1:00 p.m. – Underground Café, Sector C
Beneath the city's gleaming surface, in a quiet café built into the subway system's forgotten veins, a few key figures met under the soft hum of flickering lights. The kind of people who used to speak in code but now spoke in fear.
"He's losing it," said Jenna, a former analyst for the Helix internal branch. "The loop's becoming unstable, and Eron's not talking about it. If it breaks, we won't reset. We'll die—for real."
Across from her sat Malik, a strategic engineer turned rogue. "We need to decide—are we with Eron or against him?"
A heavy silence followed.
Then a whisper: "There's a third option."
---
1:10 p.m. – Helix Building, Surveillance Wing
Eron watched them from a hidden feed. He'd memorized every tick in their facial muscles from hundreds of previous tries.
"They always meet here. And they always hesitate," he said aloud to himself.
But this time, they said something different—something that hadn't happened before.
His eye twitched. "An unknown variable."
---
1:15 p.m. – City Market, Surface Level
Try One passed through the crowd like a shadow. No one noticed him. They never did.
He left behind tiny disruptions—coins balanced impossibly on edges, birds that flew in perfect geometric patterns, shadows that didn't match their owners.
Every loop, he changed a few threads in the fabric.
Today, he smiled.
Today, something was unraveling—and not even Eron saw it coming.
---
1:20 p.m. – Helix Building, Eron's Office
Eron received a priority alert.
Loop Error Detected.
Time Displacement Surge in Sector A-7.
Cause: Unknown.
He leaned back, face lit only by the screen. His voice barely a whisper.
"Someone else is playing the game."
1:25 p.m. – Helix Building, Subnet Core
Lights flickered inside the restricted subnet vault. This was where Helix stored the simulation logs—recordings of every day Eron had lived. The records weren't for review, but control. Correction.
But today, an anomaly spread through the core like ink in water.
One line of corrupted code.
One log entry missing.
One timestamp that shouldn't exist.
1:22 p.m. – File Missing: Loop_097192.log
Eron stood frozen before the terminal. He had reviewed that day thousands of times. It had never gone missing—until now.
"Who deleted this?" he asked the AI.
The voice responded, "User not recognized. Entry erased at root level."
Root level. That meant someone had gained access beyond admin clearance.
His clearance.
---
1:30 p.m. – Outer City Warehouse
Try One adjusted his gloves as he moved silently through the abandoned structure. In his hand, a flash drive hummed softly. It contained only one file—a decoy log filled with fabricated failures, red herrings, and memory distortions.
He plugged it into the wall-mounted port.
The network accepted it instantly.
From across the city, Eron's system would now begin processing thousands of false variables.
Time wasn't on Eron's side anymore. It was folding.
---
1:40 p.m. – Eron's Office
Alarms triggered one after another.
Loop Memory Index Corruption: 31.3%
Chrono-Sync Drift Detected
Estimated Collapse: 7 hours, 46 minutes
Eron stared in disbelief. The master of the loop—undone by something he never anticipated:
"Someone… who remembers more than me."
2:00 p.m. – Data Nexus, Central Grid
Eron descended into the Helix Grid Chamber—the core of the entire city's neural network. Massive transparent screens floated around him, flashing collapsing timelines and converging decisions. He stood in the eye of a digital storm.
He watched thousands of simulated actions from the loop blur across the panels.
"Show me anomalies after reset 99,921," he ordered.
A projection formed—a series of subtle, almost invisible changes:
A coffee shop door, opened 0.3 seconds early.
A phone call, disconnected before it rang.
A bus route that had never existed before.
"These aren't accidents," Eron muttered.
They were traces.
Someone else had been manipulating the loop. Slowly. Carefully. So invisibly that even Eron hadn't noticed until now.
He clenched his fist. "He's not just trying to escape. He's rewriting the rules."
---
2:10 p.m. – Rooftop Garden, Tower 8
Try One stood on the rooftop, eyes closed, feeling the wind.
He had tested escape a million ways: suicide, diplomacy, destruction. Nothing worked.
But in the last few thousand tries, he stopped trying to escape.
Instead, he rewrote how Eron experienced the loop.
Every death, every conversation, every choice—he had planted seeds. Delays. Doubts. Errors.
He'd become the background radiation in Eron's perfect system.
Now, Eron's own memories were corrupted.
And for the first time…
Eron was afraid.
---
2:15 p.m. – Central Grid Collapse Warning
A new alert flashed red.
Unknown Directive Injected
Origin: Loop Phantom
Eron's face drained of color.
There was only one name he'd ever given this invisible opponent—the one he thought was a myth.
The Loop Phantom.
And now the myth was real.
2:30 p.m. – Memory Stream Vault
Eron sat alone in the vault, watching decades of his memories scroll past. Some were brutal. Some triumphant. But all felt less now—like they weren't truly his.
He blinked, rewound a day, then another.
In one, he smiled at a barista he never spoke to.
In another, he avoided a car crash he had always forgotten.
"False memories," he whispered.
They had been replaced subtly. The architecture of his mind… hacked.
Then a realization hit him.
Try One wasn't just trying to beat the loop.
He was rewriting the author.
---
3:00 p.m. – Underpass, Loopline-7
Try One met someone there—a woman. Short black hair, gray coat, distant eyes. She had no name. No past. But she'd been present in hundreds of loops. Always observing.
"You came," Try One said.
She nodded. "Your frequency's leaking. The system's destabilizing."
"Good," he said. "He needs to doubt everything."
She looked at him carefully. "You're gambling everything on this. Are you sure you want him to break?"
Try One's eyes narrowed. "I don't want him to break. I want him to wake up."
---
3:30 p.m. – Helix Core Command
Eron watched his timeline fracturing. He pulled up Try One's psychological records—compiled from over 40,000 loops. Patterns. Decisions. Preferences. Predictable.
But something had shifted.
Try One was no longer acting for escape or rebellion.
He was playing Eron.
Every conversation. Every loop. Every death—an act in a story Eron didn't realize he was part of.
Eron whispered to himself:
"You're not the failed clone… you're the original mind."
He stood slowly, a grin growing across his face.
"Then let's see how many more moves you've hidden…"