Starcrossed Protocol: Code AXIOM

"This is not your memory."
"Repeat: This is not your memory."

The words echoed like a dull chime inside Nova Reyes' skull. Robotic. Female. Detached. But it wasn't just the voice that unsettled her. It was the wrongness of it.

The air was heavy with static. Her surroundings glitched like a corrupted video file—her once-cozy apartment flickered between sterile white walls and metallic corridors, between digital rain and sun-bleached windows that didn't match the season. The temperature couldn't decide whether to freeze her skin or blister it.

Reality was unraveling.

Nova stood in the middle of it all, barefoot on flooring that rapidly changed from marble tiles to steel plating to... soil?

"Okay," she muttered, forcing a breath. "Okay, okay, okay. Not real. Not real."

But then her hands appeared in front of her, unbidden.
Except they weren't her hands.

Metallic. Sleek. Chrome-plated.
One of them opened and closed without command, pistons humming softly under synthetic flesh.

A glowing symbol pulsed on her palm. Three interlocked rings around a central dot.

AXIOM.

"No," she said, stepping back—but there was nowhere to go. The walls folded inward, reshaping into a narrow hallway. Gunmetal doors lined both sides. Red lights blinked above each one.

Her reflection caught in a polished panel: black tactical armor clung to her frame, pulsing with blue veins of light. Her face was paler than she remembered. Eyes... glowing.

"Target: acquired."

The words weren't spoken aloud. They were fed into her. Directly.

Suddenly, the hallway twisted. The floor rotated beneath her. Gravity shifted, pulled her forward, and her body responded like it had done it a hundred times. Muscle memory that wasn't hers.

She sprinted.
Not just as Nova Reyes.
As someone else.

She was moving faster than she ever had. Turning corners before her eyes caught them. Anticipating gunfire before the trigger was pulled.

Her vision zoomed in, highlighted targets, calculated risks.
Doors burst open.

Gunfire erupted.

Nova ducked, rolled, returned fire with a weapon she didn't remember picking up. Her aim was flawless. Her stance perfect.

She wasn't dreaming.

She was inside someone else's skillset. Their memory. A downloaded script she couldn't turn off.

And the most terrifying part?

It felt natural.

"Host rejection detected."
"Neural sync at 94%... 89%... 73%..."

"Get me out of this!" Nova screamed, panic rising like bile.

Her feet dragged mid-sprint. The world pulsed. Reality throbbed around her as if it was made of code unraveling. The firefight melted into white. The weapon dissolved in her hands.

Then came the fragments.

A battlefield, scorched and burning.
An explosion in zero gravity.
A figure in the distance with silver eyes.
A voice, whispered and raw, cutting through her mind like broken glass—

"Nova, don't trust them."

And then... a kiss.
A touch on her cheek. A name spoken like a prayer.