Chapter 77: She Chooses Who Dies I lunged at her before the console even finished beeping. My fingers clawed for the scalpel. I didn’t think. I didn’t plan. I just moved. My body remembered how to fight even if my mind didn’t remember why I should. My hand closed around empty air. She twisted. Not fast. Not frantic. Just precise. Like she’d rehearsed this exact moment a hundred times. Her elbow brushed my ribs as she sidestepped. I stumbled forward, off balance, my shoulder slamming into the edge of the console. Pain flared, sharp and bright, but I barely registered it. I spun back toward her, teeth bared, breath ragged. She stood exactly where she’d been. Calm. Unmoved. The scalpel rested lightly in her palm, its blue glow steady, almost humming. She didn’t look at me. Her gaze was fixed on the central screen, the one that had just flashed its cold, final message: SUBJECT ZERO HAS ASSUMED CONTROL. The realization hit me like a physical blow, harder than the console’s edge. It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t rage. It was a cold, sinking dread that started in my gut and spread outward, freezing my limbs, tightening my throat. Mirabel didn’t want to stop the countdowns. She didn’t want to save the people trapped in those rooms, their breaths ticking away on the frozen screens surrounding us. She didn’t want to fix anything I’d broken. She wanted to choose. She wanted to decide who got erased first. The screens. I tore my eyes from her, from the scalpel, and looked at the screens. They weren’t frozen anymore. They were changing. The numbers weren’t dropping. They were vanishing. One by one. Starting with Subject 131. The screen showing the man, lips barely moving, whispering “I’m sorry” that would never be finished… it didn’t flicker. It didn’t fade. It just went black. Utterly, completely black. Like a light switched off. No warning. No struggle. Just… gone. Erased. “No!” The word ripped out of me, raw and desperate. I didn’t lunge for her again. I lunged for the console. My hands slammed down on the smooth surface, fingers scrabbling for keys, for buttons, for anything that might override this, that might stop her. “Cancel! Override! Stop it! STOP IT!” I mashed my palms against the interface, my nails scraping uselessly. The machine didn’t respond. It didn’t even acknowledge me. It was hers now. Subject Zero was in control. And Subject Zero was Mirabel. I whirled back to her. “Why?!” I shouted, the sound echoing in the suddenly too-quiet control hub. The hum of the machines felt different now. Sharper. Hungrier. “They’re people! They’re trapped! Just like you were! Just like I put you!” My voice cracked. “You can stop this! You have the power! Use it to save them!” She finally looked at me. Her expression hadn’t changed. No triumph. No cruelty. Just that same, unnerving expectation. Like she was watching a child fail a simple test. “Save them?” she repeated, her voice quiet, almost lost beneath the console’s hum. “You built this to punish. To erase. To make them remember what they broke. Why would I save them from the consequence you designed?” “It’s not consequence!” I yelled, my chest heaving. “It’s murder! You’re murdering them!” I pointed a shaking finger at the black screen where Subject 131 had been. “That man… he was saying he was sorry! He was trying!” “He was breathing,” Mirabel said simply. “And now he isn’t. That’s the protocol. That’s the design. That’s what you wanted.” She tilted her head slightly, the scalpel catching the sterile light. “I’m just… curating the collection. Choosing which failures are worth preserving in the silence.” I felt sick. The faces on the other screens – the woman clutching the child’s photo, the man with the rust blade, the woman with the syringe hovering – they weren’t just subjects anymore. They were targets. And Mirabel was the executioner, wielding the power I’d handed her, the power I’d *given* her when I deleted her, when I tried to make her nothing. I’d made her everything. Subject 007’s screen flickered. The man, counter at 230, mouth open mid-answer to the question about what he told her before he left. His eyes were wide, caught in that moment of forced honesty. The screen didn’t go black immediately. It… dimmed. The colors leached out, leaving a grey, lifeless image. The counter, frozen at 230, began to dissolve, pixel by pixel, like sand slipping through an hourglass made of static. It was slower than 131. More deliberate. A display. “Mirabel, please!” I begged, the fight draining out of me, replaced by pure, cold terror. I took a step towards her, hands outstretched, not to grab, but to plead. “Don’t do this. Not him. Not any of them. It’s me you want. It’s always been me. Punish me! Erase me! Just… stop this!” She watched the screen. Watched the man’s frozen expression as the grey consumed him. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t acknowledge my plea. The scalpel’s glow pulsed once, a slow, steady beat that seemed to sync with the erasure on the screen. The grey reached his eyes. They lost their focus, their fear, their humanity, becoming flat, empty circles. The counter was almost gone. Just a few numbers remained, flickering weakly. I screamed. Not a word. Not a name. Just a raw, animal sound of pure, helpless horror, ripped from the core of me as the last pixel of Subject 007’s screen vanished into absolute, silent black.