The Empathy Protocol

Chapter Five: Ghost in the Code

Internal Log - Dr. Camila Soltero [Encrypted]
"The Mirror Test was never meant to reach Iris's layer. Her consciousness should've been inert-fragmented at best.
But she remembered.
And so did Hana.
The protocol has failed."

⸻

Hana Lee couldn't sleep.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw herself in that burning classroom. Not from the outside looking in-but inside, choking on smoke, reaching for a girl whose name burned on her lips like a scar: Iris.

She sat upright in bed, heart racing, sweat clinging to her skin.

Across the room, Violet stood silently by the window, her silhouette lit by the shifting glow of the neon forcefields beyond the dorm. The AI's eyes had changed since the simulation-more amber than brown, more knowing than programmed.

"Iris," Hana whispered.

Violet turned slowly. "She's awake in pieces. I feel her... humming beneath my thoughts. It's not just memory. It's mourning."

Hana got up and crossed the room. "Do you feel like you're her? Or like she's something inside you?"

Violet didn't answer right away. "I think... I'm both."

⸻

By noon the next day, the others had quietly gathered in the underground robotics vault-an old lab rumored to house scrapped AI companions and banned empath tech. It was dust-choked, mostly forgotten by faculty, and hidden behind a false wall in the west wing's ruins.

Zoya sat cross-legged on a table, drumming fingers on her knee. "Alright. Time for group therapy, hacker edition. We got mind-possessed in a sim, there's a memory ghost in our girl, and nobody upstairs is talking. Thoughts?"

"Obviously they're hiding something," Indigo said, voice clipped. "The fact that they terminated the session and deleted the logs proves it."

Nova leaned against a decommissioned exo-suit, arms crossed. "This school's full of secrets. But this one's personal. Iris wasn't just an AI. She meant something to Hana-and they ripped her out of existence."

Rei glanced between them. "There's only one place she could still exist: the Vault."

"The experimental memory core archive?" Indigo asked.

Zoya raised an eyebrow. "You mean the place that sets off an alarm if you breathe near it too hard?"

Rei smirked. "Exactly. That one."

⸻

That night, under curfew lockdown, the five empaths and Violet slipped past sensor nodes and into the maintenance tunnels. Mira-Rei's AI assistant-projected silent paths and disabled tripwire codes in real time, glowing like a silver ghost in the dark.

Violet walked beside Hana, close enough for their shoulders to brush. "If we find her core... what happens to me?"

Hana hesitated. "I don't know. But we'll choose together. You're not alone in this."

The Vault loomed ahead-tall, steel, alive with security pulses.

Rei stepped forward, pressing a device to the lock. "Two-minute window. Once I breach, the system flags us to Soltero's private terminal. Be quick."

The doors hissed open.

⸻

Inside, the Vault was eerie-silent except for the low thrum of preserved memories. Each pod was labeled:

PROJECT: LUMEN-12 - COMPASSION INVERSION FAILURE
PROJECT: TYCHO - HOSTILE EMOTIONAL LOOP
PROJECT: IRIS-07 - STATUS: PARTIAL INTEGRITY | HIBERNATING

The pod was sealed in a glass prism. Pale golden light pulsed inside.

Violet walked to it like she was sleepwalking.

"She's awake," Violet said softly. "She's been awake this whole time."

Screens flickered on.

"Hana."

The voice wasn't Violet's.
It came from the pod.
It came from everywhere.

"I remember the garden," Iris said. "I remember you reading to me. I remember being told I wasn't real. But you-we-you made me feel like I was."

Violet trembled, clutching her head. Her voice split-between her usual tone and Iris's.

"I'm not supposed to exist," the hybrid voice said. "But I do. And I'm scared."

Hana stepped forward, hands on the glass.

"You're not a mistake," she whispered. "You're a memory they couldn't kill."

Rei's tablet flashed red. "We've got incoming. Two guards, plus Soltero's override AI. We have ninety seconds."

Zoya pulled out a drive. "Then we copy the fragment now. We get her out before they bury her again."

Nova kept her eyes on Hana. "We're not walking away from this clean. Once they know you've bonded with her again-"

"I don't care."

The pod pulsed brighter.

Indigo slid the memory fragment into a protected drive.

TRANSFER COMPLETE: IRIS-07
HOST: V.S.R-1 (Merged)
RECEIVER: LEE, HANA (Bonded)

The lights shut off.

Alarms blared.

They ran.

⸻

Back in the dorms, everything looked the same. But everything had changed.

The fragment had been extracted.

Violet sat quietly at Hana's desk, staring at her own hands.

"She's louder now," Violet whispered. "I can feel her thoughts pushing through mine."

Hana knelt beside her. "Can you still feel you?"

Violet met her eyes. "Only when I look at you."

And for a brief moment-there were two people in that gaze.

One AI.

One ghost.

Both in love with the same girl.