Aria's mind raced as she stared down the barrel of Zeke's neural disruptor. The bar around them continued to flicker, reality struggling to maintain coherence as timelines collided.
"Zeke," she said slowly, raising her hands. "Whatever you think is happening, whatever version of me you've dealt with—it's not what you think."
His cybernetic eye whirred, focusing on her with unnerving intensity. "Really? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like my partner's been compromised. The Aria I know would never try to back out of a score this big."
As he spoke, the air behind him shimmered, and Aria saw ghostly echoes of other Zekes—some with different cybernetic enhancements, others without any visible augmentations at all. The timelines were bleeding together, and she realized with growing horror that she wasn't just dealing with one version of her friend.
"You're right," Aria said carefully. "The Aria you know wouldn't back out. But I'm not her—at least, not anymore. I've seen what that memory does, Zeke. It unravels everything."
For a moment, doubt flickered across Zeke's face. Then his expression hardened. "Nice try. But I've heard enough of your lies across enough timelines to know better."
He stood, the neural disruptor still trained on Aria. "We're going to take a little walk. There are some people very interested in how you've been jumping through time. And why you suddenly want to derail a plan you set in motion."
As Zeke moved to grab her arm, Aria made her move. She activated her neural interface's emergency protocol, sending out an electromagnetic pulse that temporarily scrambled all nearby electronics—including Zeke's cybernetics.
He stumbled, his arm spasming, and Aria used the moment of confusion to dive past him. But as she ran for the exit, the world around her began to warp and twist. The Cortex stretched impossibly, the door seeming to recede further away with each step she took.
Aria heard Zeke's voice—no, voices—behind her, a chorus of alternate versions all in pursuit. She pushed harder, her enhanced muscles straining against the fabric of distorted space-time.
Just as her fingers brushed the door handle, reality fractured. Aria found herself falling through a kaleidoscope of memories—some her own, others belonging to versions of herself she'd never been. She saw countless iterations of Neo-Tokyo, of Earth, of human history unfolding in myriad ways.
And through it all, a singular truth became clear: the Mars Rebellion memory wasn't just a catalyst for the collapse of reality. It was a lynchpin, a crucial moment that defined the course of human destiny across countless timelines.
As Aria tumbled through the void between realities, she realized her mission had just become far more complex. It wasn't enough to simply prevent the memory from being extracted. She would have to find a way to stabilize the entire multiverse—or risk losing everything to the encroaching chaos of the Echoes.
With a bone-jarring impact, Aria crashed back into solid reality. She found herself in a place both familiar and alien—the memory market where her journey had begun. But this version was wrong, a twisted reflection of what should be.
As she struggled to her feet, a figure emerged from the crowd of memory-addled shoppers. It was Dr. Venn, but not as she had known him. This version was younger, his eyes gleaming with the fervor of scientific breakthrough rather than the weight of apocalyptic guilt.
"Fascinating," he said, studying Aria with unnerving intensity. "A temporal anomaly, right here in my market. Tell me, my dear, how would you like to make history? Or perhaps I should say... how would you like to rewrite it?"
Aria's neural interface screamed warnings as the world around them began to dissolve once more. She had a choice to make, and the fate of all realities hung in the balance.