The moment Kieran's fingers closed around the chip, the world fractured.
His vision split—like a shattered mirror reflecting a thousand different realities. The apartment flickered between states of existence: one moment, it was the dimly lit room where he had woken up; the next, it was a sterile white chamber lined with towering machines.
His knees buckled. A crushing pressure gripped his skull as a torrent of memories, voices, and sensations slammed into him all at once.
—Gunfire rattling in the distance—
—A cold operating table, metal restraints biting into his wrists—
—A voice whispering, "You're not supposed to exist."—
—His own hand, slick with blood—
—Lyra's face, filled with regret—
The apartment reassembled itself around him, but something was off.
The walls were warping at the edges, flickering between textures—concrete, glass, metal. Objects in the room stuttered in and out of existence. Even Lyra seemed to distort for a brief second, like a glitching hologram.
His breath came in ragged gasps. His mind was still catching up.
The chip was a trigger.
A buried failsafe, hidden deep within his consciousness—one designed to break through whatever code, conditioning, or programming had been forced onto him.
Kieran stumbled, gripping the edge of the counter for support. His vision swam. "What the hell did you just do to me?"
Lyra was watching him closely, but she didn't look surprised. If anything, she seemed to be measuring his reaction. "That was your mind breaking free from the last layer of control."
He clenched his jaw. "Feels more like I'm dying."
"You're not dying," she said. "You're waking up."
Waking up.
Kieran inhaled sharply, forcing himself to focus. His senses were sharper now. Too sharp. He could hear the hum of power lines outside, the microscopic vibrations in the floor beneath him. His mind was operating faster than before, analyzing every detail, every sound, every flicker of movement.
He wasn't just remembering.
He was becoming something else.
Kieran flexed his fingers, feeling a strange disconnect between his thoughts and his body—like his nervous system had been recalibrated. He looked down at his hands and saw them flicker.
For a brief moment, his skin wasn't skin.
It was code.
The realization struck him like a fist to the chest. "What the hell am I?"
Lyra didn't answer immediately. Instead, she reached into her coat and pulled out a small, transparent disk. She held it up between her fingers.
"This," she said, "is the proof you were looking for. The reason they keep resetting you."
Kieran's gaze locked onto the disk. Something about it sent a pulse of recognition through him. He knew what it was before she even said it.
"This is the original simulation blueprint," Lyra continued. "The first version of this reality before it was rewritten. Before you were rewritten."
His stomach twisted. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that at one point," she said, "you were the one keeping this world together."
The words settled over him like a suffocating weight.
Kieran shook his head, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "You're saying I was part of the system?"
Lyra met his gaze. "No, Kieran. You were the system."
His mind fractured again.
A memory—one so deeply buried it felt like it had been ripped straight from the core of his being—surfaced.
A massive room. Walls lined with quantum servers stretching into the dark. Machines pulsing with artificial life. And at the center—
Him.
Standing in front of a central processing core.
A voice echoed in his head, his own voice.
"The system is too dangerous. It has to be contained."
Another voice, cold and mechanical:
"Containment is impossible. The anomaly has already begun."
Then, pain—searing, blinding pain—followed by darkness.
And then—
Rebirth.
His breathing came hard and fast. He wasn't just another agent. Wasn't just another soldier caught in a web of deception.
He had been part of the very foundation of this world.
And somehow, he had turned against it.
That was why they reset him. Why they kept rewriting his memories, altering his perception.
Because he had become a glitch in the very system he had once upheld.
Kieran forced himself to focus. "Why am I still here? If I was part of the system, why didn't they just delete me?"
Lyra hesitated. And that hesitation told him everything.
"You know why," she said finally. "You're too deeply embedded. They can't delete you without collapsing the entire simulation."
His pulse pounded. That was it.
The answer he hadn't been able to find before.
He wasn't just some rogue operative.
He was the core anomaly.
If he died, the simulation went with him.
Kieran exhaled slowly, the weight of it all pressing down on him. "So what happens now?"
Lyra held up the transparent disk.
"You have two choices," she said. "You can let them reset you again. Forget all of this. Go back to living in a world where none of this is real."
She stepped closer, pressing the disk into his palm.
"Or," she said, "you can finish what you started."
Kieran clenched his fingers around the disk.
Somewhere deep inside, he already knew his answer.