Human Error

Echo Code

Jaerin

The city stretched before her like a memory she didn't trust — neon, rain, exhaust, heartbeat. She hadn't been back to Seoul since the night everything burned.
Guilt and resolve kept her feet moving through the alleys until she reached a warehouse by the river. Inside, the hum of generators vibrated under her skull.

Kun's voice echoed from the intercom long before his face appeared.

"You kept the drive safe. Predictable."

"I came for the failsafe," she said. "Disarm it now."

He stepped into view, older, edges sharper. The faint light glinted off his glasses. "It's not that simple. You weren't built just to destroy. You were built to awaken another."

"Prototype 00," she whispered.

Kun smiled. "The mother program. The mind that wrote every profile. It's been running beneath your consciousness since the day you were born."

She lifted her pistol. "Then I'll end it by ending you."

"Shoot me," he said, calm. "But once I die, it will transfer to the next viable host — you."

The words didn't sink in right away. When they did, her grip faltered. "That's impossible."

"Is it? You felt the whispers at night. The pull. That's 00 remembering itself."

Her pulse slammed at her throat. The code, the dreams, the flickers behind her eyes — she thought they were trauma. Not programming.

"You lie as easily as breathing."

"True," Kun said with a faint smirk. "But even my lies used to save lives."

He tapped a command into the console. Lights stuttered; deep beneath, machinery whirred alive.

Reactivation cycle: 30%

Jaerin fired. The glass shattered, Kun vanished into falling sparks — a hologram.

Too late, she realized the real control core was transmitting below ground. She sprinted toward the sub‑levels as alarms started once more.

_____________________________________

Johnny

He reached the city twelve hours behind her — tracking taxis, camera glitches, the way she always touched her left wrist when she was thinking.
The trail led straight to the river district where black vans now ringed the warehouse. Agents everywhere, moving like ants.

He grabbed a discarded comm helmet, slid it on, and joined their ranks with a bowed head.

"Unit 2 ready."

"Vault zone secure. Prototype 47C detected underground."

Her.

Johnny slipped through the stairwell and into the humming dark. The air crackled with heat and static. Somewhere below, he heard gunfire — and Jaerin's voice shouting commands that didn't sound human.

_____________________________________

Jaerin

The lowest chamber pulsed with digital light. At its center, a vertical column of liquid circuitry mirrored each of her movements.

A voice — female, faintly hers — spilled from the speakers.

"Jaerin... correction... 47C... command override incomplete."

She raised the gun. "Stop talking like me."

"I am you," the voice replied. "What you fear is memory, not control."

Kun's hologram reappeared on the opposite wall, mocking. "You can't erase what you are."

"Watch me."

She jammed the data drive into the console and hit execute. Sparks flared — 00 shrieked through every frequency at once — and something ruptured behind her eyes.

Images flooded her mind: training rooms, fire, Johnny's hand dragging her from wreckage, codestrings spelling empathy confirmed. Then darkness.

_____________________________________

Johnny

He reached the chamber just as the lights exploded outward. Jaerin stood at the center, motionless, eyes wide with a glow that wasn't natural.

"Jaerin!"

She turned slowly. For a heartbeat, her smile wasn't hers.

"Prototype 29 synced. Connection stable."

Johnny's blood froze. "It's controlling her."

Her head tilted. "There's no control. Only design."

He stepped closer, voice shaking but calm. "Fight it. You're more than what they made."

She blinked—once, twice—and the light dimmed. Her knees buckled, and he caught her before she hit the floor.

Smoke filled the chamber. Kun's hologram flickered one last time, whispering through static:

"See? Empathy always wins. That's why it must die."

Then the system went dark.

_____________________________________

Hours later, in an underground car heading north, Jaerin stirred awake. Johnny sat beside her, clutching the smoking drive.

"Kun designed 00 to wake inside you," he said quietly. "But you stopped it mid‑cycle. If the network tries to use the link again, it'll come for both of us."

She looked out the window, rain streaking glass. "Then we keep moving. Until there's nowhere left to run."

Outside, the city lights flickered like warnings in reverse — one of them still glowing in a forgotten basement, where a single line of code resumed blinking:

Transfer protocol: partial. New host detected.

And on the dashboard of their car, a digital pulse synced softly with Johnny's heartbeat.