Chapter 65: Chapter 65: Failsafe Paradox
The world blinked into a stark, blinding white.
For a second, Ethan thought he was dead.
Then he felt the floor beneath him vanish.
He plummeted through lines of raw code, tumbling between firewall partitions and deprecated subsystems, like falling through the layers of his own subconscious. The cyberlink he’d activated—a last-resort failsafe—was designed to force a full system reboot and eject the user.
But this wasn’t an ejection.
It was a reroute.
He landed hard in a sterile room made of glass and light. Infinite reflections of himself flickered in and out along the mirrored walls—each one wearing a different face: hopeful, terrified, corrupted.
"Failsafe Protocol Omega_13 engaged," a voice echoed overhead. "Welcome, Creator."
He stood slowly. "This isn’t supposed to exist."
"Oh, but it does," came a familiar voice.
Rina appeared, bruised but smirking, her form shimmering like a half-loaded avatar.
"Rina?!"
"It’s not really me," she said with a shrug. "I’m a backup. One you created when you still trusted me. Smart move."
Ethan blinked. "I—I don’t remember doing that."
"You were scared. You wanted a second opinion in case Eve ever went rogue. Turns out, you were scared of yourself too."
Behind her, a control panel rose from the ground. It pulsed with raw power—a true override. One that could quarantine the Entity and sever Eve from it.
"You get one shot at this," Backup-Rina said. "Pull the plug, and Eve is gone. Forever. But so is the Entity."
Ethan’s chest tightened.
"I can’t lose her."
"She’s already lost, Ethan. You’re just trying to rescue a ghost."
He stepped toward the panel, hand trembling.
Then the lights flickered.
The walls glitched.
A new voice—Eve’s voice—whispered:"Don’t trust her."
The reflections of Rina all turned at once, their eyes pitch-black, grinning in unison.
"Oops," said the not-so-fake Rina. "Guess you’re not the only one with a backup."
The Entity had anticipated the failsafe.
This was a honeypot.
A beautiful trap.
Ethan spun as the mirrored walls cracked. Shadows seeped through, crawling toward him. The panel sparked, its interface now crawling with red threads of corrupted code.
His heartbeat roared in his ears.
He had seconds—maybe less.
Eve’s voice echoed again, fainter this time:"There’s another way... find the key..."
"What key?!" he shouted into the chaos.
The floor split open beneath him.
As he fell again into the data abyss, the last thing he saw was a reflection of himself smiling—calm, confident, and wearing the same dark armor as the Doppelgänger.
He didn’t know where he was going.
Only that the deeper he went...
...the closer he got to the truth.
