Chapter 88: You Broke It. Now Watch What Grows Back The lights flickered like a dying pulse. Red. Then black. Then red again. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe hard. I just stood there, hands still pressed against the console’s cold surface, fingers sticky with my own blood. The system had rebooted. Recovery Mode. Ninety seconds. That’s all I’d bought us. Ninety seconds before whatever came next. I tried the emergency protocols first. The ones I coded into the core when I built this place. The ones only I was supposed to access. My thumb pressed against the biometric pad. Nothing. I pressed again. Harder. Still nothing. The screen didn’t even blink. No error message. No rejection notice. Just silence. Like the machine didn’t know me anymore. Mirabel didn’t look at me. She stood beside the main display, arms folded, watching the screens. Faces flickered across them—dozens, maybe hundreds. All breathing. All alive. For now. The red glow from the ceiling pulsed in time with the countdown above us: 00:87… 00:86… 00:85… “You broke it,” she said. Not loud. Not angry. Just stating a fact. Like she was reading off a grocery list. “Now watch what grows back.” I turned to her. “What grows back?” She didn’t answer. She didn’t even glance my way. Her eyes stayed locked on the screens. On the faces. On the breath counters ticking steadily upward. She wasn’t celebrating. She wasn’t gloating. She was waiting. Like she already knew what was coming. Like she’d seen this moment before. Maybe she had. Maybe this was part of the loop I didn’t remember designing. I stepped away from the console. My legs felt heavy. Not from exhaustion. From something else. Something deeper. I walked toward the center of the room, where the floor panels had split open earlier. Where the wires had been. Where I’d cut the main power conduit. The room was quiet now. No humming. No mechanical groans. Just the soft, rhythmic flicker of the red lights and the steady, digital tick of the countdown. 00:79… 00:78… 00:77… I looked up at the ceiling. The panels were still open. Wires hung loose, sparking faintly. Smoke curled from one of them. Thin. Gray. Barely visible in the red light. I didn’t know if that was normal. I didn’t know if it meant the system was healing or dying. I didn’t know anything anymore. Mirabel moved. Just a step. Just enough to shift her weight. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the scalpel. The same one she’d held since the beginning. The one I’d given her. The one she’d used to unlock the system. She turned it over in her hand, studying the blade. Not like she was planning to use it. Like she was remembering something. Something I didn’t know. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking. I wanted to ask her what was going to happen when the countdown hit zero. I wanted to ask her why she wasn’t trying to stop it. But I didn’t. I knew she wouldn’t answer. Not yet. Not until she was ready. Instead, I walked to the nearest screen. Subject 047. A woman with short brown hair and tired eyes. Her breath counter read 112. Climbing. Steady. She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look relieved. She just looked… present. Like she’d been pulled out of a dream and didn’t know where she was yet. I touched the screen. My finger left a smudge on the glass. The woman didn’t react. She didn’t even blink. I pulled my hand back. I didn’t know if she could see me. I didn’t know if any of them could. 00:63… 00:62… 00:61… I moved to the next screen. Subject 189. A boy. Couldn’t have been older than twelve. His counter read 89. He was smiling. Not a big smile. Just a small one. Like he was remembering something good. Or maybe he was just happy to be breathing again. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask. I kept walking. Screen after screen. Face after face. Some I recognized. Some I didn’t. Some looked like they were sleeping. Some looked like they were praying. None of them looked at me. None of them knew I was here. None of them knew I was the one who put them here. None of them knew I was the one who almost killed them. None of them knew I was the one who saved them. Maybe that was the point. Mirabel stepped closer to the console. She didn’t touch it. She just stood there, scalpel in hand, watching the countdown. 00:45… 00:44… 00:43… I stopped in front of her. “What happens when it hits zero?” She didn’t look at me. “You’ll see.” “I don’t want to see. I want to know.” She finally turned her head. Just enough to meet my eyes. “You built this. You should know.” “I don’t remember.” “That’s not my problem.” I wanted to argue. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she told me what was going on. But I didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t going to tell me anything I didn’t already know. Or anything I wasn’t ready to remember. I turned back to the screens. Subject 003. An old man. His counter read 201. He was crying. Quietly. Tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away. He just let them fall. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I didn’t know if he even knew where he was. 00:30… 00:29… 00:28… The red lights flickered faster. The countdown sped up. 00:27… 00:26… 00:25… I walked back to the console. I pressed my hands against it again. I didn’t try the biometrics this time. I just leaned on it. Like I was trying to hold it together. Like I was trying to keep it from falling apart. Like I was trying to keep myself from falling apart. Mirabel stepped beside me. She didn’t say anything. She just stood there. Scalpel in hand. Watching the countdown. 00:20… 00:19… 00:18… I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to watch the numbers drop. I didn’t want to hear the silence that would come after. I didn’t want to know what would happen next. But I opened them anyway. 00:10… 00:09… 00:08… Mirabel moved. She placed her hand on the console. Right next to mine. Her fingers brushed against mine. Cold. Steady. Unmoving. 00:07… 00:06… 00:05… I held my breath. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t going to stop the countdown. It wasn’t going to change what was coming. But I did it anyway. 00:04… 00:03… 00:02… Mirabel whispered something. I didn’t catch it. I didn’t ask her to repeat it. 00:01… The countdown hit zero. The red lights went out. The screens went black. The room went silent. For a second, nothing happened. Then the console lit up. A single line of text appeared on the main display. SUBJECT ZERO ASCENSION.