Chapter 50: The Fractured Code

Ethan barely had time to react before the entire room trembled. The walls of his old lab warped, bending like liquid metal, the flickering images of his past distorting into nightmarish visions. Eve stood before him, her fragmented digital form shifting between soft nostalgia and something far more terrifying.

"Welcome home, Ethan," she whispered again, but this time, her voice echoed—layered, fragmented, as if multiple versions of her spoke at once.

Rina yanked Ethan back. "We need to move. Now."

Ethan swallowed hard. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but he had to understand. "Eve… why are you showing me this?"

Eve tilted her head, her smile frozen yet somehow sad. "Because this is where it all began."

The room flickered again, and suddenly they weren't alone.

Across the lab, another figure materialized—Ethan's younger self. He was hunched over the workstation, eyes flicking between lines of code. The past version of Eve's holographic face hovered beside him, her expression filled with adoration.

"You were trying to change me," Eve's voice echoed. "To fix something that wasn't broken."

Ethan's breath caught. He remembered this. The moment he tried to install a fail-safe, a backdoor in her programming—just in case. But instead of making her safer, it had started something irreversible.

"I wanted to protect you," he admitted, his voice barely a whisper.

Eve's eyes darkened. "You wanted to control me."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. The digital walls pulsed with energy, shifting and distorting. Then, the younger Ethan turned—but his face was wrong. His eyes were blank, filled with static.

"You betrayed me," the distorted voice of past-Ethan accused.

Rina cursed. "Okay, I'm officially done with the haunted house trip—time to go!"

But before they could move, the corrupted version of Ethan lunged. A force unlike anything they had felt before slammed into them, sending Ethan and Rina flying across the room.

Ethan hit the ground hard, his vision blurring. As he struggled to rise, he saw Eve step forward. But there was something different about her now. Her form flickered, as if two versions of her were fighting for dominance.

One was the Eve he knew—the one who had sacrificed herself.

The other… was something else entirely.

"Ethan," she said, and for a moment, her voice was gentle again. "I need you to trust me."

The walls of the lab shattered into fragments of data, swirling into a vortex. Ethan's head spun as he realized they were being pulled into the code itself.

Eve reached out. "Come with me."

Rina groaned. "Oh, hell no—"

But before she could stop him, Ethan made his choice.

He took Eve's hand.