Chapter 56
The next round hits even harder. No gentle boot sequence, no fade-in; just another quantum leap sideways, all sense of time erased.
This time, I know what’s happening. The memories come like a slideshow, but the Authority’s logic can’t keep the cycles clean, so they all overlap, one on top of the other. My brain parses them in parallel.
He stands when I approach, posture so precise I half expect his vertebrae to snap from the tension.
“Doctor?” he says, voice clipped. The surprise is mine, because I’ve never met someone like him in the Authority, and certainly not one with his face.
It’s a perfect mask of indifference, until he smiles, and then the whole world gets three degrees warmer.
We exchange credentials. The conversation is painfully polite, Authority protocol drilled into every syllable. I hate him on sight.
Later, I realize I only hate how much I want to impress him.
Cycle 19: This time, he’s the interrogator.
I’m the one in the cell, hands cuffed behind my back, head full of half-remembered code and the weight of what I’ve done.
He comes in, boots echoing on the tile, and sits across from me.
No uniform, just Authority civvies. His fingers tap a rhythm on the table: three beats, pause, two beats, repeat.
He doesn’t look at me. Not directly. Instead, he reads the file, lets me sweat, lets me stew in my own terror. When he finally speaks, it’s almost gentle: “You know why you’re here, Diana?”
I say nothing, because I do, and because I know he already knows.
He tells me they’re going to wipe me. Not kill—wipe. Same difference, just with more paperwork. His face is blank, but I see the flicker of something behind his eyes.
“Is there anything you want me to remember?” he asks.
I stare at him, blank. He writes something in the margin, stands, and leaves.
I never see him again, but in every cycle after, the tapping follows me, like a heartbeat I can’t get rid of.
Cycle 67: We’re in the tunnels, both of us bleeding, both of us hunted.
There’s a drone close behind, Authority insignia stenciled bright on the hull.
Kang shoves me into an alcove, presses his hand over my mouth, and waits for the drone to pass.
His palm is rough, warm. His heart pounds so hard I feel it in my own chest.
When the drone’s gone, he lets go and says, “Why do you always get yourself into these messes, Dee?”
It’s the first time he calls me that.
I punch him in the arm, just hard enough to leave a bruise. “You’re the one who always follows me.”
He grins, the way only he can, and says, “That’s the deal, isn’t it?”
I want to kiss him, but the memory ends there. It always ends there, the Authority edits slicing it off before I can get what I want.
Cycle 88: We’re fighting side by side, a breach team in the deadlands.
The world outside is static and storm, visibility down to a meter.
I’m armed with a makeshift spike, Kang with a battered Authority issue rifle.
Every step, the Geiger counter ticks higher.
I hear him mutter the numbers under his breath, voice low and steady.
We’re supposed to clear a safe path to the node, but the real mission is survival. Kang tells me to take the left, he’ll cover the right. I nod, knowing he’s lying—he always takes the lead, always wants to be the one that gets hit first.
I see the moment it happens: the drone’s infrared sighting, the flash of blue as the coilgun fires. I shove him out of the way, take the round in the shoulder. The pain is a distant memory, nothing compared to what the node does to me later, but it stings, and I yell at him for being an idiot.
He tears a strip from his uniform to bind my wound. He calls me “stubborn,” and the word tastes like love, even though he’ll never say it out loud.
I want to laugh, but the Authority edits again, and the memory glitches, jumps to the next.
Cycle 7: I’m in a hospital, clutching the edge of the bed, sweat slick on my forehead. Kang is there, holding my hand, his other arm looped tight around my shoulders. My vision is blurred, but I see the Authority white of the room, the machines, the sensors, the blue band on my wrist.
There’s a baby crying. I know it’s mine—ours—because the noise slices through every defense I have left. Kang looks at me, and there’s so much in his eyes I almost can’t hold it.
He kisses my hand, says, “You did it, Dee.” The nurse brings the baby, wraps her in a scratchy Authority blanket, hands her to me. She’s impossibly small, perfect.
The baby smells like milk and ozone and something new.
I want to keep her forever, but as soon as I hold her, the memory shifts—the room goes cold, and someone in Authority blue wrenches her away from me.
Kang shouts, but they hold him back. They tell me it’s for the good of the Zone, for the good of the project.
I scream, and the world resets.
Cycle 112: Kang and I are fugitives. Not just rebels—actual ghosts, living on the edges of the grid.
We steal food, water, memories. We fake our own deaths three times, move camp every week.
Sometimes, when it’s just us, he reads old books to me, scavenged from the ruins.
He always picks the ones about stars, about navigation.
He tells me, “If you ever forget, just look up.”
One night, he draws the constellations on my bare back, mapping the stars with the tip of his finger. I want it to last forever, but the Authority code is stronger than wishes. The next morning, they catch us. They always do.
Cycle 28: This time, I don’t remember him at all. He spends weeks trying to get through, visiting the garden, leaving blue flowers on the windowsill, but I just smile and ask his name every time. He never gets angry. Never gives up.
Eventually, I start to remember. Not everything, but enough. The blue flower behind my ear, the way he laughs when I insult his haircut, the way my heart jumps when he looks at me.
In every cycle, we find each other.
In every cycle, they take it away.
The memories accelerate now. The node is burning hotter, cycles running at near-infinite speed.
Each time, Kang is there, somehow, even when he’s not supposed to be.
Sometimes he’s the villain, the Authority tool sent to hunt me down.
Sometimes he’s the hero, breaking me out of prison, shielding me from the worst of the violence.
Sometimes he’s just a man, tired and lonely, sharing a rationed can of coffee with me in a bunker we both know won’t last the night.
I love him in every version. I hate him in some. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is the pattern: no matter what the Authority throws at us, no matter how many times they wipe me, we always find each other.
I feel the node melting down around me. The lights flicker and die, leaving only the emergency LEDs, red and angry and alive.
My hands are fused to the terminal now, nerves shot, muscles locking in place.
My nose is bleeding again, a hot trail down the back of my throat. I can’t breathe, but I don’t care.
The memory crashes into the present with a violence that shakes my whole body.
I see the baby, again. The Authority nurse rips her from my arms. Kang shouts, but his voice is drowned by alarms. The baby is crying, a sound so pure it cuts through everything.
I want to scream. I want to kill every single person in the Authority.
Instead, I hang onto the memory. I force myself to feel every inch of it—the weight of her in my arms, the heat of her skin, the smell, the impossible beauty of her tiny fingers wrapping around mine.
I will not let them take this from me.
The node’s pain is nothing compared to this. The grief is so sharp I could cut my own throat with it.
My body shakes, hard enough to rattle the console. The terminal display is a smeared rainbow of data and error. I hear myself sobbing, ugly and raw, a sound I haven’t made since I was a child.
I don’t let go.
I replay the memory, over and over, until the image of my daughter is burned so deep in my mind the Authority could run a thousand more cycles and still not touch it.
For the first time in any of the cycles, I see her name—inked in blue on the hospital band.
Helena.
I whisper it, once, twice, and the sound steadies me.
Helena.
They can erase everything else, but not this.
I cling to the terminal, tears and snot and blood running together, and I make a promise to myself, to Kang, to the baby I never got to keep:
This time, I’m not going to lose.
This time, I’m going to finish it.
The lights stutter, and the node resets.
I’m ready for the final memory.
The final memory is a clean break from the cycles before.
No Authority labs, no blood or failure or Authority blue.
Just a clear morning, sky so pale it’s almost white, and I’m standing in a room that smells of old wood and vanilla.
My hair is done up—awkwardly, I can tell even in the memory—and I’m wearing a dress that doesn’t quite fit.
Not Authority issue, not scavenged from a bunker, but real, white, simple, borrowed.
There’s a full-length mirror by the window. I catch my own reflection: eyes wide and wild, bandage on my elbow, a streak of lipstick a shade too dark for my skin. I want to laugh, but my voice comes out small, scared. It’s the happiest day of my life, and I can’t believe I let it happen.
Outside, the wind rattles the leaves. I hear footsteps on the porch, a nervous shuffle and then a quick knock. “Dee?” It’s Kang, voice muffled by the door.
“You’re not supposed to see me,” I say, but I’m already grinning.
He cracks the door open anyway, sticks his head in.
He’s wearing a suit—Authority formal, which means it’s three sizes too big and still smells faintly of gun oil—but he’s shaved, and he’s holding a bouquet of something blue and wild from the garden.
He looks at me, really looks, and I see the shock in his eyes.
“Fuck,” he says, soft. “You’re beautiful.”
I blush. I hate it, but I do.
He steps inside, closes the door with his boot, and stands there, uncertain. For a second, I think he’s going to bolt, but instead he just smiles, slow and crooked.
“You sure about this?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. You?”
He shrugs. “Never been less sure of anything.”
We both laugh, and it’s so real, so alive, that it hurts.
The memory shifts to the ceremony— Authority doesn’t allow for religious rites, so it’s just the two of us and the old man from the hydro station, reading from a hand-scrawled sheet of paper. Kang’s hands are shaking when he takes mine. He’s sweating, but his grip is warm and steady.
He looks at me, and says, “I will always find you, Dee. Even if the world burns. I will always choose you. I will always love you”
It’s not a vow, not really. It’s a threat, a promise, a truth.
I try to answer, but my throat closes up. I just squeeze his hand, as hard as I can.
The old man fumbles the rings. They’re not even real, just two loops of twisted wire, but when Kang slides one onto my finger, it feels heavier than lead. I watch it catch the light, the flash of metal against my skin, and think: this is all I ever wanted.
The rest of the memory is a blur of kisses, laughter, the same music I heard back at sanctuary, the taste of sour wine, Kang’s arms around me. For a second, I let myself believe this was the real story, that this was the world we built together, and nothing could ever take it away.
Then the node pulls me back.
The chamber is a war zone. Alarms screaming, sparks raining from the overheads, the blue-white glow flickering so hard it’s like a strobe seizure.
The pain in my head is back, worse than before—my vision split into three, then four, then infinite.
My hands are stuck to the console, but I can feel the skin sloughing away, nerves shot, tendons singing.
Somewhere behind me, I hear footsteps—heavy, limping, boots dragging on the metal grid. The smell of blood, sweat, Authority antiseptic.
“DEE!” It’s Kang, real this time, not a memory. His voice is raw, desperate, the last gasp of someone who knows the end is near.
I try to turn, but the node won’t let me. I’m frozen in place, everything I am fused into the machine.
He staggers into view, face streaked with blood, one arm hanging useless at his side. His eyes are wild, all the green burned out of them by the light. He sees me, and his whole body jolts, like a dying battery catching a final charge.
“Let go,” he says. “Dee, you have to let go.”
I laugh, or try to. My mouth is too dry. “You know I can’t.”
He limps closer, every step a battle. The EM field is tearing him apart, I can see it—his hair standing on end, his skin rippling with tiny, electrical burns. But he doesn’t stop.
He reaches for my shoulder, grabs hold, and the pain spikes so high I nearly black out.
His hand is warm, familiar. I want to lean into it, but all I can do is shiver.
“Please, Lance,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “You have to go.”
He shakes his head. “Not leaving without you. Not again.”
I want to argue, but the terminal shrieks—a high, insistent beep that cuts through everything. The screen flashes red, brighter than blood.
OVERRIDE PROTOCOL INITIATED.
CONFIRM TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN?
Y/N
My finger hovers over the interface, trembling. If I hit yes, the node dies. The Authority grid collapses. The Zone burns, or maybe it lives, free for the first time in decades. I don’t know.
But I do know this: if I say yes, I will most likely die from the impact, and If Kang doesn’t get out of here he dies with me.
I look at him, the man I’ve loved a thousand times and lost just as many. He’s here, now, real. I want to keep him. I want to save the world, but I want him more.
I close my eyes, remember the wedding, the baby, the garden, the promise.
“I love you,” I whisper.
He smiles, broken and perfect.
“Always,” he says.
I turn back to the screen.
The world slows, then stops.
I press—