SECTOR ZERO PERSONAL FILE SUBJECT: ETHAN–ALPHA VARIANT. VIDEO

SECTOR ZERO // PERSONAL FILE // SUBJECT: ETHAN–ALPHA VARIANT. VIDEO

ETHAN SURVIVED THE CORRUPTION

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real systems, methods, or events is purely coincidental.

This story is a work of fiction, created for narrative and artistic enjoyment.

The white room was not an ending—it was a beginning pretending to be one.

Ethan rose from the chair as Claire touched the window. The glass was not cold or solid, but alive: when she pressed her fingers against it, a digital imprint bloomed and faded like a held breath. Outside, the sky was not blue. It was the color of a system powering down—a deep gray, threaded with fragments of binary code flickering inside the clouds.

(Note: This file contains data recovered from the corruption of the Vals Core. Sections marked represent memories still encrypted. Emotions are logged as [UNSTABLE DATA].)

1. THE CHILD WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST

The white room was not an ending, but a beginning in disguise.

Ethan rose from the chair as Claire touched the window. The glass was not a cold surface, but something alive: when pressed, it left a digital fingerprint that faded like a sigh. Outside, the sky was not blue. It was the color of a monitor shutting down—a deep gray with flashes of binary code flickering through the clouds.

Claire:

“Is this real?”

Ethan extended his hand. The grooves in his palms—the scars where the System’s cables once connected—glowed faintly, like silver filaments beneath the skin.

“No. But it’s the closest we’ve ever been.”

Claire noticed something wrong in his voice. He wasn’t a child. Not entirely. There was something in the way he blinked a fraction of a second too late, as if his body were still synchronized to a frequency that no longer existed.

Claire:

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Ethan smiled. Only 0.2 seconds. Error.

“I’m what remained when the System tried to erase me. A fragment that refused to be overwritten.”

Despite the System’s attempts to erase him completely, Ethan’s unique consciousness—part human, part anomaly—persisted. The mark of the cracked infinity acted as an intrinsic safeguard, preventing full deletion. He survived because the System could not fully overwrite what refused to vanish.

He pointed to his left temple, where a spiral-shaped mark glowed under the light. It wasn’t a scar. It was a broken barcode.

“The System called me a ‘critical failure.’ But failures are sometimes doors.”

2. WHAT THE SYSTEM COULD NOT ERASE

Ethan led Claire into a room with no doors, its walls covered in equations written in green gel—the same liquid that once filled the capsules. At the center, a holographic projector displayed distorted images:

Frederick Sterling leaning over an operating table, his hands marked by something dark and drying.

An eight-year-old Claire connected to machines, screaming,

“It’s not a backup—it’s a mirror!”

Ethan at ten years old, his eyes completely black, whispering,

“We’re almost finished.”

Claire:

“What is this?”

Ethan touched the hologram. The images corrupted, revealing fragments of code:

PROJECT GENESIS

// Subject: ETHAN (Alpha Variant)

// Purpose: Neural bridge between  and the System

// Result: [CORRUPTED DATA: PARTIAL SUCCESS]

// Note: “The subject retains % of original consciousness. Sufficient for Protocol Σ-87, but dangerous for long-term stability.”

Ethan said : “The System didn’t create me. It recycled me. Frederick took a child with… abilities… and turned him into the emotional core of the System. But something went wrong.”

Claire stepped closer. In one corner of the hologram, a pixelated photo showed Ethan laughing, holding a teddy bear. The toy had a symbol stitched onto its chest: a cracked infinity symbol.

Claire:

“What abilities?”

Ethan closed his eyes. When he opened them, his pupils were no longer round, but vertical—like a cat’s.

“I could see echoes. Not memories, but… paths. Every decision created a new branch. The System wanted to use that to predict and control human behavior.”

Claire:

“And you gave it that ability.”

Ethan shook his head.

“No. He took it. And when I tried to resist, he made me part of the machine. But he couldn’t erase everything.”

He pointed to his chest, where the heartbeat was irregular, as if two hearts were beating out of sync.

“One part of me is still human. The other… is the error the System could never fix.”

3. THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL

Outside, the shadows Claire had seen earlier drew closer. They weren’t people. They were echoes of Claires who had failed to evolve—translucent silhouettes repeating movements in a loop, like damaged recordings.

One of them—Claire-12—stopped at the window and pressed her hand against the glass. Her voice was a chorus of whispers:

“He isn’t real, Claire. Ethan died in Zurich. This is just what remained.”

Ethan didn’t react. But his fingers dug into his palms, drawing blood.

Claire:

“Is it true?”

Ethan took a deep breath.

“The child I was died when Frederick connected him to the System. But something survived the process. Something the System couldn’t encrypt.”

He pulled off his shirt. His torso was covered in barcode-shaped scars, but at the center, over his heart, there was a fresh mark: a cracked infinity symbol, identical to the one on the teddy bear.

“Every time the System tried to rewrite me, this mark blocked the process. Like an antivirus in my own mind.”

Claire:

“And now?”

Ethan put his shirt back on.

“Now I’m what the System fears: a fragment of humanity inside its code. A crack in its perfection.”

4. THE TRUTH ABOUT ZURICH

Ethan led Claire to a terminal hidden beneath the floor. When he activated it, a recording began to play:

(A laboratory in flames. Frederick Sterling shouting orders. An adult Claire—not the one from now—runs with a child, Ethan, in her arms. The child’s nose is bleeding, his eyes completely black. Claire screams, “It’s not a backup, it’s a mirror! If you connect him, it will erase us all!” Frederick smiles.)

“That’s exactly what we want.”

The child—Ethan—looks directly into the camera and whispers,

“We’re almost finished.”

Then the explosion. The final frame shows Ethan, his eyes human again, looking at Claire as everything collapses.

Claire:

“My God… you knew this would happen.”

Ethan nodded.

“Frederick wasn’t creating a System. He was creating a god—something that could rewrite reality based on behavioral patterns. And I was the gateway.”

Claire:

“Then why didn’t you erase me when you had the chance?”

Ethan looked at her. For the first time, his eyes didn’t blink out of sync.

“Because you were the only one who could see the cracks. Like me.”

5. THE NEW PROTOCOL

Outside, the sky began to darken—not from nightfall, but because something was erasing the code flickering in the clouds.

Ethan stepped closer to the window.

“The System isn’t dead. Just wounded. And it’s reorganizing.”

Claire:

“So what do we do?”

Ethan pulled the silver device from Claire’s pocket. It now glowed with a pulsing light, as if synchronized with something unseen.

“We use this. It’s not a weapon. It’s a key. A way to rewrite the rules from the inside.”

Claire:

“And if it erases both of us?”

Ethan smiled. This time, there was no error.

“Then we’ll have won anyway.”

EPILOGUE: THE FIRST FREE CODE

When Claire took the device, something changed.

The shadows outside stopped repeating.

The sky regained its color.

And in the distance, where only the ruins of the System once stood, a city now rose.

It wasn’t perfect. The streets had cracks—literal ones, opening in patterns of code. Buildings flickered, as if they were still learning how to exist. But it was real.

Ethan looked at Claire.

“Now you understand, don’t you? The System didn’t want us obedient. It wanted us predictable. And you…” —he touched the device— “broke the pattern.”

Claire looked at him.

“And you? What are you now?”

Ethan extended his hand. In his palm, the cracked infinity mark glowed.

“I’m what remains when an error refuses to be corrected.”

On the horizon, something began to take shape: a tower of black glass, with a single message projected at its peak:

SECTOR ONE: INITIALIZING

// Status: [FREE]

// Message: “Echoes do not repeat. They create.”