Chapter 72: The Loop Breaks Here I stood beside Mirabel, staring at the white door humming under her palm. It didn’t glow. It didn’t shake. It just vibrated, low and steady, like something breathing behind it. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t wait for me to say anything. She just pushed. The door slid open. Not into light. Not into memory. Not into some grand revelation or collapsing hallway of ghosts. It opened into a room. A real room. Cold. Sterile. Lit by overhead panels that didn’t flicker. No dust. No decay. No blood on the walls or names written in ink. Just clean white floors, clean white walls, and a long curved console stretching across the far side. Above the console, mounted in a grid, were screens. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Each one showed a different version of me. Not reflections. Not echoes. Not ghosts or glitches or digital puppets. Live feeds. I stepped inside. Mirabel followed. The door closed behind us without a sound. The hum didn’t stop. It just settled into the air, into my bones, into the space between my thoughts. One screen showed me signing a form at a desk, pen in hand, face blank. Another showed me walking away from a hospital bed, not looking back. Another showed me standing in a surgical theater, scalpel raised, eyes empty. Another showed me sitting alone in a dark room, head in my hands, not moving for hours. I didn’t recognize all of them. Some faces were younger. Some older. Some looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks. Some looked like they’d never slept at all. Mirabel walked to the console. She didn’t touch anything. She just stood there, arms at her sides, scalpel still in her right hand. It glowed faint blue, same as before. She didn’t look at the screens. She looked at me. “This is where you break the loop,” she said. I didn’t ask what loop. I didn’t ask how. I didn’t ask why now, why here, why this room. I already knew. The loop was me. Every version of me on those screens. Every choice. Every silence. Every signature. Every step away. Every breath I took while someone else stopped breathing. She pointed to one screen. The feed showed me in a white coat, standing over a consent form. My hand hovered over the line. Mirabel sat across from me in the feed, small, quiet, eyes fixed on the paper. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just waited. I watched myself sign it. I watched myself slide the form into a folder. I watched myself stand up and walk out of the room without looking at her. Mirabel didn’t say anything else. She just kept pointing. I walked to the console. My reflection stared back at me from the black glass surface. I didn’t look like any of the men on the screens. I looked like someone who’d been dragged through every one of those moments and left hollow. I reached for the panel. Buttons. Sliders. A keyboard. A biometric pad. I didn’t know what any of it did. I didn’t need to. I knew what I wanted to do. Override that moment. Not undo it. Not erase it. Not pretend it never happened. Override it. Make it so that version of me didn’t sign. Make it so he looked up. Make it so he asked her what she wanted. Make it so he waited for her answer. Make it so he tore the form in half and walked out with her instead of without her. I placed my hand on the biometric pad. The screen above it flashed red. ACCESS DENIED. A message scrolled across the center monitor. > BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE REQUIRED. > CONFIRM IDENTITY: ARCHITECT OR SUBJECT? I stared at the words. Architect or subject. Not Elias. Not brother. Not surgeon. Not criminal. Not victim. Architect or subject. I looked at Mirabel. She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t blinked. She just watched me, waiting. I looked back at the screen. The feed was still playing. Me signing the form. Me walking away. Me disappearing through the door. I placed my hand on the pad again. The screen flashed red again. ACCESS DENIED. > BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE REQUIRED. > CONFIRM IDENTITY: ARCHITECT OR SUBJECT? I pressed harder. I didn’t know if that would help. I didn’t care. I just needed it to work. It didn’t. The screen stayed red. Mirabel stepped closer. She didn’t touch the console. She didn’t touch me. She just stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat from her body, the pulse of the scalpel in her hand. “You have to choose,” she said. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Architect meant I built this. All of it. The room. The counter. The questions. The corridors. The mirrors. The surgeries. The erasures. The lies. The cover-ups. The silence. The guilt. The punishment. The machine. The system. The loop. Subject meant I was just caught in it. Just another version of me the system was using to punish itself. Just another ghost replaying the same failure over and over. Just another prisoner rewriting his own guilt because he couldn’t face what he’d done. I looked at the screen again. The feed had looped. Me signing the form. Me walking away. Me disappearing through the door. Over. And over. And over. Mirabel didn’t move. The scalpel in her hand pulsed. I placed my hand on the pad one more time. The screen flashed red. ACCESS DENIED. > BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE REQUIRED. > CONFIRM IDENTITY: ARCHITECT OR SUBJECT? I didn’t move my hand. I didn’t lift it. I didn’t pull away. I just stood there, staring at the words, feeling the hum of the room in my chest, feeling the weight of every breath I’d taken since I woke up in that first room with the counter at 300. Mirabel didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. I knew what she was waiting for. I knew what the machine was waiting for. I knew what I was waiting for. I just didn’t know what the answer was. Architect. Or subject. I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t type it. I didn’t press any buttons. I just thought it. Hard. Clear. Final. The screen flickered. The red faded. The message changed. > AWAITING INPUT.