A Broken Being

The sphere pulsed, its symbols shifting in patterns I couldn't read. The voice had been clear, sharp, aware.

"Subject identified."

I kept my body still, but my mind raced. It knew me.

Not just as a person standing before it, but as something specific. The way it had spoken—that cold, mechanical certainty—told me it wasn't guessing. It already had my name.

The woman beside me watched closely, waiting for a reaction. I gave her nothing.

The chamber was massive, the ceiling curving high overhead, smooth and seamless. Unlike the ruins I had explored, there was no decay here, no sign of time wearing things down. This place was maintained. Active. Alive.

I forced myself to focus. I needed to understand what I was looking at. The sphere was larger than the one in the ruins, its glow stronger, more stable. Not broken. Not flickering with corrupted data or distorted speech.

Which meant this one was still functioning the way it was meant to.

The air hummed faintly with power. The walls pulsed with that same soft glow I had seen throughout the city, energy moving through unseen veins beneath the surface. This entire place was built around this.

The sphere wasn't just another piece of the System.

It was the center of it.

I turned to the woman. My voice came out steady. "What is it?"

Her expression didn't change. "You've already spoken to one. You tell me."

I didn't answer immediately. I knew a test when I saw one. She wanted to see if I understood what I was looking at. If I had figured out what they knew.

I glanced back at the sphere. It floated in place, motionless except for the slow, pulsing shift of its symbols. Watching. Waiting.

It wasn't a person. It wasn't a living thing, not in the way we understood. But it wasn't just a machine, either.

It was a mind.

A mind that had been running for a very, very long time.

Finally, I said, "It's part of the System."

The woman nodded slightly, but her expression didn't change. "What else?"

I hesitated. The memories the first sphere had shown me—the images of cities, towers, a lost civilization—flashed through my mind.

I took a slow breath. "It's not just running the System." I looked at her. "It is the System."

She exhaled softly, almost like she had been waiting for me to realize it. "You're close."

That sent a chill down my spine. Close. Which meant I was still missing something.

I looked back at the sphere. "Then tell me."

The moment the words left my mouth, the symbols along its surface shifted.

"Access request acknowledged. Initiating data recall."

The chamber dimmed.

The soft glow along the walls flashed once, twice—then darkened, replaced by something else.

Light. Not from the sphere, not from the city's energy. A projection.

The space around me shifted, twisted—and suddenly, I wasn't in the chamber anymore.

The walls were gone.

The ceiling was gone.

And in their place, I saw a world that no longer existed.

Turgan. But not the one I knew. Not the wasteland.

The world before.

I saw towers of metal and glass, stretching toward the sky, humming with power. I saw rivers of light, flowing between buildings like liquid energy, illuminating the streets below. I saw machines, massive and intricate, moving with purpose, maintaining a city that pulsed like a living organism.

And I saw people.

Not scavengers. Not soldiers.

People who walked with purpose, who spoke to each other, who lived beneath the light of a sun that was warm, not burning. A city of order. Of structure.

A civilization that should have been impossible.

My pulse pounded in my ears. "This… this was Turgan?"

The woman beside me spoke, her voice quiet. "Yes."

I turned to her. "What happened to it?"

She didn't answer.

The projection shifted.

The sky darkened. The buildings cracked, their smooth surfaces splitting apart, the rivers of light flickering, breaking. The city collapsed in on itself, consumed by something unseen, something vast.

I heard screaming.

The images blurred, twisting into chaos—fire, metal, bodies lost in the streets. People running, fighting, falling.

Then, through the chaos, something else.

A shape. A presence.

I couldn't see it clearly. The image twisted whenever I tried to focus, but I could feel it.

Not a person.

Not a machine.

Something in between.

A voice—**not the System, something deeper, older, heavier—**spoke in the back of my mind.

"THE CYCLE MUST CONTINUE."

I staggered back.

The projection vanished.

The chamber snapped back into focus.

I was standing in front of the sphere again. The walls glowed softly once more. The air was still.

But I could still feel it.

That presence.

The woman watched me closely. "Now do you understand?"

My breath was shaky. My hands curled into fists.

The System wasn't a program.

It was something more.

Something that had been in control of this world long before I had arrived.

I forced myself to speak. "The System destroyed it, didn't it?" My voice was hoarse. "That's what you're telling me."

For the first time, she hesitated.

Then, finally, she said, "No."

I blinked. "What?"

"The System didn't destroy Turgan."

She stepped closer, her voice quiet.

"It's trying to rebuild it."

I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense. If it's rebuilding it, then why is everything—" I gestured around me, at the wasteland, the creatures, the scavengers, the death. "Why is everything like this?"

She exhaled. "Because it failed."

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

The System was rebuilding this world. But it had already failed.

And yet, it was still here. Still running.

Still trying.

I looked back at the sphere, its glow steady, its symbols shifting in patterns I still couldn't read.

I spoke slowly, carefully. "If the System is rebuilding Turgan, then what does it need us for?"

The woman's gaze was sharp. "Now you're asking the right questions."

Silence.

The weight of everything pressed down on me.

The hooded figure's words. You're not the first.

The scavengers digging in the sand. Something old. Something powerful.

The creatures watching me from the dunes.

The ruins buried beneath the surface.

And now, this.

A world trying to rebuild itself. A machine running without its creators. A cycle that had already failed—but was still continuing.

I clenched my jaw. "So what happens next?"

The woman studied me for a long moment. Then, finally, she said—

"That depends on you."

And somehow, I knew.

Everything had just changed.