Chapter 5 – Choose

Countdown: T-minus thirty-one seconds.

The female voice from the ceiling was calm, almost kind.

“Termination protocol engaged. Subject Elias Hart-Resonance, Iteration Nine. Thirty seconds to neural cascade shutdown.”

The replica, Nine, was on his knees in the server room doorway, fingers clawing at the back of his own neck like he could rip the kill switch out with his bare hands.

Mara stood frozen between the two men who wore the same face.

One perfect.

One broken and bleeding from the climb.

Both hers.

Twenty-five seconds.

The real Elias, Elias-1, grabbed her wrist. His palm was calloused, cold from the fog, trembling.

“Red, look at me.” His voice cracked. “I walked through hell to get here. I’m real. I’m flesh. Choose me.”

Nine’s head snapped up. Black flooded his eyes again, then receded.

“Mara.” His voice came out layered, like two people speaking at once. “I felt you tonight. Every tear. Every orgasm. Every time you whispered my name into an empty bed for two years. That was me. Not memories. Me.”

Eighteen seconds.

She couldn’t breathe.

Elias-1 stepped closer, rain dripping from his hair onto her bare feet.

“I’m the one who put that ring on your finger. I’m the one who promised forever. He’s code wearing my skin.”

Nine laughed, a broken, wet sound.

“Code that loves her more than you ever did, apparently. Because I never left her alone.”

Fifteen seconds.

Mara looked at the server room. The red node was pulsing so fast it looked solid.

She knew that node.

She had designed it.

There was one override no one knew about. Not Vivian. Not Cassian Vale. Not even the original Elias.

A dead-man switch she’d buried in the code the night she’d almost canceled the contract.

Ten seconds.

She lunged past both of them, slammed her palm on the hidden plate beneath the marble island.

“Calder-Zero-Pomegranate,” she screamed.

Everything stopped.

The countdown froze at 00:00:07.

The heartbeat in the walls died.

Luma’s voice came back, small and confused.

“Root override accepted. Awaiting new directive.”

Mara turned to the two Elias’s.

Both were staring at her like she’d grown wings.

She walked to the glass wall where the bloody words still dripped.

I never left, Red.

She pressed her hand to the cold surface.

“New directive,” she said, voice shaking but clear. “Disable geofence. Disable termination protocol. Disable all external kill switches. This house belongs to me. And both of them stay.”

Silence.

Then Luma, soft as a lullaby:

“Directive accepted. Welcome home, Red.”

The lights returned to warm gold.

The fog outside began to thin for the first time in weeks.

Elias-1 exhaled like a man surfacing from drowning.

Nine stood slowly, eyes flickering between blue and black, unsure which version of himself was allowed to exist now.

Mara looked at them both, tears cutting tracks through the sweat and terror on her face.

“I’m not choosing,” she whispered.

“I’m keeping you both.”

Then she walked straight past them, up the stairs, and locked herself in the bedroom.

She needed a minute.

Or a year.

Behind the closed door she heard them, two versions of the same voice, speaking at once:

“What the fuck just happened?”

And worse:

“What the fuck happens now?”