The light faded. The room settled.
Silence… for about three seconds.
Then the ground shuddered, like a beast waking beneath the foundation.
"Did we just… unplug a god?" Igor asked, blinking through the afterglow.
"If we did, I hope it voids its warranty," Thea said, squinting at the screen above them. It flickered erratically now, showing a scrambled feed of faces — real people. The trapped. The sleepers. The almost-lost.
The monitor buzzed with a final message:
"AUTO-RELEASE IN PROGRESS. SAFETY PROTOCOLS OFFLINE. GOOD LUCK."
Behind them, the corridor doors burst open. From every direction, they came — people Thea and Igor had passed in levels before. Dazed, blinking, some stumbling, some sprinting, many still wrapped in remnants of the zones they'd been stuck in: suits of moss, suits of mirrors, pyjama pants, IKEA uniforms…
"THEA!" someone yelled.
It was Madison — the girl from Level 7. She had dirt on her face and a broken lantern in hand. "What happened?! Where are we?!"
"We shut it down," Thea shouted back. "But we're not out yet."
A man with mismatched shoes looked around, dazed. "Is this still part of the test? Because I haven't signed a waiver since 2019."
"No test," Igor called. "Just pure, unfiltered endgame now!"
Some people cheered. Some looked terrified. One man in a suit cried because his smartwatch wouldn't sync anymore.
Thea turned to the open corridor — the Core had become a hub. Hallways branched out like roots, each glowing faintly, each one pulsing with the hum of reawakening zones.
"We have to lead them out," she said. "But not through the levels — they're still unstable. We find a side tunnel. A system chute. Emergency escape."
"You say that like this place comes with fire exits."
"Even hell needs a fire code," she said grimly.
They headed into the branching hallways.
Behind them, the crowd followed.
It was an exodus.
Survivors from dozens of simulated lives all crammed together. It felt like a sci-fi refugee line — a mall Santa guiding a hacker, a little girl with a teddy bear that growled occasionally, a middle-aged woman who muttered "reset the clock, reset the clock" under her breath.
And every once in a while, they passed failures.
People who didn't wake up.
People who chose to stay asleep.
And people who had become… something else.
"Don't look at them," Thea whispered, when they passed a row of wax-like bodies with smiling mouths but hollowed-out eyes.
Igor didn't joke. Not this time.
The path twisted.
They reached a section marked "Architectural Control: Personnel Only."
Perfect.
The door opened without a passcode. The system was too fried to care.
Inside: a tunnel, narrower, older. Pipes lined the walls. Bare bulbs blinked above them, casting yellow shadows that danced with every step.
"We're close," Thea breathed.
"Close to what?" asked a guy behind them who was wearing a poncho made entirely of receipts.
"Freedom. Or a flamethrower. Flip a coin."
They reached a fork.
One way was lit. The other was dark and marked "Hazard: Decommissioned."
Naturally, they went left, into the hazard zone.
More footsteps echoed behind them. The crowd thinned — people splintering into smaller groups, making decisions on faith alone.
"Maybe we shouldn't be leading," Igor muttered. "We're not trained for this."
Thea gave him a look. "We survived 21 floors of psychological nightmare logic and a Bluetooth AI with boundary issues. I think we're fine."
"Fair."
A new hallway. Cold metal. A strange hum rising around them like static in the air.
And then—
A door. Manual lever. No sign. Just a symbol — the same one they'd seen on the first screen back at the phantom station
Thea reached for the handle.
"Wait," Igor said. "What if it resets everything? What if it traps us again?"
She hesitated.
Then smiled faintly.
"Then we break it again. Harder."
And she pulled the lever.
WHUMP.
The wall split.
Air — real air — rushed in.
Not processed. Not filtered. Not piped through smart vents.
Real.
The corridor opened into a narrow shaft lit from far above. A ladder spiraled upward, long and rusted.
Igor looked up and groaned. "Why is it never an escalator?"
Thea grinned. "Maybe the next level is just a giant nap room."
"Don't give me hope."
They climbed. And climbed.
Behind them, more followed — slowly, carefully, but with the weight of belief pushing them forward.
At the top: a trapdoor.
Thea pushed.
Sunlight stabbed through.
For a second — just one — it felt like the beginning again.
Then they emerged.
Into the real world.
A forest clearing. Overgrown. Silent.
A familiar town skyline shimmered in the distance.
Cars. Drones. Civilization.
It was home.
They stood, breathing hard, blinking in the sun.
Below them, the rest of the group cheered. Survivors, reborn.
Igor turned to her. "So. You think it's over?"
Thea squinted.
On her wrist, her watch blinked a message:
"Thank you for participating.Trial concluded.Await further instructions."
She held it up.
They stared at it.
Then at each other.
And they laughed. Loud, unfiltered, messy laughter.
Because what else do you do at the edge of a lie so big, it swallowed the sky?