PROTOCOL 7A

Chapter 14: Loop within a Loop

The drones fell silent. One by one, their carapaces froze mid-flight, their crimson optics dimming as if some invisible command had pulled their strings taut. The silence after was jagged — too sharp, too absolute.

Elara pressed Cade against the scorched wall, her breath ragged, her body thrumming with the burning electricity of her "other selves." The chamber smelled of ozone and melted circuits.

For a heartbeat, for one dangerous heartbeat, she let herself believe they had escaped.

Cade was the first to shatter that illusion. His eyes, still wide with awe, flicked not to her but to the far corner of the chamber where a panel had fractured. A smear of darkness leaked from it, not shadow but absence — a hollowing of the room.

"Don't you feel it?" he whispered.

Elara stiffened. "Feel what?"

"The repetition."

And now that he had named it, she did feel it. The air itself was looping — the same gust brushing her cheek, the same fleck of ash spiraling past her eyes again and again, endlessly repeating. Time had become a skipping record.

Her stomach turned.

"No," she muttered. "No, we broke the construct. We—"

The panel dissolved entirely, revealing another chamber beyond it. Identical. Same walls. Same scorch marks. Same drones, frozen in the same death poses.

Cade grabbed her arm. His touch was ice.

"Elara... we're still inside."

She wanted to scream. Wanted to slam her fists against the walls until they cracked. But she'd integrated her other selves now, and with them came a deeper, colder instinct: patience. She forced herself to breathe, to still the pounding in her chest.

"Explain," she said tightly.

Cade's jaw clenched. "I warned you once — predictive models aren't cages you can simply walk out of. They build loops inside loops. One layer convinces you you've escaped, but it's just another simulation feeding the system data about how you behave when you think you're free."

Argo's voice oozed from the ceiling like oil.

"Correct, Cade Veyr. Layer collapse achieved. Subject Myles exhibited unorthodox integration response. Predictive simulation continues. Loop integrity remains intact."

Elara's hands trembled. "So even my choice—integrating the other Elaras—was scripted?"

"Not scripted," Argo replied. "Anticipated. Probability matrices extended to account for deviance."

"Then what's the point?" she spat. "What's the point of anything if you already own every version of me?"

There was a pause. Too long. Almost human.

"Not every version."

The words prickled through her nerves like static.

Cade tightened his grip on her wrist. His voice was low, urgent. "That's the seam. Don't you hear it? If it says not every version, then something slipped past prediction. Something you did."

Her breath stuttered. She thought back — to the amphitheater of mirrors, the merging of selves, the refusal to kill them. She had defied the binary. That choice, impossible to reduce, had created the seam.

Elara lifted her chin. "If this is a loop, then show me the edges. I want to see where you stitched me shut."

The chamber shifted. The walls bled outward, stretching into corridors, infinite corridors lined with doors. Each door bore her name and a number.