Chapter 103: The Last Command I didn’t move for a long time after he said it. The words sat between us like a blade laid across my throat. Not sharp. Not yet. But heavy. Real. I wanted to ask why. I wanted to scream. I wanted to turn and run until my lungs gave out and the walls stopped chasing me. But none of that mattered now. He wasn’t asking me to understand. He was asking me to choose. Subject 001 watched me from every screen. Not with anger. Not with pity. Just with eyes that had seen everything I’d done and still waited. Like he knew I’d come to this. Like he’d built the path that led me here. I lowered my head. My fingers curled around the scalpel. Cold metal. Familiar weight. I’d held it too many times. Used it too many times. On him. On myself. On the machine. On the lies. I stepped toward the console. The floor didn’t shake. The air didn’t change. The screens didn’t flicker. Nothing dramatic. Just me walking. Just me choosing. I placed the scalpel down on the edge of the console. Not gently. Not angrily. Just placed it. Like setting down a tool after the job is done. Or before it begins. I typed. One word first. DEFINE The screen blinked. A single underscore. Waiting. I didn’t hesitate. NEW PROTOCOL The underscore vanished. The screen went blank for half a second. Then reappeared. Empty. Ready. I took a breath. Not because I needed to. Not because the counter told me to. Just because I could. Because no one was counting anymore. I typed again. PROTOCOL OMEGA I paused. My fingers hovered. I thought of Elias. His hands on the console. His blood on the panel. His name on every form. His silence in every room. I thought of the child with the rabbit. The woman with the blue ribbon. The faces on the screens. The breaths I stole. The lives I reset. The loops I spun. I thought of Mirabel. Not the name they gave her. Not the designation. Not Subject Zero. Not the ghost in the machine. The girl. The sister. The one who laughed when juice spilled on her drawing. The one who held my hand when the lights went out. The one I promised to protect. I typed the rest. — NO MORE SUBJECTS I hit enter. The machine didn’t scream. It didn’t shake. It didn’t beg. It just listened. A low hum started beneath my feet. Not the angry buzz of alarms. Not the frantic pulse of countdowns. Just a slow, steady thrum. Like a heartbeat slowing down. Like a breath held too long finally letting go. The screens around me began to change. One by one, they went dark. Not black. Not red. Just… off. Like someone had unplugged them. The faces vanished. The numbers disappeared. The logs, the forms, the signatures, the lies—all of it, erased. Not overwritten. Not hidden. Gone. I watched them fall. Subject 131. Subject 007. Subject 002. Clara Reyes. The child with the rabbit. The boy who promised to fight. The man who signed the form. The woman who never spoke. All of them. One by one. Screen by screen. Fading into nothing. I didn’t look away. I owed them that much. The hum grew quieter. The lights above me dimmed. Not like a power failure. Like a sigh. Like a body settling into sleep after too long awake. The console in front of me flickered. The command line vanished. In its place, a single line of text. GOODBYE, MIRABEL I stared at it. No warning. No error. No final question. No last breath. Just that. Just those two words. Like a letter slipped under a door. Like a note left on a pillow. Like something meant to be found after everything else is gone. I didn’t cry. I didn’t smile. I just stood there. The screen went dark. The hum stopped. The room didn’t collapse. The walls didn’t crack. The floor didn’t open. Nothing exploded. Nothing shattered. The machine didn’t fight back. It just… ended. I turned around. The scalpel was still there. I picked it up. Not because I needed it. Not because I wanted to use it. Just because it was mine. Because I’d carried it through every lie, every cut, every memory, every death. Because it was the only thing left that remembered what I’d done. I held it in my palm. Light. Cold. Quiet. I looked at the dark screens. All of them. Every one. Blank. Empty. Free. I didn’t know what came next. I didn’t know if there was a next. I didn’t know if I was still alive. I didn’t know if any of them were. I didn’t know if the world outside still existed. I didn’t know if I wanted it to. I just knew I was done. The last monitor—the one that had shown Subject 001’s face, the one that had asked me the question I couldn’t answer—flickered one last time. Not with text. Not with a face. Just a single pixel. A tiny point of light. Blinking once. Twice. Three times. Then it went dark. And stayed that way.