The world fractured around Kieran as he sprinted down the collapsing corridor.
Alarms shrieked, warning sirens echoing through the failing simulation. The walls flickered between steel and static, reality and code blurring at the edges. The deeper he went, the more the system resisted—glitching, twisting, rewriting.
But this time, he wasn't the one being rewritten.
He was the anomaly now.
Kieran clenched the drive in his fist as he ran. The last failsafe. The final piece the First Kieran had hidden, waiting for the right version to reach this point.
And now, he was here.
The final version. The one who wasn't supposed to exist.
The floor beneath him warped, shifting from solid ground to digital distortion, then back again. His vision blurred as lines of raw data flickered across his cybernetic interface.
The system was trying to consume him.
"Find the core access point. Use the drive. End this."
The First Kieran's words rang in his mind, cutting through the chaos.
Kieran's gaze locked onto the farthest point in the corridor—an enormous vault-like door, humming with energy.
The Core.
He pushed forward, fighting against the collapsing simulation.
The moment he reached the massive door, a wave of static exploded outward.
Kieran was thrown backward, slamming into the floor. His cybernetic arm sparked from the impact, but he barely registered the pain.
Because he wasn't alone anymore.
From the shifting walls, from the glitching shadows, they emerged.
Figures.
Versions of himself.
Some were half-formed, their faces flickering with fragmented expressions. Others were solid—echoes from past cycles, past failures, watching him.
And then—
They spoke.
"You can't do this."
Kieran pushed himself up, breathing hard. His heart hammered as the voices overlapped, repeating in distorted layers.
"You don't understand."
"The system needs to exist."
"We are meant to be erased."
His own voices.
Kieran's grip tightened around the drive.
"No," he said, his voice firm. "We were meant to be free."
The echoes glitched, their faces contorting, struggling against the simulation's hold. The system was using them—using his past selves—as a final defense.
But Kieran had come too far.
He took a step forward. Then another. The figures flickered in and out, their protests growing weaker.
He reached the vault.
A control panel blinked beside it, waiting.
Kieran exhaled sharply. He raised the drive.
And inserted it.
The moment the connection was made, the world froze.
The echoes of his past selves vanished.
The sirens cut out. The air stilled.
Then—
The system spoke.
"WARNING. Unauthorized command detected."
Kieran didn't flinch. He braced himself, fingers hovering over the panel as streams of data rushed across the screen.
This was it.
He had one chance.
And he was ready.
Kieran took a deep breath—
And began to rewrite reality.