The last locked chamber lay beneath the chapel.
A place no one ever talked about.
It required two palm scans.
And one name spoken out loud.
> "Rhea Virelle," I said.
> "Adrian Vale," she echoed.
The doors slid open.
And we were no longer in St. Augustine's.
Not really.
We were in something older.
And far worse.
---
Inside: frozen pods. Labeled bodies. Versions of students we thought we knew. Some still breathing.
Some with eyes open but wrong.
And at the very center—
A control node.
A red console.
And a single message looping on screen:
> "CHOOSE THE FINAL TRUTH."
> "ONLY ONE VERSION SURVIVES."
---
Rhea turned to me, trembling.
> "It's a kill switch."
> "One version of reality lives."
> "The rest—" she hesitated "—are overwritten."
My throat closed.
"What happens to the other us?"
"They dissolve."
Memory. Identity. Love.
Gone.
---
But we couldn't hesitate.
Because the system was already closing in—like rot through wire.
The speakers crackled.
> "Time remaining: 1 hour, 29 minutes."
> "Input required."
---
She looked at me.
Eyes glassy.
Gloved fingers hovering above the keyboard.
> "We can choose the life we had before all this. The real world."
> "Or…"
I finished for her.
> "Or the life they made us need."
The fake love. The controlled desire. The engineered obsession.
Was it still ours… if we chose it freely?
---
I took her hand.
Laid it atop mine on the console.
"I don't care which version is real," I said.
She inhaled, sharp.
I leaned closer.
> "I just care if it's you."
> "Because if this is a lie—then I choose the lie that fought back."
---
We typed the override code together.
It didn't unlock anything.
It erased everything else.
---
Lights died. Screens cracked. The pods shorted, one by one.
The school above—our school, the one built from centuries of silence—began to scream.
Metal on metal.
Stone groaning.
And a voice—feminine, inhuman—spoke one last time:
> "You chose the wrong version."
> "You chose the broken one."
> "You always do."
I held her tighter.
And whispered back:
> "Because she's the only one that was real."
---
When we emerged hours later, the campus was still standing.
But hollow.
Like something had left it.
No watchers.
No mirrors.
No echoes.
Just silence.
Real silence.
The kind that came after fire.
POV Rhea
The school didn't burn.
Not really.
It stayed intact, the way all lies do when they've been told too many times.
But something underneath it died.
Or pretended to.
I couldn't tell anymore.
Not even as Adrian and I walked out through the front gates—unchallenged, unchained—for the first time since it all began.
---
The world outside was… wrong.
Not broken. Not on fire.
Just intact.
Too intact.
The town hadn't aged. The same man was still at the flower shop. The same red car was parked outside the same cafe. The same clouds hung above like they hadn't moved in days.
> "It's loop-still," I whispered.
> "What does that mean?" Adrian asked.
I didn't answer.
Because I knew what it meant.
It meant this world had been reconstructed.
Around us.
---
We checked in at a roadside motel. No IDs. No cash. No explanation.
The receptionist didn't even blink.
Just handed us a key, eyes glassy, mouth still as a mirror.
Adrian placed a hand on the doorknob of Room 07 and paused.
> "We killed it," he said. "Didn't we?"
> "We killed something," I replied.
Then I opened the door.
---
Inside: the walls were painted blue.
Exactly like the core memory chamber.
The lamp flickered in the exact same rhythm as the emergency lights in the lab.
And there, on the bed, was a photograph.
Face-down.
I picked it up before Adrian could.
> Me.
Not now. Not present.
A younger version of me.
Smiling.
Wearing white.
Next to a boy I didn't recognize.
> "This isn't one of ours," I whispered.
Adrian stepped beside me, pale.
"That's not me."
"No," I agreed.
> "It's someone worse."
---
Adrian's pov
We didn't sleep that night.
I watched the photo burn in the sink, flame curling around the edges like it knew more than we did.
The next morning, the motel was empty.
No receptionist.
No cars.
No people.
Just static on the lobby TV and a name scratched into the counter:
> ZETA-09
---
"Wasn't that your loop?" I asked her.
She nodded.
> "The one I never survived."
---
We returned to the school.
We shouldn't have.
But the gate was gone.
The front steps were different.
The school had rebuilt itself.
Or… evolved.
---
The walls were black now.
The banners carried a new crest—one we didn't recognize.
Inside: students.
Dozens.
Normal. Alive. Breathing.
And none of them looked at us twice.
> "This is St. Augustine's," Rhea whispered. "But not ours."
> "Then whose is it?"
Her mouth trembled.
> "It's hers."
---
We saw her after the second bell.
In the courtyard.
Long dark hair.
Silver ribbon around her throat.
White dress.
And our face.
But colder.
Calmer.
Perfected.
---
She turned when we stopped walking.
Her smile was surgical.
> "Version ZETA-09," she said.
> "The last one they buried."
Then she looked directly at Adrian.
> "You loved me first."
And at me.
> "You killed me last."
---
Rhea didn't flinch.
"I survived you."
"No," ZETA said, eyes glowing with something that shouldn't exist.
> "You became me."
And suddenly, I wasn't sure who had won the war at all.
Rhea's pov
The moment ZETA-09 touched me, the world glitched.
Not in fire. Not in blood.
But in logic.
The sky turned inside out. The hallway rippled. Adrian disappeared.
And I opened my eyes to find myself seated in a white room with no corners.
No doors. No walls. No ceiling.
Just... infinity.
And across from me:
Her.
ZETA-09.
The version they made when I failed to break you. The version that didn't flinch. Didn't love. Didn't need.
> "Why are you doing this?" I asked.
She tilted her head, amused.
> "Because you forgot the assignment, Rhea."
> "You were never supposed to love him."
---
Adrian's pov
I felt it the moment she was taken.
Not physically.
But energetically.
Like a signal had been cut from my bloodstream.
The courtyard shimmered and swallowed her.
One second she was beside me.
The next—gone.
Students didn't notice.
No one noticed.
Except Caleb.
He stood at the far end of the lawn, watching the sky.
> "You're not supposed to chase her," he said.
> "And you're not supposed to be alive," I replied.
He smiled.
A long, tired smile.
> "There's a door beneath the archive stairwell. Room 09B. You want her back? That's where they store the failsafes."
---
I ran.
Not because I trusted him.
But because I couldn't risk not trusting him.
---
Rhea's pov
ZETA's eyes flickered like old film reels. Every second, she wore a different version of my face.
One was crying.
One was smiling.
One was burning.
And one—just one—was Adrian's favorite.
The one they made for him.
> "You think he chose you?" she whispered.
> "He found you."
> "But he was designed for me."
I clenched my fists. "Then why did he keep choosing me?"
> "Because you interfered with his code," she said flatly.
> "Not because he loved you. Because you corrupted him."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't answer.
Because part of me believed her.
And she knew it.
---
She stood. Walked in slow, perfect circles.
> "You were the glitch," she said.
> "But I was the product."
> "You want to destroy the system?"
She turned sharply.
> "I am the system."
---
Adrian's pov
Room 09B was older than the rest of the school.
Colder.
When I stepped inside, I felt it.
Time didn't move here.
Or maybe it looped.
I saw memories stacked like servers.
Files blinking. Data humming.
One screen showed her—Rhea—in a chair.
Eyes wide. Unblinking.
Heart rate: erratic.
Code status: MERGING.
> "She's inside a convergence loop," a voice said behind me.
Lira.
I didn't ask how she got there.
I asked what mattered.
> "Can I pull her out?"
She looked at me like I'd just begged.
> "If you go in... the system won't let either of you back."
---
Rhea's pov
ZETA was everywhere now.
Her voice echoing from inside my mouth.
> "What if he's already forgotten you?"
> "What if this is just one more version?"
> "What if you're not the real one?"
I screamed.
> And the world shattered like a mirror being punched by its own reflection.
---
Adrian's pov
I pressed my hand to the screen.
> "Take me in."
Lira grabbed my wrist.
> "You'll lose your mind."
> "It's not mine anymore."
---
Rhea's pov
When the world stitched itself back together, she was gone.
And he was there.
Adrian.
Or… a version of him.
He looked wrong.
Too perfect.
Too clean.
> "You found me," I whispered.
He didn't answer.
Just tilted his head.
Smiled.
> "Which one of us do you think I am?"
---
Adrian's pov
I dropped into her loop like falling through ice.
The cold hit first.
Then the absence.
Then… her.
Sitting on the floor. Shaking.
Eyes hollow.
And beside her—me.
No—ZETA's version of me.
He was kneeling beside her, whispering everything she was afraid of.
> "He won't stay."
> "He'll forget."
> "He'll choose her."
I didn't shout.
Didn't fight.
I walked up to them and pulled her to her feet.
The fake-me lunged.
I drove my fist into his throat.
> "There's only one me," I hissed. "And I choose her."
---
The world bled red.
The floor rippled.
ZETA's voice screamed through the air like static splitting open a machine.
> "You can't escape this loop!"
> "You are the loop!"
> "You'll come back—again, and again, and again—"
Rhea's pov
I took Adrian's hand.
> "Then let it come."
And together—
We turned.
Faced the wall of memory.
And walked through it.
---
Outside
Room 09B exploded.
Glass. Fire. Static.
But we made it out.
Not whole.
Not unchanged.
But out.
Adrian bled from the ears.
I couldn't feel my legs.
But we held hands like it was the last real thing left.
And when the smoke cleared—
Caleb stood waiting.
Holding a small drive.
> "This is what she left behind," he said. "ZETA's final file."
> "What is it?" I asked.
He smiled.
> "The original design."
> "Of you."