The morning was quiet—too quiet. The familiar alarm buzzed at 6:00 AM. Kairo's eyes opened, not with surprise, not with panic—just with intent. He had rehearsed today 97 times already. This one had to go exactly right.
He sat up slowly, stretching as the plan unfolded in his mind like the turning of gears in a well-oiled machine.
By 6:20, he was in his sleek grey suit. Not the expensive kind, but the kind that made people take him seriously. He no longer bothered blending in. Today, he wanted to stand out—to make an impression.
Downstairs, he met Elijah—one of the junior members of the Black Quorum. In other loops, Kairo had learned Elijah's routines, insecurities, passwords, and weaknesses. But today wasn't about exploiting those. It was about leveraging them.
"Morning," Elijah said, sipping his burnt coffee.
Kairo smiled. "You looked into that classified server I mentioned?"
Elijah blinked. "Yeah... I did. It's real. And guarded as hell."
"Then we're in luck," Kairo said, placing a folded document on the table. "This is the breach plan. You run distraction; I get the access key."
Elijah's face paled. "That's... suicidal."
Kairo leaned closer, calm but intense. "You'll survive. I won't make a move that gets you killed. I need you alive. You trust me, right?"
Elijah swallowed. "...Yeah. But if this fails—"
"I'll take full responsibility," Kairo interrupted, standing up. "And tomorrow, it won't even matter."
Of course, Elijah didn't know what that meant.
---
By 9:00 AM, the plan was in motion. Elijah created a network disturbance in the internal systems—a fake cyber breach. Kairo, meanwhile, slid past layers of digital firewalls using tools he'd memorized over hundreds of failures.
Each second felt smooth. Timed.
No cameras saw him. No guards noticed. Even the biometric lock, which had stumped him 14 loops ago, now opened with ease thanks to a palm print he stole from the coffee table earlier that morning.
Behind the locked door? A quiet server room. Cold and humming with information.
Kairo didn't hesitate. He inserted a small drive—custom-coded over 38 time loops—and began pulling files: member lists, secret plans, blackmail folders, data to bring the Black Quorum to its knees if needed.
And that's when the unexpected happened.
A voice.
"I don't believe we've met," said a woman standing in the doorway. Black suit. No name tag. But Kairo had never seen her before—not even once across all the loops.
He turned, carefully sliding the USB drive into his sleeve. "You're right. We haven't."
She narrowed her eyes. "Who gave you access to this floor?"
Kairo's mind raced. Scripts spun in his head—lies, truths, half-truths. But this was new. Uncharted.
He smiled slightly. "Let's just say... I've been here more times than you could imagine."
Kairo's eyes locked with the mysterious woman's. She wasn't reacting like a typical agent. No alarm. No radio call. Just… studying him, with a calm curiosity that felt too deliberate.
That's when it hit him—she might not be a reset. She might be like him.
"Who are you?" he asked, testing her.
"I'm the anomaly assigned to watch anomalies," she replied. Her voice was low and firm, but not hostile. "And you've set off a lot of them lately."
Kairo took a subtle step back, mentally scanning every loop he'd lived through—hundreds of thousands, maybe more. Never had he encountered another who remembered. Never had the world hinted that the reset was anything but absolute.
"You're not supposed to exist," he said quietly.
She smiled faintly. "Neither are you."
The server behind him continued to hum as if unaware it was now ground zero for something far greater than classified files.
Kairo considered running. But he didn't. Instead, he asked the only question that mattered.
"How long have you been aware of the loop?"
She paused. Then: "Since try number 99,271."
His heart stopped.
That meant… she had entered awareness just 728 loops ago. Compared to him, she was still adjusting. Still new.
"I'm on 100,231," Kairo said slowly, watching her reaction.
Her eyes widened, just slightly. "You're the one that's been triggering anomaly reports in the Quorum database. You're the reason they started building the 'Constant Room.'"
Kairo froze.
He'd seen that term—'Constant Room'—in loop 87,134. Just a vague note. Back then, he thought it was an inside joke.
"Why did you let me in?" he asked her.
"Because I wanted to see if you were real. The files say you're a ghost. A glitch." She stepped into the room. "But glitches don't plan. They don't evolve. And they sure as hell don't survive 100,000 loops."
Kairo studied her posture, her breathing, her expression. She was confident, but guarded. Like him. Paranoid. Clever.
"Then you know I can't afford to lose today," he said.
"I know," she replied. "That's why I'm here—to offer you something."
He raised an eyebrow.
She pulled out a black flash drive. "Everything they've collected on the loop. Data. Patterns. Failed experiments. Behavioral predictions. It's yours."
Kairo didn't reach for it.
"What's the catch?"
"You tell me what happens on try 100,001."
Kairo blinked.
"…You think there's an end?"
She nodded. "I think you're about to hit the loop's final limit. I think everything changes after that."
He stared at her, brain firing in overdrive. Could she be right? Was that why new anomalies were surfacing? Was the world… destabilizing?
"Then we find out together," he said, finally reaching for the drive.
As their hands touched briefly—Kairo saw it.
A flash.
A city on fire.
A clock turning backward.
A girl with violet eyes standing on a cliff, whispering: "One more try, Kairo."
He snapped back to the room. The woman was already walking away.
"I'll see you at the Constant Room," she called.
And then she was gone.
The moment she left, Kairo stood in complete silence, the black flash drive in his hand a hundred times heavier than its physical weight.
"Final limit… Try 100,001..."
It echoed in his mind like a drumbeat. If what she said was true, then he wasn't just trying to break the loop anymore—he was approaching its core.
Plugging the drive into his portable terminal, he watched as file after file decrypted itself with ease—she had already cleared the access.
**> Anomaly Reports
> Failed Reset Sequences
Quorum Audio Logs
Experiment File: PROJECT ORIGIN**
That last one froze him.
PROJECT ORIGIN.
He clicked.
The screen came alive with cascading data, and at the top, a single line in red:
"Subject K-0: Catalyst of Temporal Divergence."
His own designation. K-0. He was the first anomaly. Not a glitch, not a bug—but the origin of the loop's instability.
> "Test subject showed repeated memory retention through reset protocols after exposure to Site Zero.
Further loops increased subject adaptation, eventually breaking causality constraints."
There were videos—clips of himself waking up, failing, trying again, learning. Monitored. Studied. He had been a lab rat in a maze that reset itself endlessly.
But then he found something worse.
A file labeled: 'Backup Protocol – Full Collapse Authorization'
It was scheduled to activate on Try 100,001.
Kairo's breath caught. That was what she meant.
Not a reset.
A purge.
The total collapse of reality.
If he failed one more time, there would be no loop. No next try. The world would fold into itself, wiping all memory, all anomalies—him included.
"Damn it…" Kairo whispered.
He stood, yanked the drive free, and stuffed it into his coat. His mind was now racing with more urgency than ever before.
100,001 wasn't just a milestone. It was the edge of extinction.
But even as the weight crushed him, there was something else.
Hope.
He wasn't alone anymore.
Someone else remembered. Someone else wanted him to succeed.
And deep in the files, under the final encrypted layer, there was one more hidden message—just three words, recorded in a voice that shook him to his core:
"Kairo, save us."
It was her voice.
But… not the woman from earlier.
No.
This voice… was the girl from his visions.
The one with violet eyes.
She remembered him too.
The voice echoed in his head even after the message ended—soft, almost trembling, but full of unshakable conviction.
"Kairo, save us."
His hands trembled slightly. That voice… he hadn't heard it in years—not in this world, not in the loop. Only in dreams. Visions. Memories that had no place in any reality he remembered living.
The girl with the violet eyes.
She was always there at the edge of his senses. Laughing, crying, warning. Begging him not to forget her. Not to forget why he started this journey.
Kairo closed his eyes.
For a brief second, it was as if the world stopped. The endless noise, the suffocating silence of the reset—all of it vanished.
He saw her.
Standing barefoot in a shattered field of glass-like flowers, violet light swirling behind her like stardust. Her eyes pierced through time itself.
> "You're close," she said, not with her lips—but her will.
"Don't let the 100,001st become the last. Don't just break the loop—rewrite it."
Kairo's eyes snapped open, breath sharp.
Rewrite it.
The files. The flash drive. The Quorum's data. The reset wasn't the only option anymore. There was a code buried in the system—one he now understood could do more than end the loop.
It could reshape it.
But he needed access to the core loop server—the Heart of the System. Buried deep in the frozen ruins of Origin Point Zero. A place no one returned from.
"Then that's where I go next," Kairo said, determination replacing fear.
He tucked the drive into a hidden compartment in his coat and activated his communicator.
> KAIRONET > Beacon 7: Online.
Coordinates: Origin Point Zero – Status: Locked.
Override Code Required.
He typed the code embedded in the final file.
> Input Code: VIOLET-01-∞
The beacon pulsed green. Coordinates unlocked. A portal lock-on started to stabilize.
Behind him, the city buzzed on as if nothing had changed—but he knew better.
Somewhere, the Quorum had realized the breach. The countdown to the final try had begun.
And as shadows began moving in the corners of his reality—agents designed to stop anomalies—Kairo stepped forward.
One last breath.
Then—
Flash.
A gateway burst open in blue fire, spiraling with symbols from lost timelines.
Kairo disappeared through the portal, toward the heart of everything.
Toward Origin Point Zero.
And the violet echo whispered one last time:
"You already saved me once, Kairo. Now save the world."