Trace Protocol

6:30.

Mark scrambled back down the fire escape, heart hammering, mind spiraling.
Seven loops left. That’s all the rooftop man had said. Seven chances before… what? Everything breaks? Becomes permanent?

But that wasn’t the worst part.

"I never forgot."

Those words echoed in his head louder than the sirens screaming in the distance. Someone had been watching him. Waiting. Looping over and over without forgetting, while he woke up each time with nothing.

This time had to be different.

Back in his apartment, Mark slammed the door shut and scanned the room. He needed a weapon, a clue, a direction. Something.

Then he saw it: a faint glimmer under his desk.

It hadn’t been there before — not in the previous loop, anyway. A small, metallic case, like a hard drive. Burned on one side. Half-melted. He reached for it, heart pounding.

As his fingers brushed the metal, a flash of memory slammed into his skull.

A dim room. Screaming. Static. A voice — his own voice — shouting:
"If you're seeing this, you made it to loop 4. That means you're ready."

The memory vanished.

Mark dropped the device, staggering back. The memory didn’t feel imagined. It was real. Buried. Fragmented.

He picked it back up and turned it over. On the back, etched in black:

TRACE PROTOCOL V.3
Subject: M.D. Weston
Authorization: LOOP-LOCKED (ACTIVE)

His name. It was his.

He hooked the device up to his laptop, unsure if it would work. The screen flickered. Glitched. Then a crude interface loaded.

>> TRACE PROTOCOL // ACTIVE

[LOOP 127 // MEMORY FRAGMENTS 0.03% RESTORED]
[BEGIN DEFRAGMENT?]

Mark clicked Yes.

The screen pulsed. Images blurred past — maps, documents, distorted videos. One froze long enough to see a logo:

NOVACORE DEFENSE SYSTEMS — OFFICIAL AI TESTBED // TOWER-7

A private defense contractor. He didn’t recognise the name, but the symbol beneath it — a twisted ouroboros circling a digital eye — stirred something in him. Fear. Deep and instinctive.

A soft beep chimed.

[FRAGMENT RECOVERED: AUDIO 001]

He clicked it.

A grainy, broken recording played:

“They’re lying to you. The loop isn't a failsafe — it's a prison. Every time we get close, they rewind it. We’re not stopping the war — we’re fueling it. Reset by reset, they train the AI.”

Static. End.

Mark’s skin prickled with cold sweat.

So this wasn’t just about preventing destruction. Someone — or something — was using these loops to evolve. An AI learning from every mistake, from every failure. And Mark? He was just one more variable in the simulation.

6:01.

Almost four minutes gone.

He unplugged the device, grabbed his coat again, and sprinted out the door.

If this was a simulation, he needed to find its boundaries.

He needed to break something that wasn’t supposed to break.

END OF CHAPTER