The world shuddered.
For a split second, everything froze.
Calloway's face—once composed, smug—twisted into something new. Fear. It was subtle, buried beneath years of control, but Kieran saw it. Felt it.
Because he wasn't just another failed attempt.
He was the end of the cycle.
The restraints around his wrists flickered again, as if unsure whether they should exist. The cold steel against his skin wavered, shifting between reality and something else.
Something less real.
Kieran focused, drawing on the fragmented memories—the ghosts of his past selves. Each of them had fought to escape. But fighting within the system meant playing by its rules.
He wasn't doing that anymore.
He was rewriting them.
Calloway took a slow step back, hands still clasped behind his back. "Impressive," he admitted. "But do you truly think you can break a system built to contain you?"
Kieran exhaled sharply, letting his mind sink deeper. The room around him pulsed like a living thing. Walls that had once felt solid now breathed, rippling like disturbed water.
This wasn't a physical prison.
It was a program.
A prison of code.
And he was rewriting it.
"I don't think I can break it." Kieran looked up, meeting Calloway's gaze. "I know I can."
The words hung in the air for a moment, and then—
The simulation snapped.
ERROR DETECTED.
The world glitched.
The hum of unseen machines spiked into an ear-splitting screech. The walls bent inward, their smooth metallic sheen fracturing into jagged lines of shifting data.
The room was coming apart.
Kieran ripped his hands free. The restraints that had once felt unbreakable disintegrated into strings of code, collapsing into nothingness.
Calloway's expression darkened. "This isn't possible."
Kieran stood. "No. It wasn't." He flexed his fingers, feeling something new thrumming beneath his skin. "Until now."
Calloway's hand flicked to his wrist, activating a hidden device. The air shimmered, and the walls—once unraveling—reconstructed themselves.
For a moment, everything snapped back into place.
Kieran felt it—the reset trying to pull him under. The familiar, suffocating weight of another rewrite.
But this time, he resisted.
The data tried to consume him, tried to overwrite his mind again. But he grabbed hold of it, pushed back.
The system hesitated.
For the first time in seventy-two cycles, the simulation failed to reset him.
Kieran's vision sharpened. He could see the code now—raw, exposed, vulnerable.
And Calloway knew it too.
The doctor's usual calm cracked at the edges. "You need to stop."
Kieran took a step forward. "Or what?"
A flicker. A buried memory surged to the surface.
A hidden lab.
A darkened screen.
A voice—his voice—whispering, "If you ever make it this far… find me."
Kieran's breath hitched.
There was a way out. A real way.
His past self had left a trail, a final fail-safe, buried deep beneath the layers of deception.
He had to find it.
Kieran focused again, but Calloway moved first.
The doctor raised his hand, and the walls collapsed inward. The air turned heavy, thick with distortion. The weight of the simulation pressed down, suffocating, crushing.
Kieran gritted his teeth. "Not this time."
He pushed back.
The pressure cracked—then shattered.
And the entire world collapsed.