Lucien stood in front of the mirror, half-dressed, fingers buttoning his shirt with mechanical precision. He could still taste Aveline's kiss from the night before, still feel the warmth of her curled around him. But something in her eyes this morning had shifted.
He could sense it now more clearly than ever: the tension between what she gave and what she withheld.
The woman he loved—had always loved, even before he knew her name—was lying to him.
And he was beginning to remember why.
Jules watched Clara pace the narrow hallway of the university's abandoned research wing, the fluorescent lights flickering with the ghosts of forgotten experiments.
"You're sure?" he asked.
She handed him the USB. "Positive. It's all in there. Every loop. Every collapse."
"And Aveline?"
Clara's jaw tightened. "She built it. She ran it. And then she wiped herself clean so she could love him without guilt."
Jules rubbed the back of his neck. "So we're all part of her design."
Clara turned to him. "No, Jules. You and I… we weren't in the original loop."
He blinked. "What?"
"She added us later. Probably to stabilize her emotions, ground herself in something outside of Lucien. But we're anomalies."
Jules felt the chill settle into his bones. "What happens if we pull the plug?"
Clara looked him in the eye. "Everything resets. She forgets. He dies. We vanish."
Back in her apartment, Aveline stared at the coffee cup in her hands like it held the answer to a question she hadn't yet dared ask.
Lucien sat across from her, unusually quiet.
"You're not telling me everything," he said finally.
She flinched. "I'm trying to protect you."
"From what?"
"From me."
He reached across the table, fingers grazing hers. "I don't care who you were, Aveline. What matters is who you are now."
Tears welled in her eyes. "But what if the person I am now only exists because I forced time to let me try again? What if all of this is stolen?"
Lucien stood and walked around the table, kneeling before her.
"I want it to be real," he said. "I want you. No matter how we got here."
And then—he whispered the words that made her breath stop.
"I remember asking you to marry me."
She stared at him, frozen.
"It was snowing," he continued. "You wore a red scarf. We stood under a streetlight. You cried."
He looked up at her.
"I remember."
In the Concordia simulation log, Loop 1's seed memory began to destabilize.
A glowing warning appeared:
Emotional Anchor Breach Detected.Origin Memory Surfacing.Loop Integrity at 72%.Collapse Threshold: Approaching.