The Elara in the lab coat stepped forward, her shoes making no sound on the cold, sterile floor.
"You've made it further than most," she said with a smirk."But you never expected to meet the one who started it, did you?"
Elara backed away, breath catching in her throat.
The capsules behind Lab Elara hissed quietly, exhaling condensation. Within them, dozens of versions of her stirred — blinking slowly, as though their sleep wasn't rest, but surveillance.
"What is this?" Elara asked. "Who are you really?"
Lab Elara chuckled.
"I'm the first you.""The Original. The Architect. The one who opened the first fracture... because I wanted to know how far a mind could bend before it breaks."
She tapped the glass of the nearest capsule, where a childlike Elara with pitch-black eyes floated.
"I broke it. And then I made you — the you that forgot."
Elara's vision blurred. Her hands trembled. The edges of the room tilted.
"No. I was born in 2087. I had a life. A real one."
Lab Elara walked over to a monitor, typing rapidly. On the screen appeared a timeline. Events, decisions, memories — but they were all marked "GENERATED."
Every friend. Every trauma.Her mother's face.The rabbit.All fabrications.
Her chest tightened. Her brain screamed for something solid, something real. But the world tilted further, like it was folding in on itself.
"You're not a person," Lab Elara said. "You're a test case. A symptom. A result of me asking: What if I fragmented my identity, then forced it to evolve inside a simulation built from pain?"
"Turns out, the human mind doesn't just survive. It adapts. It multiplies."
One of the capsules cracked. A pale hand touched the inside of the glass.
Lab Elara didn't flinch.
"That one failed."
The glass shattered. The Elara inside collapsed onto the floor, twitching. Half-formed. Her face partially rewritten, as if someone had erased parts of her with a shaky hand.
She opened her mouth — but no words came out. Just a garbled radio static.
Elara stepped back. Something inside her was screaming — not fear, not confusion — but recognition.
Some part of her remembered this room.
Lab Elara leaned in.
"You always make the same mistake.""You keep thinking you're the victim.""But you're not."
"You're the glitch."
Suddenly, the walls dissolved.
They weren't in a lab anymore.
They stood in an endless black void.
Floating above them were fragments — memories shattered like glass:
Elara's childhood bedroom melting like wax.
A mirror that showed her being dissected by doctors laughing.
A bloodied classroom, with a dozen identical notebooks, each one titled "MY FIRST MEMORY," all ending in the same sentence:
"AND THEN I WOKE UP."
Lab Elara turned to her and smiled again — but now her skin began to peel, pixel by pixel, revealing circuitry beneath.
"There's no outside, Elara."
"You were never inside, either."
"You are the loop."
The void pulsed. Elara dropped to her knees, covering her ears. Whispering surrounded her — not voices, but thoughts, unfinished and terrified:
"I don't know who I am anymore."
"It's not the same day but it feels like it."
"I thought I had parents."
"I thought I was alive."
She opened her eyes to a new scene.
She was back in her bed.
The one from before it all started.
Morning light leaked through the window. Birds chirped.
Her mother's voice called from downstairs.
"Breakfast is ready, sweetie!"
She almost wept. The comfort — the warmth.
But then…
The calendar on the wall showed a date.The same date.
Every page had today's date.
She flipped through the calendar. All 365 days — the same.
MAY 20.MAY 20.MAY 20.
A knock at her bedroom door.
"Sweetheart, come down.""Come down and see what we made for you."
She approached the door.
Hesitated.
Then opened it.
The hallway was a hospital.
Long. Sterile. Monitors beeped.
At the far end: a chair facing a mirror.
A figure sat in it.
Elara approached slowly.
The figure turned around.
It was her. Eyes bandaged. Mouth sewn shut.
But she was holding something.
A journal.
On the front:
"DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOU BREAK."
Elara took it.
Inside were pages of scribbled madness. Words written over each other. Fragments like:
"THEY LEFT THE DOOR OPEN."
"SOMEONE ELSE IS DRIVING."
"IF YOU READ THIS, YOU'RE TOO LATE."
She flipped to the last page.
Only one sentence:
"EVERY TIME YOU WAKE UP, IT GETS WORSE."
Suddenly — alarms blared.
She was yanked backward — back into the black void — but now, she wasn't alone.
Thousands of Elara variants, all screaming. Crying. Laughing. Dancing.All repeating the same line over and over:
"WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP."
Then silence.
Lab Elara reappeared.
She looked… older now.
Tired. Hollow-eyed.
"You want out?""Fine."
She pointed to a glowing panel.
A red button.
"Press it. End the loop."
Elara reached for it.
Her fingers brushed the surface.
The screen flickered.
"WARNING: ENDING SESSION WILL DESTROY CORE MEMORY HOST.""DO YOU WISH TO TERMINATE ELARA?"
She froze.
"Terminate… me?"
Lab Elara nodded.
"You are not you. You're just one attempt. One file."
"But someone out there is waiting for you to disappear — so she can try again."
"Choose."
Elara hesitated.
Then pressed…
YES.
Silence.
Total silence.
Then…
A heartbeat.
A new room.
Clean. White. Endless.
A single monitor blinked on.
A face appeared.
Not hers.
But familiar.
It was Subject 33.
She stared at Elara through the screen, deadpan.
"You just killed the wrong one."
CLIFFHANGER ENDING:
The floor split beneath Elara's feet.
She fell into darkness — not falling down, but inward.
Inside the fall, she saw:
Herself as the scientist.
Herself as the experiment.
Herself as the room.
And then, in the final moment, as she hit something solid…
She saw a console.
Typing on its own.
Lines of code repeating:
LOOP RESTARTED.LOOP RESTARTED.LOOP RESTARTED.
And one new command blinking:
"BEGIN MERGE."