Chapter 106: If I’m the Question I stared at the blinking pixel. It wasn’t supposed to be there. The machine was dead. I killed it. Or I thought I did. I typed the command. I watched the screens go dark. I heard the hum die. I felt the silence settle like dust over a grave. I even said goodbye to it. And it said goodbye to me. But that pixel. It pulsed. Once. Twice. A slow, steady blink. Like a heartbeat. Like a warning. Like a dare. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just watched it. That single point of light in the black. It didn’t belong. Nothing should be alive in here anymore. Not after what I did. Not after Protocol Omega. Not after I told it no more subjects. Not after it whispered my name and shut down. But there it was. Alive. I reached for the keyboard. My fingers found the keys without looking. Muscle memory. Habit. Trauma. I typed: QUERY: SUBJECT OMEGA STATUS The screen flickered. Not the whole screen. Just the center. Like something waking up behind glass. Then the pixel vanished, swallowed by a new image. A live feed. The original room. The white walls. The chair. The table. The envelope. The counter above the door ticking down from 300. And the woman. Young. Pale. Confused. Sitting on the edge of the chair, clutching the photograph in her hands like it might explain everything. It didn’t. Because the photograph wasn’t of Elias. It was of me. Mirabel. Not the name the machine gave me. Not Subject Zero. Not the ghost in the wires. Not the architect’s regret. Just me. My face. My eyes. My hair. The version of me that existed before the scalpel, before the override, before the lies. She was staring at it. Not understanding. Not yet. But she would. The machine would make sure of that. Subject 001 didn’t just reboot the system. He seeded it. He didn’t bring back the old game. He didn’t reset the loop. He didn’t resurrect Elias’s design. He built something new. Something worse. Something personal. He made me the variable. Not the architect. Not the judge. Not the executioner. The question. The photograph in her hands wasn’t a clue. It was a trigger. A loaded gun pointed at my past. A mirror shoved in front of every subject who woke up in that room from now on. A test not of their truth, but of mine. What do you do when the face haunting you is your own? I let my hand drop from the keyboard. The feed stayed. The woman lifted the photo closer. Her lips moved. She was whispering my name. She didn’t know it yet, but she was. The machine was watching her. Watching me. Waiting. I turned away from the screen. Not because I couldn’t look. Because I needed to think. I walked to the edge of the console. My boots clicked against the floor. The only sound in the room besides the low, almost inaudible hum of the machine pretending to be dead. I picked up the scalpel. It was still warm. Or maybe that was my hand. I didn’t know anymore. I held it up. The light from the monitor glinted off the blade. Clean. Sharp. Ready. I didn’t reach for the console. I didn’t try to type another command. I didn’t smash the screen. I didn’t scream. I rolled up my sleeve. The skin on my forearm was pale. Unmarked. A blank page. A fresh start. A lie. I pressed the tip of the scalpel against my skin. Just enough to feel the pressure. Not enough to break it. Not yet. Subject 001 thought he was clever. He thought he could turn me into the new architect. The new jailer. The new god of this digital hell. He thought by putting my face in their hands, he could force me to play his game. To answer for Elias. To punish myself over and over again through strangers who didn’t know my name. He was wrong. I wasn’t Elias. I wasn’t the machine. I wasn’t the system. I was Mirabel. And if he wanted me to be the question, fine. But I would choose the answer. I dragged the scalpel down my forearm. A thin red line opened. It didn’t hurt. Not really. Not compared to everything else. The blood welled up slow. Thick. Dark. I watched it gather. Watched it drip. One drop. Two. I turned back to the console. The feed was still there. The woman was still staring at my face. The counter was at 297. I stepped forward. Pressed my bleeding wrist against the biometric panel. The machine recognized me. Of course it did. It was built to. The screen flickered again. The feed vanished. Replaced by a single line of text. AWAITING INPUT. I leaned in close. My breath fogged the screen. My blood smeared across the panel. I whispered the words into the silence, into the machine, into the face of every subject who would ever wake up holding my photograph. “If I’m the question, then I choose the answer.”