Chapter 117: You Finally Chose Mercy I crawled. My knees scraped against the floor. My palms left smears behind me. Blood. Sweat. Whatever came out when the body breaks but doesn’t stop. The child’s screen was gone. Just black glass now, cracked in the center like a spider had crawled out from inside it. I didn’t look at it again. I kept my eyes on the terminal. The only thing left glowing in the room. Mirabel’s voice still hung in the air. Not loud. Not angry. Just there. Like she’d whispered into my ear and stepped back, waiting to see what I’d do with it. I reached the terminal. My fingers found the edge. Cold metal. I pulled myself up. My arms shook. My breath came in short bursts. I didn’t count them. I didn’t care anymore. Let it run out. Let it all run out. I leaned over the keyboard. My fingers hovered. I didn’t know if the machine would listen. I didn’t know if Mirabel would stop me. I didn’t know if I even had the right to do this. But I typed. TERMINATE ALL LOOPS I hit space. OVERRIDE MIRABEL I didn’t pause. I didn’t second-guess. I pressed enter. The machine hesitated. Not long. Just a beat. A single breath. Like it was checking my pulse. Like it was making sure I meant it. Then it accepted. Every screen in the room went black. Not one by one. Not in sequence. All at once. Like someone had pulled a plug. Like the whole system had exhaled and decided not to breathe back in. The hum that had lived in the walls since I first woke up—it stopped. The flicker of light behind the panels, the low thrum under my feet, the whisper of code running through the air—it all just… ended. Silence. Not the silence of waiting. Not the silence of threat. Just silence. Empty. Clean. Like the room had been wiped. I looked up. The central monitor—the one that had shown Mirabel’s face, her eyes, her mouth forming words that cut deeper than any scalpel—flickered one last time. Her face appeared. Not angry. Not triumphant. Just there. Watching me. Like she’d been waiting for this exact moment since the first time I signed a form without reading it. Since the first time I told myself it was necessary. Since the first time I looked away. Her lips moved. “You finally chose mercy.” Then the screen went dark. The room powered down. No lights. No glow. No hum. No voice. No breath counter ticking above my head. No photograph waiting to be opened. No intercom waiting to ask me a question. Just me. And the dark. And the faint smell of ozone. Like something had burned out. Like something had been unplugged. Like something had finally, after all this time, been allowed to rest. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I didn’t even breathe. I just stood there. In the dark. In the silence. In the smell of something ending. And waited.