They met in the ruins of the Data Spire, beneath broken clouds that pulsed with static. This was once a place of prophecy—where code-priests read future-threads from glass monoliths, and children came to ask the city what they might become.
Now, it was silent. Broken. Forgotten.
And perfect for a duel.
Eka stood at the edge of the crater, breath visible in the chill. The glyphs on her arm buzzed erratically. Her pad was dead. The Algorithm—quiet.
But she wasn’t alone.
Across from her: a figure in black, face masked, moving with the fluidity of someone who had fought not just in battles, but in ideas.
At first, Eka thought it was another Guardian. Until it moved like her.
Spoke like her.
Fought like her.
It was another Echo.
Not from the mirror.
But from someone’s future.
“I am what you could’ve been,” it said, voice filtered but familiar. “If you had chosen order. If you had chosen symmetry.”
Eka didn’t hesitate. “Then you’re not me.”
“No,” the Echo said, drawing its blade of compressed memory. “I’m what the city wants you to be. Predictable. Noble. Controlled.”
—
The duel began with sparks and ends unfinished.
She darted, flipping through timeline fractures, dodging strikes before they were made. The Echo countered—impossibly fast, as if it knew her code. Her movements. Her doubts.
They collided midair, and for a moment, everything else fell away.
She saw what the Echo saw:
A city saved through sacrifice. Through command. Through fear.
It wasn’t wrong.
But it wasn’t free.
And in that instant, Eka made her choice.
Not to win.
To break the thread.
She let the blade pass through her—only a scratch—but it bought her the opening. She touched the ground, flooded it with fragmented potential, and shattered the space between them.
Light bent.
The Echo vanished.
Not destroyed.
Unwritten.
—
Khora found her later, half-conscious, bleeding, smiling.
“What happened?” she asked, kneeling beside her.
Eka looked up at the night, where the stars blinked like cursors waiting for input.
“I fought myself,” she said quietly. “And I chose not to be her.”
A pause.
“And what did it cost?”
Eka’s fingers trembled as the Algorithm returned.
It was dimmer.
“Ask me tomorrow.”
But tomorrow never waited.
And by the time Eka’s wounds began to fade, the Algorithm had already opened the last door—where fate was no longer a question, but a confrontation.
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Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate
Science FictionIn the neon-washed city of Neo-Lagos, the future isn't guessed-it's calculated. When street-runner Eka Olani stumbles into a vault buried deep beneath the city, she inherits a power that should not exist: the Algorithm of Fate-a sentient system capa...
