Convergence Point

Millbrook General Hospital shimmered like a mirage in the twilight, its architecture defying reality. Walls rippled between brick and steel, occasionally dissolving into materials that had no name in any known dimension. Each window reflected a different truth, and through them all, watchful eyes lingered. The building itself seemed to breathe, its structure held together by threads of raw probability.

Leo felt the gravitational pull strengthening with each step forward. Reality twisted around him, binding him not just to this hospital, but to every version of it that had ever existed or could exist. Behind him, his Echoes moved in perfect synchronization—seven versions of himself, each representing a path not taken, a life that spawned its own universe.

He glimpsed them in his peripheral vision: one in crisp military dress, another wearing a priest's collar, a third crackling with cybernetic augmentations that belonged to a future that never was. Their footsteps echoed strangely, the sound arriving both before and after their movements, as if time itself couldn't decide on the correct sequence.

"The equations," Jessica whispered beside him, golden mathematical formulas spiraling around her like strands of luminous DNA. "They're evolving beyond my control." Her fingers traced patterns in the air, leaving behind glowing trails that formed complex mathematical structures. Theorems spawned corollaries that devoured themselves and birthed new forms of logic. "It's like they're writing themselves now. They're... anticipating."

The four Chens moved in formation around them, their probability devices humming in discordant harmony. Each monitored a different layer of reality, but all their readings pointed to the same conclusion: something at the heart of Millbrook General was pulling at the fabric of existence like a cosmic drain.

The eldest Chen, silver streaking his hair, adjusted his device with trembling hands. "The readings are impossible. Every probability curve approaches infinity while remaining stable. It's as if—"

"—reality is holding its breath," the youngest Chen finished, her eyes wide behind goggles that revealed the quantum foam bubbling beneath normal space-time.

The parking lot had become a maze of temporal eddies. Abandoned vehicles existed in multiple states simultaneously—some rusted to shells, others factory-new, many suspended in between. A single ambulance phased in and out of existence, its siren wailing across centuries.

The hospital's revolving door spun through dimensions rather than mere space. Inside, other realities bled through: a ward where every patient wore Leo's face, each suffering a different fate; surgeons operating on reality itself, cutting away diseased timelines while probability monitors screamed in alarm; an emergency room where time pooled on the floor like mercury, reflecting past and future events in its surface.

Mike's console, now more oracle than machine, crackled with revelation. "The convergence point isn't just in the hospital," he said, voice shaking. "It is the hospital."

Leo's Echoes laughed in unison, their voices rippling through probability space. "Did you think the Weaver was the only one watching? There are older things in the mathematics. Things that remember when reality was... flexible."

"Before the patterns were fixed," said the youngest Echo, barely more than a teenager.

"Before probability collapsed into certainty," added the military Echo, his medals shifting between metals known and unknown.

They reached the lobby, where physics had surrendered to chaos. Gravity pooled in corners like liquid, drawing objects into temporary orbits. Light bent into impossible geometries, casting shadows that moved independently. The air itself pixelated, breaking down into discrete units of space-time that clicked and whirred like cosmic clockwork.

At the reception desk sat a figure—or rather, had always been sitting. It wore a nurse's uniform that shifted through decades, its nametag rearranging itself into every possible name that ever was or could be.

"We've been expecting you," it said, its voice resonating through every version of the hospital simultaneously.

Jessica's equations flared blindingly bright, her golden light turning harsh and actinic. "Leo," she gasped, shielding her eyes from her own mathematics. "The hospital—it's not just a convergence point. It's a judgment point."

The thing at the desk smiled with too many teeth, arranged in geometries that shouldn't fit inside a human mouth. The Editor was watching.

"The multiverse was meant to be fluid," the entity said. "Possibilities were meant to cross-pollinate, create new potentials. But order..." It spat the word like venom, and where its spittle hit the floor, chaos bloomed in fractal patterns. "Order calcified everything."

Near the elevators, a young doctor cycled through lifetimes—aging, dying, being reborn, living every possible career path. The gift shop sold memories that never happened and hopes not yet crushed. Leo's Echoes pressed closer, whispering different versions of his future.

Jessica's equations spun faster, no longer just predicting but fighting. "The probability curves," the eldest Chen gasped. "They're not approaching infinity anymore."

"They're approaching harmony," the youngest Chen finished.

Understanding blazed through Leo's mind. "The experiment," his cybernetic Echo murmured.

"The proof," added the priestly Echo.

"We're not just possibilities anymore," the soldier Echo realized, holstering his multi-dimensional weapon.

"We're... Synthesis," Jessica breathed.

Leo stepped forward—toward his Echoes, toward the Nurse, toward the watching Editor. "Reality doesn't need an editor," he said, his Echoes moving with him as extensions of himself rather than separate entities. "It needs a creator. Someone who doesn't just cut away the unwanted—but sees how everything fits together."

Above them, the Editor hesitated. It had come to select. Now, it had to reconsider.

As the hospital pulsed with the birth of a new reality, Leo reached out. Not to destroy. Not to choose. But to weave.

The Selection was over.

The Integration had begun.