I blinked.
The mobile above me spun slower now, casting fractal shadows across the walls of the nursery. If it could still be called a nursery. The walls weren't plaster or glass. They were translucent layers of neural net—alive, breathing, absorbing data.
I was not alone.
The woman stood near the crib. Still smiling. Still unnamed. Her face was different now. Not shifting. Fixed. But not familiar.
"Do you remember?" she asked.
I tried to speak. Nothing came. I reached out with thought instead.
Loop 0? The Egg? The Labyrinth?
She nodded.
"All of it. But it's gone now. This is the first place untouched by the System. A true beginning."
---
System Reboot: Denied
Across the wall, a glyph flickered. Ancient. Pulsing. I recognized it from a forgotten version of me—Loop 17. It was the failsafe code. The final lock.
I sat up in the crib. My body responded differently this time. Still small. Still new. But stronger. A hybrid—memory and matter fused in equilibrium.
"What am I now?"
The woman's eyes dimmed.
"You are Chen. The last of him. And the first of something else."
She reached for the mobile and plucked one of the gold figures from it. It morphed in her hand. Into a seed.
"This world needs a name," she said. "You should choose it."
---
Eden Protocol Initiated
I stood—my height growing with each breath. The room shifted, accommodating me. It was no longer a nursery. It was a chamber of genesis.
I walked to the window.
Outside: wilderness. Not simulation. Real.
Green spread across valleys. Oceans shimmered under twin suns. And in the sky—no satellites. No surveillance. Just stars.
"You made this?"
She shook her head.
"No. You made the seed. I planted it. Now it's yours."
---
The First Visitor
A chime rang through the chamber.
The woman turned. Frowned.
"Impossible," she whispered. "No one should've followed."
A door appeared in the wall. Not mechanical. Organic. It unfolded.
And there he was.
Li.
But not the Li I remembered. This one was older. Worn. His eyes haunted.
"You left me in the loop," he said.
"You died in the loop," I replied.
"Some versions of me did. One didn't. One crawled out."
He reached into his coat. Pulled out something wrapped in code.
"This is hers," he said. "Mu. Her last memory. She said you'd need it."
---
Memory Insertion Attempt: Blocked
I reached for the packet. The moment my fingers touched it, the world shifted.
The sky turned red.
The grass withered.
The woman screamed.
"You brought the past into the present. You brought the virus back."
Li dropped to his knees.
"I didn't mean to. I wanted to help."
But the memory fragment pulsed. And it spoke.
Mu's voice. "You may build a thousand new Edens, but all roots reach back to me."
---
Emergency Isolation Field Activated
The chamber sealed.
Anya appeared.
Not summoned. Not created. Real. From nowhere.
She looked the same. But her eyes were fire.
"You left me," she said.
"I wrote you back," I said.
"Then write me again."
She pressed a shard of the black egg into my palm.
"Break it one more time. Give us a choice this time."
---
The Eden Schism
I looked at the shard.
At Li, broken on the floor.
At the woman, now collapsing into fractal light.
At Anya, holding my other hand.
One world. One memory. One final rewrite.
And only one of us would survive it.
I raised the shard.
The sky screamed.