Sam paced the room like she didn't want to say anything—but knew she had no choice.
"I was told not to engage. That if I ever met you again… it could collapse everything."
"What does that even mean?" I asked. My heart pounded in my ears.
She paused.
"You don't remember anything from before Hi5, do you?"
I stared at her. "I remember enough. Why?"
She knelt, sifting through the scattered papers from the black folder.
"There were other Subjects before you. Four, to be exact. All tested. All monitored. You were different. They called you the 'Divergent Anchor.'"
I laughed. "That sounds like sci-fi junk."
Sam didn't laugh.
"I'm serious, Athan. When they first started Project 863, it wasn't about keys or codes. It was about fixing timelines. About looping events. Testing how much a person could remember across shifts."
"You're saying I was part of that?"
"You are part of that. Still."
The silence that followed was thick. Tangible.
Then Sam picked up one of the stills from the video—the one where the other me looked into the camera.
"You were never supposed to come back. Not this version of you."
I opened the folder further. More papers. A list of designations:
SUBJECT ONE – TERMINATED
SUBJECT TWO – MISSING
SUBJECT THREE – NEUTRALIZED
SUBJECT FOUR – CORRUPTED
SUBJECT FIVE – ACTIVE
Active.
Now.
Me.
Just then, Matt burst in, breathless.
"You guys need to see this," he said.
We followed him into the control room where Tanner stood frozen in front of the main monitor.
On-screen was another video file from the flash drive. Matt had finally opened the last one, labeled:
"ARCHIVE_N.SYPHUS_FINAL.mov"
It was security footage—grainy, distorted. But the voice was unmistakable.
Nelson Syphus.
He stood in a lab. The walls were stark. Fluorescent. In the background: a whiteboard covered in formulas and a massive red '863' painted across the back.
He stared into the camera.
"This is the final attempt. Subject Five has returned. If you're watching this, containment has failed. Again. Time will fracture. They won't remember. But he will. He always does."
He stepped closer, eyes hollow.
"You cannot kill the Divergent Anchor. You can only delay him. Reset. Redirect. But he always finds his way back."
The video ended in static.
Nobody spoke.
I slowly looked at Sam. "He meant me, didn't he?"
Sam nodded, tears brimming in her eyes.
"You were never supposed to be reactivated. And now… we don't know what happens next."