held a closed board meeting in the East Asia branch."
Elias didn't flinch.
"That wasn't me."
"I know. But he had retinal clearance. Voice match. Neural ID."
Elias turned slowly, eyes gleaming with a strange light.
"Subject-7 has started playing."
Magritte watched the news loop of Elias delivering a cryptic speech in Seoul. She knew immediately: that wasn't *him*. She could see it in his posture. In the cruel twist of his mouth.
Her comms device buzzed. Lewis.
"He's trying to seize full control of the PRIMIS network," he said. "We have thirty-six hours before the merge protocol completes."
"Then we stop it," Magritte said.
"You and Elias?"
She hesitated, looking out the window into the rain.
"Us and whatever's left of the real Elias."
Subject-7 sat confidently in Elias' seat at Draxon East Asia. His voice was perfect. His signature, exact. He convinced the board to approve Operation Sovereign a hostile asset absorption program that would wipe out every independent AI lab worldwide.
None of them knew they were speaking to something grown in a vat.
But one man did.
Dr. Calder.
He watched from a hidden chamber behind a mirrored wall.
"My beautiful monster," Calder whispered. "So close to completion."
Jude rushed into Elias' study.
"Magritte says Subject-7 has your full authority in Seoul. They've approved Sovereign."
Elias exhaled sharply.
"Then he's setting fire to the world. In my name."
Magritte appeared, hair damp from the rain.
"If we let him move forward, thousands will die. Independent developers, dissenting board members. People we fought to protect."
Elias looked at her.
"Then we cut him off at the source."
Jude, Elias, and Magritte descended into the Draxon SubNet a digital vault built beneath the tower during the original PRIMIS trials.
As they walked, lights flickered to life, revealing long-forgotten corridors and sealed servers humming with forbidden data.
Elias approached the core terminal.
"If I interface directly, I can overwrite Subject-7's genetic clearance."
"But?" Magritte asked.
Elias turned to her, jaw tight.
"It'll trigger a neural bleed. I could lose what's left of my identity."
"You won't," she said, stepping closer. "Because I'll stay with you. Every second."
As Elias gripped the terminal, his mind split open.
He was ten years old again, screaming in a test chamber.
He was twenty-three, killing a man with his bare hands in a blackout he couldn't remember.
He was thirty-nine, in love with a woman named Magritte, terrified of what he was becoming.
He saw Subject-7's face.
He saw himself.
"You can't win," the clone whispered through the data stream. "You were made to be a failsafe. I was made to replace you."
"I wasn't made to win," Elias hissed, "I was made to survive."
The Seoul boardroom descended into chaos as every screen in the building flickered.
Then came a voice calm, resolute, unmistakably Elias.
"This is the real Thorne. All previous executive orders issued in the last 36 hours are rescinded. Operation Sovereign is hereby nullified. Anyone acting under Subject-7's command will be treated as traitorous."
Subject-7 stood, snarling.
"No one will believe you."
On screen, Elias appeared.
"We already do," said a chorus of board members from around the world.
Behind Subject-7, armed guards raised their weapons.
Subject-7 burst through the windows, leaping twenty stories into the night.
"He's gone," Jude said, panting.
"For now," Elias murmured. "But we're not done."
He turned to Magritte.
"I remember more now. About you. About us. About Calder."
Magritte nodded. "Then we have to go deeper. Back to where PRIMIS began."
Scene Nine Elsewhere, in the Shadows, Athena watched the footage of Subject-7's escape. She turned to her war council.
"Activate the Echoes," she said.
An old man leaned forward. "Even Number Nine?"
She nodded.
"They're not ready."
"Neither is Elias."
She smiled.
"And yet... look how far he's come."
Elias and Magritte stood together once more in the wind.
"Who were we?" he asked her.
She reached for his hand.
"Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe we should ask. Who do we want to become?"
And far below, a shadow watched them.
Waiting.
Planning.
Smiling.