The lights in the underground room flickered as if the air itself held its breath.
Ruoxi stood frozen in front of the glass bed. Her own face stared back at her, younger, softer, like a girl caught in time.
Prototype Zero.Designation: Memory Core.Heartbeat: Steady. Temperature: Controlled. Brainwaves: Active.
Zeyan stepped forward cautiously. "She's not asleep."
Ruoxi didn't blink. "She's waiting."
Zeyan studied the monitor beside the bed. The neurological interface was still live — synapses responding as if someone had just spoken to her.
"She's linked to the emotional server system. This entire facility must be feeding her microdata… probably for years."
Ruoxi moved closer.
The girl's chest rose and fell gently, her lips slightly parted. Beneath her closed eyelids, her eyes flickered — as if dreaming.
"I can feel her," Ruoxi whispered. "Not just recognize her… but feel her. It's like she's already inside me."
Zeyan pulled out his portable terminal and hooked into the old lab console. "There's a memory sync port here. If I connect her to a controlled uplink… I might be able to stream her archived memory pattern. Just view it, not absorb it."
Ruoxi hesitated. "What if I want to absorb it?"
Zeyan looked at her sharply. "It's dangerous. You don't know how much of her is already inside you — the wrong fragment could overwrite your own."
Ruoxi glanced at Prototype Zero again. "Maybe I was always just a reflection of her. Maybe the truth is… I was never meant to be me."
Zeyan's voice dropped, firm but gentle. "Ruoxi, you're more than data. You've bled, cried, fought for people. You've loved. That's not programming."
She gave a faint smile. "If that's true, then I need to know where her story ends and mine begins."
Zeyan nodded reluctantly. "Five-minute sync. No more."
Ruoxi sat on a medical bench beside Prototype Zero and placed the neural band against her temple. The connection hummed through her spine. She gasped as lights flashed in her mind — scenes crashing into her thoughts like waves.
A room with no windows. Mo Qinghua stands beside a younger Ruoxi — or is it Zero? — whispering, "You were made for balance. Not war."
Lin Qian running down a hallway, chased by guards. A young Ruoxi slams a glass door shut to protect her, eyes glowing with something not quite human.
Professor Yan arguing with a shadowed figure: "The emotional core cannot be replaced. If she merges with the wrong imprint, she'll collapse — or worse, split."
Ruoxi gasped, clutching the bench.
Zeyan's hands steadied her shoulders. "You're going too deep—pull back!"
But she couldn't stop.
A dark room. Two figures in restraints. One screams. One watches in silence.
Ruoxi herself — in a mirror — but the reflection shows her smiling while she's crying.
Then, a final image:Mo Qinghua kneeling beside Prototype Zero, weeping.
"They don't want to raise a daughter. They want a doll. But I built you to feel — to hope. Maybe one day, someone will find you and set you free."
Ruoxi snapped back into the present with a gasp, tearing off the neural band.
Zeyan caught her before she collapsed.
Her nose was bleeding.
But her eyes—clear. Alive. Burning with new certainty.
"She didn't want to create a clone," Ruoxi said. "She wanted to preserve her soul."
Zeyan looked at the sleeping girl. "Then who are you?"
Ruoxi stood shakily, wiping the blood from her lip.
"I'm the version that survived the collapse. The one who remembered love."
They left Prototype Zero in stasis, but Ruoxi knew she wouldn't sleep much longer.
"She's me," Ruoxi said softly as they walked the dark corridors back to the car. "But a version that never got to live. If they wake her, they'll erase me to keep her pure."
Zeyan opened the car door for her. "Then we don't let them wake her. We protect both of you."
Ruoxi sat inside and stared into the night.
"Or maybe… I wake her first."
Back at the villa, Lin Qian was pacing.
The lipstick message still haunted her.
"You forgot one."
She opened the drawer of her old sketchbook — the one she used before everything unraveled.
Inside, beneath a sheet of unfinished pencil drawings, was a page torn from a child's notebook.
Drawings of three girls.Names scribbled beside each figure.
Qian. Xi. Lei.
Lin Qian's hand trembled.
She had no memory of anyone named Lei.
And yet—her eyes filled with tears.
Somewhere, deep inside, she remembered the girl with the wild laugh. The one who braided their hair while humming lullabies.
The one they were forced to forget.
Meanwhile, in a high-security office somewhere in the city, the lead scientist of Project Twin Flame stared at a blinking alert on her monitor.
Prototype Zero had been accessed.
And it hadn't triggered the self-erase protocol.
"Unexpected," she murmured. "Still emotionally bonded. That core should've degraded after sync."
She turned to a shadowed figure beside her.
"What do we do?"
The figure stepped into the light.
It was a woman with soft eyes… and a familiar face.
Almost too familiar.
"We prepare to overwrite Ruoxi," she said with a smile. "She's already starting to blur. All we need now… is to make her doubt who she really is."