Day 100,021 – 7:00 a.m.
The alarm buzzed.
Try One didn't flinch.
He didn't reach for the alarm anymore. He didn't even blink. Thousands of mornings had taught him how to breathe without thinking, stand without a sound, and watch without reacting.
This was no longer a routine.
This was a battlefield.
He slipped on a gray hoodie and made his way out the door. His steps were measured. His eyes caught every detail: the traffic light that stayed green for 1.7 seconds longer than average. The old man feeding birds—one pigeon missing today.
The system was already off-balance.
Good.
He made his way into the alley behind the data bank tower and slipped into a maintenance door he'd unlocked 19 loops ago. Inside was a forgotten terminal, long dead to most employees. But Try One had rewired it across 32 loops to access Level-2 surveillance streams.
Today, he'd plant his move.
---
8:12 a.m. – Eron's Private Quarters
Eron was already awake, sipping bitter coffee and staring at the data ghost of Try One. The simulated model of him had become unreliable—flickering, missing reactions, losing patterns.
Try One had become unpredictable.
But Eron had adjusted.
He now reset with memory injections—giving himself two layers of consciousness. One inside the loop. One watching above it.
"Show me all deviations," Eron commanded.
The system displayed seven.
But one stood out.
Surveillance node M-9 reactivated for 0.03 seconds.
Eron leaned forward.
That node hadn't been touched in years. And Try One had no reason to go near it.
Unless...
He wasn't trying to escape. He was trying to signal.
---
9:40 a.m. – Subway Line 4, Car 11
Try One sat beside a young analyst. Her name was Jun—he'd met her in 3,741 loops. She never changed much. Always honest. Always skeptical.
Perfect for what he needed.
"Hey," he said casually, as if meeting her for the first time. "You work in data control, right?"
She blinked. "Do I know you?"
"Not yet," Try One said with a smile. "But I need your help. I think your boss is lying to you."
She narrowed her eyes. "Excuse me?"
Try One passed her a burner phone. No explanation.
On the screen: a loop recording—a fragment—showing her executing orders that were erased the next day. Orders she never remembered giving.
"I think you've been living the same day over and over."
Jun froze.
He leaned in. "And you're not the only one."
10:02 a.m. – Subway Line 4
Jun stared at the screen, her hands trembling. The footage played in silent loops — her face delivering cold, mechanical orders to a group of interns in a basement lab she had no memory of.
"What is this?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
"Proof," Try One said. "Of a lie that's bigger than you or me."
"I've never seen this lab in my life."
"No," he replied calmly. "But you've been there. Many times. You just don't remember."
Jun's eyes darted back and forth, her mind racing through denial, doubt, and dawning fear. "Is this deepfake? Are you trying to frame me?"
"If it were fake, would I know that you bite your nail on your left thumb when you feel cornered? That you hate elevators but use them anyway because the stairs smell like mold on the 9th floor? That you've had the same security badge since the day you started, and it has a micro-crack in the bottom right corner?"
Jun's breath caught.
Try One didn't break eye contact.
"I've lived today... over a hundred thousand times. I've died thousands of deaths. Some peaceful. Most not. I've read every book in the public library and decoded every back door in the company's core servers."
Jun shook her head, but her voice was quieter now. "That's not possible."
"Then explain this," he said, pressing play again. The footage jumped to a moment of her laughing at something — the same thing — in three identical scenes, same reaction, same breath.
Three loops.
Her face paled.
---
10:17 a.m. – Rooftop Café, Sector 3
Try One and Jun sat at the farthest corner, beneath the sound dampener he had installed ten loops ago. He didn't rush. Manipulating people wasn't about force — it was about weight. Give them too much too fast, and they collapse. Too little, and they forget.
She needed to tip.
"So you're saying... someone's wiping our memories every time the day ends?"
Try One shook his head. "Not someone. The day resets on its own. I'm the only one who remembers. And now, you're the first I'm showing this to."
"Why me?"
He paused for a beat. Not long enough to seem suspicious, but enough to make her feel special.
"Because you're smart. And you still question everything."
Jun looked down. "How do I know you're not manipulating me?"
"You don't," Try One said simply. "But that's the point. If you still have doubts, then good. You're thinking."
That silence... it was heavy. Pregnant with a thousand possible futures.
She met his eyes again. "What do you want from me?"
"Just access," he said. "To the core node logs. One file. One time."
She hesitated.
He added the last weight to the scale.
"You'll forget this tomorrow. You won't even know you helped me. But I will. And I'll move one step closer to breaking this loop."
Jun closed her eyes... and nodded.
12:41 p.m. – Orbital Corp Server Vault, Sublevel B
The scanner beeped green. Jun's credentials, combined with Try One's bypass script, granted access to one of the most secure server rooms in the country. The air inside was cold and silent, broken only by the humming of machines holding data worth billions.
Try One moved fast.
He knew exactly where the logs were — he had spent over 1,000 loops being caught, failing, dying… just to learn their true location. This time, he moved with precise confidence, like someone who belonged there. Because by now, he did.
He typed in the terminal commands, overriding Orbital's time-locked logs.
"You've done this before," Jun said, watching his hands fly across the keyboard.
"Hundreds of times," he answered. "But this is the first time I had the right help."
A screen popped up.
Timestamped log files. Encrypted, hidden behind a firewall so advanced that it'd take a full AI cluster days to crack it. Unless, of course, you'd spent decades in one day reverse-engineering it, bit by bit.
Try One inserted a flash drive.
"This contains a zero-second exploit I built. Took me 4,903 loops just to find the first vulnerability."
Jun's eyes widened. "You're... you're serious."
"I am now what experience looks like when time has no cost."
He hit enter.
The logs decrypted — revealing lines of data. Commands. Memory wipe protocols. Names.
Project Palindrome.
Try One's fingers paused.
"What is it?" Jun asked.
"Palindrome... it's the program that resets the day. It's artificial. A system trigger."
"You mean it's not... supernatural?"
He nodded. "No god. No curse. Just code. Someone built this."
Jun backed up a step. "Why would anyone do that?"
Try One looked at her, and for a moment, his expression cracked with something more human — pain, anger, obsession.
"To build a perfect day. To live forever in the illusion of control. But they didn't expect me."
---
1:17 p.m. – Exit Corridor, Sublevel B
Footsteps. Guards. Alarms blared.
"Damn it," Jun muttered. "They tripped on my ID being used twice!"
Try One didn't panic. "It's fine. Watch this."
As the guards rounded the corner, Try One casually dropped a pen from his coat pocket.
A guard tripped over it.
The second slipped on the first.
The third tried to avoid them and hit the glass wall.
All three went down in a moment that looked almost like slapstick… if not for how calculated it was.
Jun gawked. "That was—"
"Loop #61,340. I memorized this hallway's angles. Let's go."
They sprinted.
As they reached the exit, Jun looked at him in awe. "You've become a ghost, haven't you?"
"No," he replied. "I've become inevitable."
1:43 p.m. – Safehouse 47, Sector 3
The door slammed shut behind them, Jun panting, Try One calm as still water. The decrypted files were uploading to a secure server only he could access, bouncing between ghosted IPs.
Jun stared at the screen. "So… what now? You expose them? You end the loop?"
"No," Try One replied. "Now I understand who started it. Next, I learn why."
He pointed to one name in the decrypted logs — Dr. Emil Rathmoor.
Jun gasped. "The head of Orbital's psychological warfare division? He's…?"
"The architect," Try One confirmed. "He created Project Palindrome. The day that resets — it's his design. And it wasn't an accident."
Jun stepped back. "So all this time… you weren't trying to escape the loop."
"I was trying to own it."
---
2:15 p.m. – Try One's Mind Palace (constructed memory)
The world blinked, and Try One entered his mind space — a meticulously built memory palace where he stored intel from over 60,000 loops. Every guard rotation. Every camera delay. Every political blackmail angle.
In one corner sat a profile of Dr. Rathmoor — psychological breakdown, family, fears, motivations.
"He fears irrelevance," Try One whispered. "His biggest weakness."
He smiled.
"Time to use it."
---
3:33 p.m. – Orbital Corporation, VIP Tower Conference Room
Dr. Emil Rathmoor walked into his private office, expecting silence.
Instead, Try One sat in his chair.
"You've gotten old," Try One said.
Rathmoor froze. "You—how did you get past security?!"
"Trial and error. 100,000 times, give or take."
Rathmoor's eyes narrowed. "You're... him. The anomaly. The reason we keep getting system echoes."
"You trapped me in this loop to control your experiment," Try One replied. "But you didn't expect a rat to learn the maze better than the designer."
"What do you want?"
Try One leaned forward, voice cold and clear: "A seat at the table. Publicly. Orbital's board. I want control of the Palindrome protocol. Or tomorrow, every dirty secret you've buried in the last twenty years gets leaked."
Rathmoor laughed, a brittle sound. "You think I'd give power to a ghost?"
"You already did," Try One said, tossing a flash drive onto the desk. "This contains a list of blackmail threads on your board. I know them better than you. Because I've watched them fall, fail, confess, and break for a thousand years."
Rathmoor's breath hitched.
"You can't win," he whispered.
Try One smiled, stood, and walked past him.
"I already did."
---
4:04 p.m. – News Bulletin (in the loop)
"Breaking: An unknown individual has been appointed as a secret advisor to Orbital Corporation's board following internal restructuring…"
Jun stared at the screen.
"You're on the inside now."
Try One folded his arms, watching the sunset through a looped sky.
"I'm not just in the game," he said. "I am the game."