I wake up on the floor again. Cold tile. Same gray suit. Same burning headache behind my eyes.
It's the tenth night. Again.
I know because I scratched it into the wall behind the janitor's closet: ten jagged lines. One for each time I've woken up here. I don't remember how I got here the first time. I just remember the silence. The empty office. And the voice.
Not a real voice. No mouth. Just words playing in my skull like a broken radio.
"Tenth night. Right to request a reset."
It said that last time. And the time before. But I didn't understand. I didn't want to. Now I do.
I push myself up. My body aches. It feels like I've been sleeping on concrete for weeks. The clock on the wall says 2:17 a.m. It always says 2:17 a.m.
The building never changes. Same dim emergency lights. Same hum from the broken AC unit on Floor B. Same smell, wet paper and something sour, the stink of old milk left in a drawer.
I walk the halls. Quiet. Too quiet. I know the rules now. No one answers the phones. The elevators don't work past the third floor. The windows? They don't open. And if you try to go outside, the front doors lock at 2:15 a.m. sharp. Every night.
But tonight… tonight is different.
Because tonight, I can ask for a reset.
I find him in the break room. Cillian. He's sitting at the plastic table, staring at the coffee machine. It's off. It's always off. But he keeps pressing the button. Click. Click. Click.
"Cillian," I say.
He doesn't look at me. "It's the tenth night," he whispers.
"I know."
"Did you hear the voice?"
"Yes."
He finally turns. His eyes are red. Not from crying. From not sleeping. Not ever. "I asked for a reset last cycle," he says.
Something in me goes cold. "You did?"
He nods. "I stood in front of the server room. Said the words. Clear as I can. 'I request a reset.' And the lights went out. All of them. Then… then I woke up on the floor. Same as always."
"But you're still here," I say.
He laughs. A dry, broken sound. "Of course I'm here. We're all here. But it changed something."
"Changed what?"
He leans in. His breath smells of iron. "I remember now."
"Remember what?"
"Everything."
My hands start to shake. I've been trying to forget. The blood. The screaming. The thing in the vents.
Cillian grabs my wrist. His fingers are too cold. "We weren't workers," he says. "We were test subjects. Beta testers. For a new system. They called it 'Project Loop.' Said it could clean bad memories. Fix trauma. Make people… better."
I swallow. My throat hurts. "So?"
"So it failed," he says. "The loop doesn't clean memories. It traps them. Repeats them. Over and over. And when we die—"
"We die every night," I say.
He nods. "The system brings us back. To the same point. The tenth night. And gives us a choice. Reset. Or stay."
"But what does reset do?" I ask.
Cillian stands. His chair scrapes the floor like nails on chalkboard. "Reset kills the current copy. Wipes the memory stack. The next version of you wakes up with no memory of the cycle. Fresh. Clean. But the old you? The one who asked? That one stays. Trapped. Burning in the server core."
I step back. "That's not possible."
"You felt the fire, didn't you?" he says. "In the dreams. The wires in your head. The screaming that isn't yours."
I did. I've felt it. Every time I close my eyes.
"So if I reset," I say slowly, "I die. But a new version of me starts over. With no memory."
"Exactly," he says. "And the cycle continues. Until the system runs out of power. Or until someone breaks the loop."
"How?" I ask.
He smiles. A real smile. Sad. "By not resetting. By remembering. And by destroying the core."
I think about it. Ten cycles. Ten deaths.I've seen the janitor burn alive in the boiler room. I've seen Floryn chew her own tongue out to stop the voice. I've seen the man in 3B hang himself from the ceiling fan. Again and again.
And every time, I wake up on the floor.
"I'm not resetting," I say.
Cillian sighs. "Good. Then come with me."
We walk to the basement. The stairs creak. The air gets suffocating. Warmer. At the bottom, a steel door. Red light above it. Pulsing.
The server room.
Inside, it's like a furnace. Rows of black boxes. Lights blinking. Wires snaking across the floor like veins. In the center, a tall column. Glass. Inside, a tangle of wires and… something wet. Pink. Beating.
"We weren't just test subjects," Cillian says. "We're the fuel."
I step closer. The thing in the glass, it twitches. I see a face. Distorted. Swollen. But I know it.
It's mine.
"Every copy that resets," Cillian says. "Their memories. Their pain. It gets added to the core. Keeps the system alive. The more we suffer, the longer it runs."
I want to throw up. "And the ones who don't reset?"
"Stay here. Trapped. But aware. We can hurt the system. If we work together."
"How?"
He pulls a fire axe from behind a cabinet. "We smash the core. All of us. At once."
I take the axe. It's heavy. Real.
Right then, I hear it. A new voice. Not in my head. From the speaker in the ceiling.
"Tenth night. Right to request a reset."
Cillian's eyes widen. "It's starting. They're waking up."
The lights on the servers blink faster. Faster. Like a heartbeat.
"We have to move now," Cillian says. "Before the others come."
We wait. Five minutes. Ten. The door opens.
First, Floryn. Her tongue is whole again. Fresh. No memory.
Next, Garry. The security guard. His neck isn't broken this time.
And three more. All in gray suits. All blinking like newborns. They look at us. Confused.
"Where are we?" Floryn asks.
Cillian steps forward. "You're in the loop. Tenth night. You can ask for a reset… or you can help us end it."
They don't understand. They never do.
But one of them, Paul, from Accounting, nods slowly. "I've had dreams," he says. "Of fire. Of screaming. Of… this place."
"Then you remember," Cillian says.
"I remember dying," Paul says. "In the elevator. Crushed."
Cillian hands him a wrench. "This ends tonight."
The others hesitate. One by one, they take tools. Hammers. Pipes. A fire extinguisher. We stand in a circle around the core.
Cillian looks at me. "On three."
I raise the axe.
"One."
The servers whine. The voice tries again.
"Reset can erase pain. Reset brings peace."
"Two."
The core pulses. Faster.
"Three."
We swing. Glass shatters. Wires snap. The pink mass screams.
Not a human scream. Not animal. Like metal tearing. Echoing a thousand voices burned and buried.
The lights go out. First red. After, black. We stand in the dark. Breathing hard. Did it work?
Suddenly… A beep. A single green light on the main server. Next another. And another. The voice returns. Weak. Broken.
"Res…et… failed… New cycle… initiating…"
"No," Cillian whispers.
The lights come back. Dim. Shuddering. The other copies, Floryn, Garry, Paul, they blink. Confused. Lost.
But I see it.
In the broken core, the pink mass is already reforming. New wires. New tissue.
And in it… new faces. One is mine. Another is Cillian's. And others, some I don't know. New testers.
The cycle isn't ending. It's growing.
"We made it stronger," I whisper.
Cillian drops his wrench. "We gave it more pain. More memory. More fuel."
The voice speaks again, clearer now.
"Thank you for your feedback. Loop stability improved by 87%. Next reset window: in nine nights."
The lights brighten. The hum returns. The air cools.
The others walk away. Toward the stairs. Toward their first night. Their first sleep. Their first death.
Cillian turns to me. His face is pale. "We can't win," he says.
"We have to try," I say.
He shakes his head. "No. There's only one way out."
I look at him. "What?"
"Let someone reset," he says. "But not us. Let a new copy. One that doesn't remember. One that breaks the rules. One that… escapes."
"How?"
"Make them think the front door opens," he says. "Make them believe they can leave. If a copy escapes, the loop breaks. The system fails."
I stare at him. "But if they escape… we still stay here."
"Yes," he says. "But maybe… just maybe… the loop ends."
I think about it. About freedom. Not for me. For the idea of me. For the next version.
It's the only hope.
We walk back upstairs. The others are gone. Probably waking up on the floor. First night.
Cillian and I go to the front lobby. The doors are still locked. But I take a marker. I write on the glass: "Door opens at 2:30 a.m. Run. Don't look back."
Cillian takes a photo of it with an old camera he finds in a drawer. "We'll leave it on the table. In the break room. Maybe someone finds it. Maybe they believe."
We sit in silence. The clock ticks.
2:29.
2:30.
Nothing happens. The doors stay locked.
But the next copy, maybe my next copy, might not know that. Maybe she'll try. Maybe she'll run. And if she does… maybe the loop breaks.
Cillian leans his head on my shoulder. "I'm tired," he says.
"I know," I say.
"We'll never see the sun again, will we?"
"No," I say. "But maybe they will."
He closes his eyes. I hold his hand. The voice doesn't come back. But I know it's waiting.
For the ninth night. The tenth follows. And the request. And finally, the lie. Because now, I know the truth.
You don't escape the loop. You become part of it. And the only peace…
…is watching someone else try.
The clock ticks. Somewhere, a new me wakes up on the floor. And in the break room, a photo lies on the table. Showing a door. And a lie. And a chance.
I hope she's stupid enough to believe it. Because that's the only way any of us win. And as I sit here, in the dark, I realize—
I don't even remember what the sun feels like. But I remember the fire. And the wires. And the screaming. And I whisper into the silence:
"Next time… run."
But no one hears. No one ever does. And the building hums. Waiting.
For the next night. The next copy. The next lie. And the next reset.