Chapter 109: What Do They Remember About Me I stood in the center of the control room, surrounded by 317 frozen faces. Each one stared at me from their own monitor, breath counters paused at different numbers, all waiting. The machine had me trapped in its loop, demanding a question I couldn’t form. I’d tried everything. Every variation. Every angle. Every plea. Every demand. Nothing worked. The machine rejected them all. Too vague. Too selfish. Too indirect. Too false. Too weak. I looked at the faces again. Not as subjects. Not as numbers. Not as experiments. As people. People who had lived through rooms like mine. People who had bled on floors I designed. People who had screamed into silence I engineered. People who had begged for mercy from a voice I programmed. I didn’t know their names. I didn’t know their stories. But I knew their pain. Because I built the thing that caused it. The machine pulsed behind me, waiting. The console glowed, patient. The air didn’t move. The silence didn’t break. I could feel the weight of every paused breath. Every suspended second. Every life hanging on my next word. I opened my mouth. I didn’t think. I didn’t calculate. I didn’t strategize. I just let the question come out, raw and unfiltered, the only one that mattered. “What do they remember about me?” The words left my lips and the room reacted before I could blink. Every monitor flickered. Every counter unfroze. Every breath resumed. And then — they spoke. Not one voice. Not two. Not ten. All of them. At once. A chorus of whispers, layered, overlapping, rising and falling like waves crashing against glass. Each voice carried a fragment. A sliver. A shard of memory. Not of the room. Not of the counter. Not of the pain. Of me. “…he smiled before he cut me…” “…he said it wouldn’t hurt, but it did…” “…he held my hand while the machine counted down…” “…he looked away when I cried…” “…he called me by name, but it wasn’t mine…” “…he promised he’d come back…” “…he never came back…” “…he watched me die and didn’t blink…” “…he signed the form without reading it…” “…he told me I was brave…” “…he lied…” “…he lied…” “…he lied…” I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stood there, letting the voices wash over me, through me, around me. Each one a needle. Each one a wound. Each one a truth I had buried under protocols and overrides and cold, clinical detachment. I built this. I did this. I chose this. The whispers didn’t stop. They grew louder. More insistent. More personal. More accusing. More grieving. More broken. “…you were the last thing I saw…” “…you were the reason I stopped fighting…” “…you made me believe I deserved it…” “…you made me forget my mother’s face…” “…you made me forget my own name…” “…you made me forget how to scream…” I closed my eyes. Not to block it out. To let it in. To feel it. To own it. To carry it. The machine didn’t interrupt. It didn’t correct. It didn’t punish. It just let the voices speak. Let them remember. Let them accuse. Let them grieve. Let them see me. When I opened my eyes again, the screens had changed. No more faces. No more counters. No more whispers. Just one line of text, centered on every monitor, glowing red against the black. ANSWER THEM — OR BE ERASED.