Chapter 92: The Blood That Chooses I didn’t move. The scalpel lay where I dropped it, dull against the console’s edge. My blood pooled near the biometric panel, thick and slow, like syrup left out too long. I watched it. I didn’t wipe it. I didn’t try to stop the bleeding. I let it fall. I let it spread. Mirabel didn’t move either. She stood beside me, scalpel lowered, fingers loose around the handle. She wasn’t looking at the blood. She wasn’t looking at me. She was watching the screen. The words still pulsed there, faint but steady: SUBJECT ZERO ASCENSION. Like a heartbeat that refused to die. I shifted my weight. My wrist throbbed. I pressed my palm flat against the console, smearing the blood across the biometric panel. It felt warm. Sticky. Real. I leaned into it, dragging my fingers through the mess I’d made, spreading it wider. I whispered her name. “Mirabel Varga.” The machine didn’t respond right away. I waited. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t blink. I just stood there, hand pressed against the panel, blood seeping into the seams, my name hanging in the air like a question no one wanted to answer. Then the screen flickered. A thin line of static cut across the display. The words SUBJECT ZERO ASCENSION dissolved into noise. For a second, nothing replaced them. Just black. Just silence. Then a new line appeared, small and white, centered in the middle of the screen. JUDGMENT REVERSAL. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t care. It was movement. It was change. It was something other than death counting down in perfect sync with hers. I glanced at Mirabel. She hadn’t moved. Not an inch. Her eyes were still fixed on the screen. Her expression hadn’t changed. No surprise. No anger. No fear. Just stillness. Like she’d expected this. Like she’d been waiting for me to do exactly this. I turned back to the console. The screen shifted again. A partition slid open in the interface, hidden until now. No fanfare. No warning. Just a simple folder icon labeled JUDGMENT REVERSAL. I reached for the panel, fingers hovering over the controls. I didn’t touch anything yet. I wanted to see what she would do. She did nothing. I tapped the folder. The screen went black again. Then, slowly, two lines of text appeared. SUBJECT ZERO — FINAL WITNESS. CHOOSE: ERASE ARCHITECT OR ERASE SYSTEM. I stared at the words. They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. They just sat there, waiting for me to pick one. Like a menu. Like a game. Like a sentence. I looked at Mirabel. She still hadn’t moved. But her eyes—just for a second—flicked toward the panel. Not toward me. Not toward the screen. Toward the blood. Toward the place where my hand still pressed, smearing, spreading, feeding the machine with what it wanted. I pressed harder. More blood oozed out. I dragged my fingers in slow circles, making sure every sensor, every reader, every hidden wire beneath the surface tasted me. I whispered her name again. “Mirabel Varga.” The screen glitched. A new window opened beneath the first. Smaller. Sharper. No icons. No folders. Just two buttons. One red. One black. No labels. No explanations. Just color. I knew what they meant. The red one was me. Elias. The Architect. The one who built this. The one who signed the forms. The one who chose silence over surgery. The one who deleted her. The one who let her cry alone. The one who held the scalpel over the child with the blue ribbon and didn’t flinch. The black one was the system. The machine. The loop. The rooms. The breath counters. The subjects. The lies. The protocols. The punishment. The architecture of suffering I designed brick by brick, line by line, breath by breath. Erasing me meant freeing them. Erasing the system meant keeping me—and condemning her. I looked at Mirabel. She still hadn’t moved. But now her eyes were on me. Not the screen. Not the blood. Me. Her face was blank. Empty. Like a monitor before it boots up. Like a subject before the first question. Like a patient before the first cut. I turned back to the screen. My breath caught. Not because I was afraid. Not because I didn’t know what to do. But because for the first time since I woke up in that first room with the counter at 300, I understood what this was. This wasn’t a test. This wasn’t a punishment. This wasn’t even justice. This was a mirror. And the only thing staring back at me was the man who made all of this happen. I lifted my hand from the panel. The blood dripped off my fingertips. I wiped it on my shirt. I didn’t care if it stained. I didn’t care if it ruined the fabric. I just needed my hand clean enough to make the choice. I hovered my finger over the red button. Erasing me meant they all walked out. Every subject. Every face on every screen. Every counter that climbed instead of fell. Every child who cried in a room with no doors. Every sister who waited for a brother who never came back. Every lie I buried under layers of code and silence. It meant Mirabel lived. Not as Subject Zero. Not as a ghost in the machine. Not as a memory I carved out of my own skull. As Mirabel. Real. Whole. Free. I moved my finger. Stopped. Hovered over the black button. Erasing the system meant I lived. Not as the Architect. Not as the surgeon. Not as the brother who broke his promise. As Elias. The man who woke up with no memory. The man who answered questions to buy breaths. The man who followed clues, cut himself, injected himself, screamed names into the dark, and walked through corridors of mirrors just to remember her face. It meant I kept breathing. It meant I kept choosing. It meant I kept lying. And it meant Mirabel stayed here. Not dead. Not alive. Stasis. Frozen. A monument to my failure. A trophy in the museum of my guilt. I looked at her. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t plead. She didn’t reach for me. She didn’t look away. She just stood there, scalpel in hand, waiting for me to pick. I looked back at the screen. The buttons didn’t change. They didn’t pulse. They didn’t taunt. They just sat there, patient, inevitable, like the breath counter that started all of this. I thought about the first room. The photograph. The chair. The envelope. The voice over the intercom. The first question. The first lie I told myself. I thought about the knife under the table. The code on the wall. The second photograph taped beneath the chair. I thought about the child’s shoe. The flooded passage. The crib in the dark. I thought about the syringe labeled FORGIVE. The music box that played her lullaby. The handprint on the steel door. I thought about the operating table. The restraints. The scalpel in my hand. The blood on the floor. The name I forgot. The name I deleted. The name I whispered into the silence. Mirabel. I thought about every breath I took that wasn’t mine. Every breath I stole. Every breath I gave back. Every breath I begged for. Every breath I didn’t deserve. I thought about her laugh. Her hands. Her voice. The way she looked at me before they took her away. The way she looked at me now. I moved my finger. Closer to the red button. Closer to the end. Closer to her. I stopped. My finger trembled. Not from fear. Not from pain. From knowing. Knowing that whatever I picked, I would regret it. Knowing that whatever I picked, I would carry it. Knowing that whatever I picked, it wouldn’t fix anything. It would just be the last thing I ever chose. I looked at Mirabel. She blinked. Once. Slow. Like she was waking up. Like she was remembering. Like she was forgiving me. Or sentencing me. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask. I didn’t speak. I just moved my finger. And pressed the button.