BLOODCAPE
Chapter 140: Ash Broadcast

Chapter 140: Chapter 140: Ash Broadcast

The city was wrong.

Not broken. Not burning. Just... wrong.

They emerged from the Zodiac freight tunnel in silence, boots thudding softly against concrete slick with condensation. Hernan blinked into the open space of the Sector Nine transit corridor, where sodium-vapor lights once bathed commuters in washed-out yellow. Now, the lights pulsed faint blue, rhythmic, wrong — like breath being held just a little too long.

Aya stepped out behind him. Iro followed, rifle half-slung, scanning rooftops without being told. Dekra came last, her cloak trailing like smoke, collecting ambient noise like static.

Nothing had changed in structure. The signs were the same. The benches. The distant echo of a train along an unseen line. But everything else — the feel of it — had shifted. The atmosphere was layered now, like another version of the city had been painted thinly over this one, and the new paint hadn’t dried.

"Lighting grid’s off by thirty-two nanoseconds," Iro muttered, eyes on his HUD. "They rewired the tempo."

"Why?" Aya asked.

"To make people feel unsettled," Dekra said. "It makes them more likely to accept new certainties when offered."

A vendor stall that used to sell synth-noodles now displayed prefab armor patches emblazoned with a sleek, abstracted emblem — an angular "E" formed from broken chain-links. Above it, a screen flickered in perfect intervals.

ECHO DEPLOYMENT READINESS: TRUST WHAT’S RETURNED.

Aya’s jaw tightened. "We weren’t gone long enough for this."

"We were," Dekra said, tone dry. "You don’t understand how fast Ash Logic works. It doesn’t seed data. It seeds perception. Once the logic enters the system, the city doesn’t need a timeline. It creates inevitability. People don’t remember when this started — just that it feels like it was always true."

Footsteps echoed. Two teens passed them. One looked up, caught Hernan’s face — and froze. Recognition flickered, then shifted. Something in the boy’s eyes fractured: memory mismatch.

"Sir..." he started to say. Then stopped. His expression blanked. The boy turned and tugged his friend along faster, muttering under his breath.

Hernan stood still.

Aya moved beside him. "You saw that."

He nodded once, slowly.

"He recognized you," she said.

"No," Dekra corrected. "He recognized someone. But when his brain tried to resolve two copies in one frame, it rejected the ambiguity. He defaulted to safety — and you weren’t it."

Aya pulled her portable scanner from her belt. "Let’s see how bad this is."

She ran the local neural tag log.

Her eyes narrowed.

"There’s a ghost entry," she said. "My scanner’s registering two pings for Hernan. One of them flagged as passing through Gate 6 — thirty minutes ago."

"We’ve never been to Gate 6," Iro said.

Aya rotated the display to show Hernan. Two biometric entries. Same ID. Same retinal lock. Same life signs.

No errors.

No warnings.

Just duplication, perfectly accepted.

"The system isn’t flagging this as identity fraud," Aya murmured. "It’s not even confused."

"It’s treating both records like verified truth," Dekra said. "Two valid copies. Two continuous Hernans. You’re not the same man anymore — you’re data with conflict resolution disabled."

Hernan stared at the screen. His name. His markers.

One was real.

One was walking ahead of him.

"It’s not about who came first," he said. "It’s about who fits better."

A gust of wind swept through the corridor, carrying with it the murmur of a crowd in a nearby plaza — unaware, unconcerned. Digital signage above flickered, mid-cycle.

WELCOME BACK, VALE.

It held there.

Then blinked.

YOU WERE NEVER GONE.

Aya turned slowly, eyes tracing the people walking by.

No one screamed. No one pointed. They just looked.

And their eyes couldn’t agree.

Her scanner chirped softly again.

Side by side.

Two faces.Two biometrics.One name.VALID.

Hernan didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

Because for the first time since all of this began, he looked — truly — unsure if he was the original.

And the city?

The city looked just as confused.

—

The wind rattled through the vents of the abandoned signal tower like a breath stuck in a throat. Cold night fog ghosted in low swirls across the grated floors and whispered between server racks and dangling coils of old fiber.

The place had once been a Zodiac relay node.

Now, it was a tomb for misremembered truth.

Dekra moved first, boots silent. She reached a scorched panel on the north wall and slotted in a narrow data-prong. The servers groaned awake — groggy, suspicious, angry at being disturbed.

"We’ve got a window," she said. "Forty seconds before Scorpio’s side-net realizes we’re awake."

Iro positioned at the door, rifle steady. "If you need another thirty, I can give you fireworks."

Aya approached the console, already scanning. "What exactly are we pulling?"

"Intercept logs," Dekra said. "Ash Logic’s burst transmissions. Hidden under public systems. City maintenance alerts, transit routes, drone pathing — it’s all camouflage."

Hernan didn’t speak.

He stood near the cracked glass of the tower’s long window, staring out over Sector Nine. Somewhere out there, people were eating dinner. Sleeping. Existing. And maybe forgetting things they hadn’t realized they’d lost.

Dekra began decrypting. Lines of glyphs scrolled by in fluid cascade. Her implants pulsed. Then — a stutter.

"I found him," she said.

Aya turned. "Zero-B?"

"He’s not just active. He’s integrated. Embedded himself inside an old Zodiac tactical support unit. New paperwork. Clean ID. He’s officially city-sanctioned."

"Zodiac’s defunct," Aya said.

"Not anymore," Dekra said. "Scorpio resurrected the badge through Ash Logic. And the city — hell, the surveillance AIs — are honoring the chain of command."

Iro swore under his breath. "So he’s not pretending to help the city."

"He is helping it," Dekra said. "In their eyes."

She pulled up another feed.

"Hernan’s tag’s been flagged twice. Not for being dangerous. For being... inconsistent."

Aya’s voice turned sharp. "Define that."

Dekra looked at her. "The network labeled him a ghost. A temporal distortion. His memory profile doesn’t align with the consensus perception index."

She tapped the terminal. "In short — the city thinks he is the fake."

A low tone buzzed from the console.

A new window opened.

A video feed.

Sector Twelve. Live broadcast. Timestamp: ten minutes ago.

Aya’s hand froze.

Onscreen, a crowd had gathered beneath a massive curved billboard. The plaza was calm. Controlled. No riot shields. No panic.

Then a new figure stepped into view.

Echo Zero-B.

Hernan Vale.

Polished. Clean.

He wore the same coat — but newer. Sharper. His eyes didn’t carry the weight of memory. They gleamed like purpose.

He raised one hand, palm open in faux humility.

"My name is Hernan Vale," he said. "And I want to thank this city... for its loyalty."

The crowd didn’t react.

They didn’t need to.

Because nothing about this felt strange to them.

The feed cut.

Silence.

Iro was the first to speak. "He’s not hiding anymore."

Aya shook her head. "He doesn’t have to. He is the narrative now."

Dekra added, "This was never about replacing Hernan. It was about replacing the world around him. Piece by piece. Until it stopped recognizing him."

Aya raised the scanner again. Two tags.

Still side by side.

Still green.

Still valid.

"He doesn’t need to kill you," she said quietly. "He just needs to make them believe he’s always been you."

Hernan stared at the screen, lips parted slightly.

Behind his eyes, something cracked.

Not fear.

Not doubt.

But the dawning truth that to survive this... he’d have to wage war not on a man.

But on memory itself.

And memory?

Memory doesn’t bleed.