Chapter 75: Now You Need Me I stared at the prompt. Red letters. Bold. Unblinking. TERMINATE ALL SUBJECTS. My finger hovered over the key. Not because I wanted to press it. Not because I was deciding. I hovered because my body refused to move. My mind had already made the choice. My hands just hadn’t caught up. Mirabel stood beside me. Silent. Still. Her scalpel no longer pulsed. The blue light inside it had faded to a dull gray. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t look at the screen. She looked past it. Through it. Like she was watching something unfold in a place I couldn’t see. Her silence wasn’t waiting. It was withdrawing. She had given me the room. The console. The power. And now she was stepping back, letting me choke on it. I didn’t want to kill them. I didn’t want to save them either. I wanted to walk away. I wanted the screens to go dark. I wanted the names to vanish. I wanted the counters to stop. I wanted the whole damn thing to collapse under its own weight and bury me with it. But I couldn’t. Because I built it. I designed the prompts. I coded the pauses. I signed off on the protocols. I didn’t remember doing it, but my name was stamped on every line. My authorization. My goddamn fingerprint. I couldn’t pretend I was just a visitor here. I was the landlord. The warden. The one who turned the key and locked the door. I pressed CANCEL. The console didn’t beep. Didn’t flash. Didn’t warn. It just accepted it. Like it expected me to fold. Like it knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Every screen around me froze. Not glitched. Not broken. Frozen. Solid. Still. The live feeds of the subjects—their faces, their rooms, their counters—all locked in place. 233. 189. 112. 97. 76. 55. 38. 19. 7. 3. 1. 0. All of them. Stuck. No more ticking. No more breathing. No more movement. Just faces caught mid-scream, mid-whisper, mid-reach. Like statues carved from panic. The hum of the machines didn’t die. It just changed. Dropped an octave. Slowed its rhythm. Became something heavier. Something waiting. I turned. Mirabel was already moving. Her scalpel flared—not with warning, not with threat, but with recognition. Blue light pulsed once, hard, like a heartbeat restarting. She didn’t look at the screens. Didn’t look at the frozen counters. She looked at me. Only me. Her hand shot out, fingers closing around my forearm. Not gentle. Not angry. Just certain. Like she’d rehearsed this moment a thousand times. “You just reactivated the loop,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud. Wasn’t sharp. It was flat. Final. Like she was reading off a script she’d memorized in her sleep. I didn’t pull away. I didn’t argue. I just stood there, my arm in her grip, the console humming beneath my other hand, the entire system holding its breath around us. She didn’t let go. Didn’t need to. Her fingers were cold. Not from temperature. From stillness. From knowing. I looked back at the screens. At the faces. At the numbers that weren’t moving anymore. I built this. I designed the pauses. I wrote the code that made time stop when the architect spoke. I didn’t remember doing it. But my fingerprints were all over it. My login. My authorization. My goddamn signature at the bottom of every protocol. Subject 007: Male, 42. Counter at 233. Question 14: “What did you tell her before you left?” — frozen mid-sentence, mouth open, eyes wide. Subject 019: Female, 31. Counter at 189. Photograph of a child clutched to her chest, tears halfway down her cheeks. Subject 033: Male, 56. Counter at 112. Rust blade pressed into his forearm, blood pooling but not spreading. Subject 041: Female, 28. Counter at 97. Lips parted, whispering a name that would never leave her throat now. Subject 055: Male, 39. Counter at 76. Hand outstretched toward a door that would never open. Subject 068: Female, 45. Counter at 55. Syringe labeled “FORGIVE” hovering over her wrist, trembling but unmoving. Subject 089: Male, 33. Counter at 38. Strapped to a table, scalpel descending but never touching skin. Subject 102: Female, 29. Counter at 19. Mouth open in a scream that made no sound. Subject 117: Male, 51. Counter at 7. Finger hovering over a red button labeled “LAST BREATH.” Subject 124: Female, 36. Counter at 3. Eyes closed. Chest still. Not breathing. Not dying. Just… paused. Subject 131: Male, 44. Counter at 1. Lips barely moving. “I’m sorry” never finished. Subject 138: Female, 27. Counter at 0. Screen black. No face. No room. Just void. I scrolled. Fast. Faster. More names. More rooms. More frozen moments. More pain suspended in digital amber. All of them. Every single one. Waiting. Not for death. Not for mercy. For me. I built this. Not just the rooms. Not just the counters. Not just the questions or the photographs or the syringes or the corridors. I built the pause. I built the silence. I built the moment where everything stops and waits for the architect to speak. And now I had. Mirabel’s grip tightened. Just a fraction. Just enough to remind me she was still there. Still real. Still holding on. I didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. Not yet. I kept scrolling. Kept watching. Kept seeing the faces I’d trapped. The lives I’d suspended. The breaths I’d stolen and then put on hold. The console beeped. Not a warning. Not an error. A prompt. Center screen. Bold. Red. Flashing. > FINAL PHASE INITIATED — SELECT PRIMARY SUBJECT FOR TERMINATION. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stared at the words. They didn’t scare me. They didn’t shock me. They bored me. Like a test I’d already taken. Like a question I’d already answered. Like a sentence I’d already served. I reached for the key. Not to select. Not to confirm. To cancel again. My finger brushed the key. The screen flickered. The prompt vanished. A new one appeared. > ARCHITECT ACCESS RESTRICTED — AWAITING OVERRIDE FROM SUBJECT ZERO. I blinked. I read it again. I read it a third time. My breath caught. Not because I didn’t understand. Because I did. Subject Zero. Mirabel. She wasn’t just watching. She wasn’t just waiting. She was the key. The override. The only one who could unlock what I’d just locked. I turned to her. Slowly. My throat dry. My chest tight. My fingers numb. She was already looking at me. Not with anger. Not with pity. Not with triumph. With expectation. Like she’d been waiting for this exact second. Like she’d planned it. Like she’d let me think I had a choice so I’d walk right into this. She stepped toward the console. One step. Then another. Her scalpel glowed brighter with each step. Blue. Steady. Alive. She stopped beside me. Close enough that I could feel the heat from her skin. Close enough that I could smell the sterile scent of her clothes. Close enough that I could hear her breath. She didn’t look at the screen. She looked at me. Her lips parted. Her voice was quiet. Soft. Certain. “Now you need me.”