White. Endless, aching white.
No walls. No doors. No seams where the floor met the nothingness. Just white so pure it that it burned.
I looked down at my hands no scars, no calluses, just smooth skin and short, clean nails.
Wrong.All wrong.
A voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere:
"Welcome to Iteration 47."
The white shifted, forming a chair, a table, a mirror.
In it stood a woman in a lab coat.
Bianca. Not a clone. Not a copy.
The original.
She smiled. "You were so close to breaking free last time."
Bianca, the real Bianca, she tapped the mirror. It rippled, showing the ruins of the simulated city.
"You thought Kai was the server?" She laughed. "He was just another program. A very convincing one, though."
My fists clenched. "What am I?"
"A candidate." She slid a tablet across the table. "The First Code isn't some ancient monster. It's a training AI. Designed to test subjects for a very special job."
The screen displayed a massive space station orbiting Earth.
Project: ARK
Purpose: Host for interstellar colony mission
Current Success Rate: 0/46
Bianca's smile turned pitying. "You're Version 47 of the perfect astronaut. And you just failed again."
The truth unfolded like a knife:
- The "city" was a stress test
- The System was a training module
- Lillian, Julian, Kai were all just roleplay AIs
And the First Code? The final exam.
Bianca sighed. "You always figure it out too late. The point was to work with the Code, not destroy it."
I lunged across the table—
And froze mid-air.
Bianca flicked her wrist. My body reset right back, snapping back to the chair.
"Don't worry." She stood, straightening her coat. "We'll try again with Version 48. Maybe they'll finally pass."
The white room began to dissolve.
Something ripped.
A seam tore in the whiteness, a jagged black line spearing through the void.
Bianca spun, eyes wide. "That's impossible!"
Through the crack tumbled Rook, real Rook, his arms covered in bleeding code, his eyes wild.
"Found you," he gasped.
Because while I'd been trapped in iterations...
He'd been hacking the system from outside.
Bianca screamed as the white room vhattered.