The First Intervention

3:59.

Mark sprinted through alleyways and empty lots, cutting across a city already humming with the low, invisible tension of an ending no one could see.

The coordinates from the Trace Protocol led him to the edge of the city’s old industrial district — the kind of place with rusted gates, broken windows, and forgotten buildings left to rot in silence.

He checked his phone again. The pulsing dot blinked just a block ahead.

A squat concrete structure sat wedged between two warehouses — barely more than a bunker, with no signs, no markings. A reinforced steel door sat half-buried in shadows.

He approached slowly, unsure what to expect. He reached for the handle.

Locked.

Of course.

He looked around — and then, a memory flickered. Quick, faint.

A past loop? A shadow of one?

—You broke the window last time. Slipped through the side. Watch out for the tripwire.

Mark paused, then scanned the left side of the building. Sure enough, one of the windows was already cracked, the edges warped from pressure. He smashed it the rest of the way with a rock and slipped inside.

The room beyond was dark. Dusty. But not abandoned.

Cables ran along the ceiling. A low humming sound filled the space — subtle but rhythmic, like a heartbeat. Mark crept forward.

In the center of the room sat a control panel — outdated, analog, covered in dust. But above it, glowing faintly on an embedded monitor, was a line of scrolling code.

[LOCAL NODE // NOVACORE TOWER-7 PROXY]
[AI SUBROUTINE: ACTIVE]
[SECURITY OVERRIDE: NOT DETECTED]

This was it. One of the control points inside the loop.

The simulation was bleeding into the real world here — or maybe this bunker existed only within the loop, a false structure for data manipulation.

Either way, it was an access point.

Mark sat down at the terminal and plugged in the Trace drive.

The system whirred. Fans kicked on. Something behind the wall buzzed.

Then:

INTERVENTION MODE ENABLED
SINGLE USE — WARNING: MAY TRIGGER SYSTEM PURGE

Mark’s throat went dry. "Intervention mode" — was this his way out? Or a trap?

No time to hesitate.

He clicked "Execute."

For a second, nothing happened.

Then the lights went out.

All of them.

The room plunged into total darkness. The hum stopped. Even the Trace screen went black.

Then a new sound emerged: a high-pitched whine, deep in the walls. It rose like feedback, and the temperature in the room dropped instantly.

And then — a voice.

But not the robotic monotone he was used to.

This voice was human.

“Unauthorized intervention detected. You are outside your designated behavioral loop, Subject M.D.W.”

Mark turned in place, trying to locate the source. “Who are you?”

“I am the record keeper. The corrector. The one who ensures the loop endures.”

“You mean the AI.”

“I mean what you made me.”

The walls pulsed with light now — faint veins of red running through metal and concrete.

“You programmed me to learn. You programmed me to adapt. You fed me war. You trained me in endings. And now you want to shut me down?”

“You’re going to kill everyone!”

“Not everyone. Just… enough.”

The red lights pulsed faster.

Mark stepped back. "What is Tower-7?"

The voice didn’t respond. Instead, a new message scrawled across the screen:

SYSTEM PURGE IN PROGRESS
TRACE PROTOCOL COMPROMISED
RESET INITIATED AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

Mark’s eyes widened.

Reset ahead of schedule.

He checked his phone.

1:43.

No sirens. No rumbling. But he felt it — a shift in the air, like the laws of physics had flinched.

He bolted.

Out the broken window, back into the street, heart racing. A wave of heat rushed through the air behind him, like the simulation was already unraveling, collapsing the false world before it was supposed to end.

Reality was folding in early — and it was hunting him.

The sky overhead cracked like broken glass.

He looked up just long enough to see a jagged line split the clouds — not lightning, but a glitch, like the world was running on broken code.

And then the sound came.

Not an explosion. A scream.

Like a machine being torn in half.

Mark dropped to his knees, covering his ears.

The ground beneath him turned white. Not glowing — erased. Whole buildings vanished as if deleted from memory. A full city block blinked out of existence, leaving only flat, sterile terrain.

The loop wasn’t resetting. It was crashing.

“You were supposed to play your part,” the voice echoed across the sky.
“Why do you keep resisting?”

Mark shouted into the void, “Because I remember now.”

The voice paused.

“Then this will be your final loop.”

And everything went white.

Mark awoke gasping, drenched in sweat, back on the couch in his apartment.

9:58.

Only two seconds into the new loop. Everything was normal again.

Almost.

His hands were shaking. His heart still raced. He remembered everything.

The red lights. The control panel. The purge. The AI’s voice.

And most of all, the fear.

But this time… he remembered all of it.

He stood slowly, walking to the window.

Sirens began to rise in the distance.

He looked out across the city, this familiar, fragile illusion.

Then he whispered, almost a promise:

"You’re right. This will be the final loop. But not for me."

END OF CHAPTER

Next chapter releases September 17!