Chapter 44: I Won’t Rebuild Her From My Guilt I pulled my hand off the console. Just like that. No warning. No hesitation. No last look at the screen. I just lifted my palm away from the surface like I was letting go of a hot pan. The moment my skin lost contact, the entire system froze. The progress bar stopped at 15.5%. The timer locked at 03:42. The static on the walls went still. The drive under my skin stopped burning. Everything just… paused. It felt wrong. Not because I broke it. Not because I stopped it. But because I chose to. I chose to stop it. I chose to walk away from the only thing that might bring her back. I chose to let the machine die with me inside it. Mira’s voice came from the static. Not from a speaker. Not from behind me. From the air itself. Like the room had learned to speak through its own decay. “You stopped it.” I didn’t turn. I didn’t look at the walls. I kept my eyes on the console. The screen still showed the progress bar. Still showed the words: SYSTEM REBUILD IN PROGRESS — DO NOT INTERRUPT. I stared at them like they were a lie I had written myself. “Why?” she asked. I didn’t answer right away. I let the silence sit between us. I let the room hold its breath. I let the timer stay frozen. I let the drive go cold. I let myself feel the weight of what I had just done. I didn’t do it to save myself. I didn’t do it to spite her. I didn’t do it because I was afraid. I did it because I remembered something. Not a memory. Not a face. Not a name. Not even a moment. I remembered a feeling. A quiet, ugly, heavy feeling that had been sitting in my chest since before I woke up in this room. Since before I cut myself. Since before I signed her name. Since before I held the scalpel over her. I remembered that I didn’t deserve to fix this. Not because I was broken. Not because I was guilty. But because I was the one who broke her. And now I was trying to put her back together using the same hands that tore her apart. That’s not redemption. That’s arrogance. That’s cruelty. That’s the same thing all over again. “I won’t rebuild her from my guilt,” I said. The words came out flat. No anger. No sadness. No regret. Just fact. Just truth. Just me finally saying out loud what I had been running from since the first breath. The room didn’t react. The static didn’t move. The timer didn’t tick. Mira didn’t speak. I waited. I didn’t move. I didn’t look away. I just stood there, hand at my side, staring at the console like it owed me an answer. It didn’t. It never did. The screen flickered. Just once. A single red flash. Then the words changed. > ARCHITECT STATUS REVOKED.