[Location: Outpost Omega - Main Hall] [Time: Day 4. 05:45 Hours. Countdown: 00:00:00]
My mechanical arm was completely dead, a deadweight of iron and frayed wiring hanging off my shoulder. I leaned heavily on Silas as we limped back up the stairs to the main hall.
The emergency red lighting bathed the cavernous room in the color of dried blood. Rook and Lyra had dismantled the barricade and were standing in the center of the room, staring up at the massive central monitor.
The countdown had reached zero.
The screen flickered. Static hissed through the ancient surround-sound speakers, making Lyra cover her ears.
Then, an image resolved.
It was a man sitting at a desk. He wore a pristine white Federation lab coat. His face was lined with exhaustion, and a jagged scar ran through his left eyebrow. He looked twenty years older than the man I knew, but there was no mistaking those cold, calculating eyes.
"Dr. Aris," Vesper breathed, her voice barely a whisper.
The man on the screen looked straight into the camera. He looked right at me.
"If this automated beacon has triggered, and you are watching this," Aris's recorded voice echoed through the tomb-like facility, "then the Loop has failed. Again. And Outpost Omega has fallen."
Silas stepped forward, her revolver lowered. "What is he talking about? Outpost Omega was decommissioned fifty years ago."
"My name is Director Aris. Head of Project Zero. This recording is for iteration number four thousand, one hundred and twelve."
The air in the room vanished. Rook looked at me, his eyes wide.
"We tried to create a savior," Aris continued, rubbing his temples. "The Algorithm was beating us. It was a machine intellect that adapted to every strategy we devised. So, we decided to fight fire with fire. We built a human algorithm. A soldier who could harvest temporal data. We cloned him, wired his nervous system into a localized temporal singularity, and sent him to die."
Aris pointed a trembling finger at the camera.
"Every time you die, Caelum, you send combat data back in time to yourself. Trial and error. The perfect weapon."
"It's a lie," I whispered. My voice cracked. "I remember my parents. I remember growing up on a farm in Sector 4."
"We implanted those memories to keep your psyche stable," Aris's voice cut through my denial. "A machine without a soul breaks. You needed something to fight for. So we gave you a fake childhood. I am sorry, Subject Zero. You were never born. You were manufactured in the tank behind you."
I couldn't breathe. I looked back at the murky green tank. At the spare parts. At the faceless girl floating in the water.
"But we made a fatal miscalculation," Aris said, leaning closer to the lens. "The Algorithm didn't just adapt to our weapons. It adapted to you. It tapped into your temporal wake. Every time you reset the timeline, the Enemy learns from your previous life too. You aren't just fighting the Enemy, Caelum. You are feeding it."
Vesper dropped her datapad. It shattered on the metal floor.
"Oh my god," she choked out. "The infinite escalation... he's the catalyst. The war is unwinnable because he is keeping the Enemy evolving."
"Caelum," Aris's voice softened, filled with a terrible, crushing pity. "If you are watching this, you have to stop fighting. You cannot win. The only way to starve the Algorithm... the only way to end the war... is to break the loop. You have to die, Caelum. Permanently. Do not reset. Let the dark take you."
The screen went black.
Dead silence filled the room.
Silas slowly turned to look at me. The tactical gears were turning in her head. The brutal, cold math of a captain who realized the only way to save humanity was to execute one of her own men.
"Silas... don't," Rook warned, stepping between us.
Before Silas could speak, the concrete floor violently shook. Dust rained down from the ceiling.
"What was that?!" Vesper cried out, grabbing a console for balance.
"The countdown," I said numbly, staring at the blank screen. "It wasn't just counting down to the video. The power surge... it broadcasted our coordinates."
BOOM.
The heavy steel blast doors buckled inward. Red laser sights cut through the darkness of the hall.
"The Enemy is here," Silas yelled, raising her gun.
I just stood there. I didn't reach for my weapon. I didn't activate my Overdrive. For the first time in 4,112 lifetimes... I didn't know if I wanted to survive.
[END OF VOLUME 4]