Darkness.
For a long, weightless moment, there was nothing.
No sound. No pain. No time.
Then—a heartbeat.
Kieran gasped as sensation flooded back. His body jerked, lungs burning as if he had been drowning and had just surfaced.
His eyes snapped open.
He was lying on a cold, metallic surface. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar—smooth, dark steel, lined with strips of dim blue light. The sterile scent of machinery filled the air.
This wasn't the collapsing simulation.
This was somewhere new.
Slowly, Kieran sat up. His head pounded, his cybernetic interface flickering as it struggled to recalibrate. He felt… different.
Lighter.
Whole.
He looked down at his arms—his cybernetics were still there, but something was… changed. The data streams flowing through them were clearer, no longer corrupted by the system's interference.
He wasn't trapped anymore.
The realization sent a surge of adrenaline through him. He had done it. He had rewritten reality.
But what exactly had he created?
Kieran pushed himself to his feet, taking in his surroundings. The room was sleek, futuristic—a control center of some kind. Large holo-displays lined the walls, scrolling with streams of unfamiliar data. The air hummed with the quiet thrum of advanced technology.
Then he noticed the glass panel at the far end of the room.
Moving toward it, Kieran felt a strange weight in his chest. Something deep inside him was whispering that this moment mattered.
That what he was about to see would change everything.
He reached the glass and looked out.
And his breath caught.
Beyond the window stretched an endless expanse of stars.
A vast, breathtaking view of space—not a simulation, not a program.
Real.
Kieran wasn't in the digital prison anymore.
He was somewhere else.
Somewhere in the real world.
His pulse pounded in his ears. The simulation had been a cage, a containment loop—but what had it been containing him from?
What had he forgotten?
And more importantly—
Who had put him there in the first place?
Behind him, a door hissed open.
Kieran spun.
A voice—calm, mechanical, yet eerily familiar—spoke from the entrance.
"Welcome back, Kieran. We've been waiting for you."
His chest tightened.
Because standing in the doorway—was another version of himself.
But this one wasn't an echo.
This one looked fully real. Fully alive.
And worst of all—
He looked like he was in control.