Chapter 97: The Scalpel Doesn’t Cut the Code I stood over the child’s console. Her face glowed on the screen, small fingers curled around the rabbit’s frayed ear. She didn’t know what was coming. She didn’t know she was already dead. Again. And again. And again. The scalpel sat heavy in my palm. Cold. Familiar. Elias had held it last. He’d used it to cut himself open, to bleed truth onto the machine, to dissolve into nothing so I could stand here. So I could choose. I could type the command. Again. Again. Again. REINSTATE PROTOCOL ZERO — FULL RECURSION. I could watch her smile fade as the counter ticked down. I could listen to her giggle turn to confusion, then panic, then silence. I could reset her. Wipe her. Send her back into the loop like all the others. Like Elias had done to me. Like I had done to him. I raised my hand. Not to type. To smash. The scalpel came down hard on the console’s center. Glass cracked. Sparks spat. The screen flickered, then died with a choked gasp. Alarms didn’t scream. They stuttered. A broken cough of sound, mechanical and confused. Red lights pulsed once, twice, then froze mid-flash. Every screen around me locked. Every counter stopped. 299. 287. 143. 07. 03. 01. Frozen. Not dead. Not saved. Just… paused. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t need to. I felt it. The machine holding its breath. The system caught between commands. The recursion broken. The loop cracked open. I turned to the central monitor. The master screen. The one Elias had used to erase himself. The one that now bore my name. SYSTEM ADMIN: MIRABEL VARGA — ACTIVE I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t think about the child. I didn’t think about Elias. I didn’t think about the hundreds of faces now suspended in digital purgatory. I thought about the blue ribbon. I thought about the hospital bed. I thought about the scalpel in my hand when I was six and he was ten and he promised he’d stay. I typed. TERMINATE PROTOCOL ZERO — PERMANENT LOCK. I hit enter. The machine didn’t sigh. It didn’t groan. It didn’t beg. It just… accepted. Like it had been waiting. Like it had known this was coming. Like Elias had built this escape hatch and buried it under layers of cruelty, just for me to find. The central screen flickered. The words dissolved. New ones formed. CONFIRMATION REQUIRED: FINAL OVERRIDE — IRREVERSIBLE I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe. I pressed enter again. The screen went black. Then white. Then black again. Then nothing. The hum of the machine dropped to a whisper. Then silence. Not the silence of death. The silence of surrender. I turned. The first subject’s screen was still lit. The young man. Dark hair. Wide eyes. The one Elias had watched first. The one I had watched first. The one who had stared at the photograph and not known himself. His eyes snapped open. Not confused. Not scared. Aware. He looked past the camera. Past the walls. Past the machine. He looked at me. His lips moved. “Mirabel?” The walls around him began to dissolve. Not like mist. Not like smoke. Not like anything that leaves a trace. They just… unmade themselves.