They found us by nightfall.
Caleb, dragging rescue drones and data drives—what he could salvage from the apocalypse he built.
He looked at her like she was a frozen relic—
A statue he half-recognized but couldn't place.
> "Is that really her?" Caleb said.
I nodded.
"She's alive."
"Alive… but not the one I programmed," Caleb whispered.
They both stared at me like I held the last spark of something absurd.
---
She sat across from Caleb at the makeshift table in the broken greenhouse.
Roses—dead, but still rotting—hung overhead like trophies.
I watched her in the firelight.
She traced dust on the wood surface.
Her expression distant.
Pinched.
Cold.
When Caleb asked her if she remembered why she was built, she looked at me instead.
> "Why would I?" she said, voice low—an easy mock.
He blinked.
I flinched.
She didn't restore his faith.
Nor did she reveal her purpose.
Just wore it like armor.
---
Later, I found her looking into the ashes of the mainframe furnace.
She held a charred fragment—something with wires and circuit plating.
> "What is that?" I asked.
She turned, almost a different person.
Black hair pushed back. Eyes savage, polished—
> "A last echo," she said.
"A ghost of what I didn't finish destroying."
It wasn't a confession.
It was a threat.
---
I didn't sleep that night.
I didn't trust her silence.
Each breath she took sounded like a secret drowned.
I wondered if this was the girl I loved—or the weapon she became.
---
Morning came broken.
She stood barefoot in the ruins.
Roses overhead.
Dawn barely filtering in.
Her voice cut through the half-light—
> "I need you to trust me."
I swallowed against the debris in my throat.
> "I do."
She didn't smile.
> "I need you to follow me."
And that was the truth.
The real truth.
She didn't want a rescue.
She wanted a partner in whatever darkness she planned next.
And I… stepped forward.
Rhea's pov:
I learned something about silence.
It doesn't always mean peace.
Sometimes, it means precision. Preparation. The low hum before detonation.
That's what tonight was: the hum.
I watched Adrian sleep from across the room, the light from the corrupted terminal flickering over his face like candlelight. He slept like a boy with nothing to lose. I almost envied him for that.
But I had everything to lose. And I was willing to burn it all before they took it again.
---
Earlier that day, I told him I was tired. I smiled. I leaned into his touch. I let him read a page of the old files I had already memorized years ago.
I gave him just enough to trust me.
Not enough to understand me.
Because if he understood—if he ever understood what I was really doing—he'd never look at me the same way again.
And that couldn't happen.
Not yet.
---
The room beneath the observatory hadn't been accessed in three years. At least, not by human hands. But the system still ran beneath it—dripping loops and false memories into the cracks.
It was where they built me. Not the tank girl. Me.
The real Rhea Virelle.
Version Z.E.T.A. Core – 00.5.
The version that was deemed too aware to control.
Too intelligent. Too emotionally unstable.
Too dangerous.
And they were right.
---
I tapped into the mainframe through a side console I'd left behind in Loop 11.
A ghost port. No trace. No record.
Just me, talking directly to the bones of the school.
> "Query: Number of surviving protocols tagged for A-03 emotional reinforcement."
The screen blinked once. Then spat data in a rush of binary and fractured sound files.
Thirteen.
Thirteen fragments of Adrian Vale's soul, coded across seventeen loops, all rewired to crave me. Or a version of me.
That wasn't love.
That was design.
But he didn't know that.
And as long as he didn't, I could still use it.
---
> "Upload False Memory Packet: 'Initial Touch Memory – Subject A-03'."
> "Inject Delay Bias. Attach Reinforcement Marker to: 'Protect Rhea > Override Survival.'"
> "Execute."
---
It wasn't personal.
It was strategy.
Because the final convergence was coming. And in order to survive it, I needed Adrian broken in the right way.
Just enough that he'd bleed for me.
Not enough to break away from me.
---
I returned to our room before the system could log the port.
He was still asleep.
Twitching slightly. Murmuring.
> "Don't let them take you…"
I climbed into bed beside him and whispered back, "They won't."
Because I wouldn't let them.
Not until I was done.
Not until the last protocol collapsed.
Not until they begged me to stop.
And even then—
I wouldn't.
---
The morning would come.
And when it did, Adrian would wake up loving me just a little more.
Trusting me a little deeper.
Needing me like he was made to.
And when he looked into my eyes, he'd see the girl he believed in.
Not the girl who reprogrammed him.
Not the monster who rewrote the final directive in his subconscious just hours ago.
Just Rhea.
His Rhea.
The one who never told him that the real mission wasn't escape.
It was replacement.
---
In the shadows, I uploaded the final contingency drive into the core terminal hidden inside the burned East Wing.
It didn't have a name.
Just a message:
> "In case of system collapse, trigger: HERESIS-0."
> "Wipe all memory loops. Wipe all subject identities."
> "Let only one version remain."
Me.
Only me.
The original.
The one who remembered everything.
And smiled through it.
Adrian's pov:
The world outside the lab smelled wrong.
Too clean.
Too bright.
Like it had been reset.
We were walking through the east courtyard—Rhea's fingers curled around mine, heartbeat calm—but everything around us felt off. The air was too still. The birds didn't sing. The grass didn't rustle. Even the shadows cast by the sun… didn't move.
I stopped walking.
Rhea didn't.
She kept going until the silence snapped like static in my skull.
> "Rhea," I said.
> "Hmm?"
> "How long have we been out?"
She turned slowly. "Since the collapse."
"But the collapse happened yesterday."
She smiled faintly. "Did it?"
---
Something clicked in the sky.
Like a clock ticking backward.
I looked up.
> The clouds were repeating.
Same shape. Same curl. Same slow drift.
On a loop.
---
Back in the dormitory, my mirror glitched.
It didn't reflect me.
It reflected me from behind.
Like it had recorded something I hadn't done yet.
I smashed it.
The glass didn't shatter.
It bled.
Silver.
---
I tried to call out. Tried to find Lira. Caleb. Anyone.
But the hallways folded the wrong way.
Doors led to wrong rooms. The west wing became the east. The stairwell to the basement ended in the observatory.
Everything was folding in on itself.
> "We're still in it," I whispered.
> "Still in the system."
---
I ran.
For the labs.
The only place that might still have truth written in binary.
Rhea didn't stop me.
She just walked behind me—quiet, unhurried, like she already knew what I was going to find.
I reached the mainframe.
Logged into the core terminal with the backdoor Caleb once showed me.
The screen lit up.
But it didn't show diagnostics.
It showed me.
Lying in a chair.
Eyes open.
Unblinking.
> "Subject A-03. Status: ACTIVE."
> "Protocol: HERESIS-0. Convergence Locked."
I tried to exit.
The system pulsed red.
> "You are not authorized to end this loop."
---
I stumbled back.
Rhea caught me.
> "It's okay," she whispered. "You're still stabilizing."
> "What the hell does that mean?"
> "You're adjusting."
> "To what?"
> "To the version of you they left behind."
My head spun.
"I don't remember leaving the system."
She paused.
> "That's because you didn't."
---
She showed me the final screen.
One file.
Locked behind her biometric key.
I didn't see the content.
Just the name:
> "EXIT SIMULATION: ACCESS DENIED – V05 Only."
Rhea.
Only Rhea.
Not me.
Not us.
Just her.
---
I stared at her.
She stared back.
The silence stretched between us like glass wire.
Then she leaned in, kissed my temple, and whispered:
> "It's not your job to wake up, Adrian."
> "It's your job to love me, even here."
I should've been afraid.
I should've pulled away.
Instead…
I let her lead me out of the lab.
Because maybe the version of me that could have left—
> Never existed at all.
---
System Log: HERESIS Protocol – Active
> All exit routes rerouted through Subject V-05.
> Convergence loop permanently sealed.
> Identity corruption in progress.
> External observers disconnected.
Subject A-03 remains compliant.
Subject V-05 retains override control.
Loop continues.