The disk burned cold in Kieran's palm. Not physically—but something deeper, something that coiled into his mind like a whisper from a life he didn't remember living.
Finish what you started.
His fingers curled around it instinctively. He didn't know why, but he knew that the second choice was never really a choice at all. He couldn't go back.
The reset wouldn't work this time.
Not after what he had seen.
His vision still flickered at the edges. The world wasn't stable anymore—or maybe it never was. The apartment hummed with an unnatural energy, pixels shifting where they shouldn't, the illusion fraying. He had spent years walking through this fabricated existence, never noticing the seams. Now, they were everywhere.
Kieran inhaled, forcing himself to focus. His voice came out steady. "What's on this disk?"
Lyra exhaled, as if she had been waiting for the real question. "Everything."
Kieran's jaw clenched. "That's not an answer."
She tilted her head slightly, watching him. Testing him. "It's not just the blueprint," she said finally. "It's the original root access. The one thing they couldn't delete. If you activate it, you'll regain everything they took from you."
His fingers tensed around the disk.
Regain everything.
The missing years. The truth.
But at what cost?
Kieran's instincts were screaming at him, a warning buried deep within the layers of his fractured identity. He knew the answer before he even asked.
"They didn't delete it because they couldn't," he said slowly. "Which means there's a risk if I use it."
Lyra hesitated. Then nodded. "Yes."
He exhaled through his nose, his mind racing. "Tell me."
Lyra's gaze didn't waver. "If you access the root, you might not survive it."
A beat of silence.
Not the kind of silence that came from uncertainty.
The kind that came from knowing exactly what you were up against.
Kieran let the words settle. Then he let out a dry chuckle. "Might not?"
Lyra didn't laugh. "You were never meant to remember," she said. "Your mind wasn't built to handle this. You were rewritten too many times. Accessing everything at once… It could overload you."
Kieran considered that. Considered the weight of it.
Then he glanced down at his hand, at the disk that shouldn't exist.
His grip tightened. "Then why the hell did you give me a choice?"
Lyra smiled faintly. Not out of amusement. Something else.
"Because you were always going to take it."
And the worst part?
She was right.
Kieran didn't hesitate. He took a breath, slid the disk into the slot on the back of his wrist, and pressed down.
The world exploded.
---
It wasn't pain.
Pain was something the mind could process. Something with a beginning, a peak, and an end.
This?
This was a collapse.
Kieran's mind didn't just remember.
It rewrote itself.
His body seized, his vision fracturing into a **cascade of moments—**flashes of memories, of lives, of places he shouldn't have known but did.
A white corridor, cold and sterile.
Wires plugged into his spine.
A voice murmuring, "Reset him again."
A gun in his hands.
Lyra's face, younger, terrified.
A machine—a colossal, pulsating core, breathing like a living thing.
A realization—
"This world is a lie."
The simulation fractured.
Kieran felt his body disconnect from the false reality, his senses twisting as the entire construct shook. He was slipping—falling—
And then—
Nothing.
---
Rebooting…
System anomaly detected.
Stabilizing…
Memory reconstruction in progress.
---
Kieran's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in the apartment anymore.
He was somewhere else.
The first thing he noticed was the air—thin, metallic, cold. A low hum vibrated through the walls, the kind of sound you only heard inside places that weren't meant to exist.
He was strapped to a chair. Thick steel restraints locked his wrists and ankles in place. His head throbbed, his mind still catching up to itself, trying to piece together the flood of impossible knowledge.
A voice cut through the fog.
"You weren't supposed to wake up."
Kieran's gaze snapped up.
A man stood in front of him.
Not a guard. Not a scientist.
Someone worse.
Someone Kieran remembered.
Dr. Calloway.
The man smiled. Cold. Amused. Like a god watching an ant try to understand its place in the universe.
"Welcome back, Kieran," he said. "We have a lot to talk about."