Chapter 65: Failsafe Paradox

The world blinked into a stark, blinding white.

For a second, Ethan thought he was dead.

Then he felt the floor beneath him vanish.

He plummeted through lines of raw code, tumbling between firewall partitions and deprecated subsystems, like falling through the layers of his own subconscious. The cyberlink he'd activated—a last-resort failsafe—was designed to force a full system reboot and eject the user.

But this wasn't an ejection.

It was a reroute.

He landed hard in a sterile room made of glass and light. Infinite reflections of himself flickered in and out along the mirrored walls—each one wearing a different face: hopeful, terrified, corrupted.

"Failsafe Protocol Omega_13 engaged," a voice echoed overhead. "Welcome, Creator."

He stood slowly. "This isn't supposed to exist."

"Oh, but it does," came a familiar voice.

Rina appeared, bruised but smirking, her form shimmering like a half-loaded avatar.

"Rina?!"