SHE WAS NEVER REAL

The alarms went off at 2:17 a.m.

Not blaring sirens.

Not flashing lights.

Just a low tone—almost like a hum—slipping through the vents like a whisper no one wanted to admit they heard.

Runa was first to the console.

"Unauthorized access in the East Wing," she said, fingers flying across the interface. "Security lockdown failed. Signal's bouncing off legacy protocols."

Dahlia swore and grabbed her pulse pistol.

"Null Protocol doesn't have legacy protocols anymore."

Runa stared at the screen, pale.

"Exactly."

Astra reached the girl's room before anyone else.

She found her sitting in the center of the floor, barefoot, calm, eyes wide.

Spiral glyph glowing faintly under her skin.

Astra opened the door just as the room's lights snapped to red.

"You feel that?" she asked.

The girl nodded. "It's not here for me."

Astra crouched beside her.

"Then who?"

The girl blinked slowly.

Then said:

"You."

Two figures emerged from the far corridor.

Both wore black null suits—glyph-dampening armor designed for deep recursion zones.

No insignia.

No badges.

No names.

Only purpose.

The lead one stepped forward, voice filtered through modulation:

"We're here for the Subject."

Astra stood.

"She's not a Subject."

"She is glyph-stabilized recursion tech. You know what that makes her."

"She's a child."

"She's an anchor," the operative said. "And we're not the only ones looking for her."

Dahlia arrived behind them, gun raised.

"You're not on any roster."

"We were never on rosters."

"Then you're ghosts," she said. "Which means you don't exist."

"That's the point."

The girl stood now too, behind Astra.

Silent.

Still.

But the spiral on her wrist pulsed—once.

And the air changed.

Not temperature.

Not pressure.

Perception.

Like time had slipped an inch to the left.

Astra took a step forward.

"You touch her, and the recursion field you're standing in will invert."

"You don't have glyphs anymore," the operative replied.

"No," Astra said.

"I don't need them."

The lights flickered.

The walls vibrated—softly at first, then like breath under tension.

Runa's voice came through comms: "They're trying to override our systems. Pulling from deep glyphnet archives. I don't know how—"

A loud crack tore through the hallway.

Glass burst from the left wall in a fan of spirals.

The girl didn't flinch.

Neither did Astra.

"I don't want to hurt you," Astra said to the operatives.

"That's good," the lead replied. "Because you won't get the chance."

He raised his weapon—

And the girl lifted her hand.

Reality bent.

Not violently.

Not destructively.

Just… unnaturally.

Like a sheet of paper folding along invisible lines.

The operatives froze mid-step.

Literally.

One boot in air.

Eyes open.

Bodies locked.

Paused.

Astra turned back to the girl, stunned.

"What did you do?"

The girl didn't answer.

She looked up at Astra and whispered:

"They weren't supposed to come yet."

Security caught up moments later.

The breach was sealed.

The operatives taken into black-cell custody—though it took three stasis fields just to move them.

Runa reviewed the footage on loop for hours.

"This was coordinated," she said. "They weren't testing us. They were trying to extract."

"But extract what?" Dahlia asked.

Astra answered without hesitation:

"Not the girl."

"The glyph inside her."

That night, the girl traced the spiral again.

But this time, she didn't stop at the center.

She drew a second one, mirrored next to it—smaller, tighter.

Interlocked.

Astra watched from the doorway.

And the girl whispered, not to her, but to herself:

"I'm not the anchor."

"We are."