The lab's alarm still echoed in her ears as Alison stood before the glass wall outside the interrogation room. Rain streaked the city's neon lights, pooling in her pupils like blood-red vortices. A text on her phone—"Jack submitted the review application three years ago"—pierced her heart like a poisoned thorn.
She turned and pushed open the interrogation room door. Richard had already been taken away, leaving only shattered hard drive fragments scattered across the floor. Jack leaned against the table, his gun nowhere in sight; his platinum cufflinks glinted coldly under the lights.
"You knew the car accident was murder all along." Alison's voice strained like a taut string. "You used me—just to get revenge on Richard."
Jack fell silent for a moment, his brushing the debris on the table. "You once said revenge needs blades and chips. I gave you the blade, and you… became the sharpest chip of all."
Alison's breath caught. The accident scene three years ago, Jack's sudden proposal, the encrypted files he'd pored over in his study late at night… all fragments pieced together into a truth in her mind—his ex-wife's death had also been linked to Richard.
"Your wife's insurance policy beneficiary was you too." She trembled as she voiced the deduction. "You made her a to lure out Richard's crimes."
Jack finally looked up, his eyes hiding embers of burning ash. "She loved me, and hated me. She knew my revenge plan, yet chose to walk with me into the abyss."
Alison stumbled backward, a metallic tang choking her throat. She'd thought herself a chess player, but was merely a sacrifice in another's revenge.
"Where is Sophia?" she suddenly demanded. Her phone vibrated again—Sophia's voice message cut through the air: "Alison, I'm at the old data center. Jack tampered with all evidence backups, but I kept the original logs—enough to put him in prison."
Jack's pupils contracted, a tiny remote control sliding from his sleeve. The moment Alison lunged for his wrist, alarms erupted—the coordinates Sophia had sent were locked.
In the downpour, the three raced to the data center. Sophia's figure darted through the server jungle, flames roaring behind her—Jack had set up detonation protocols.
"He sold the company to a multinational consortium!" Sophia screamed, tossing an encrypted USB drive. "This is the merger agreement—the clauses hide a black market chain for data trafficking!"
Alison caught the USB as fire devoured half the servers. Jack tried to flee, but she locked the escape route with an emergency keycard.
"You've destroyed everything." She stared at the man trapped in the fire's net, pressing the gun to his chest again. "Including yourself."
But Jack laughed, his face in the firelight. "At least I killed Richard. And you, Alison… you're just repeating our game. Your three years of rebirth are nothing but another cycle."
As Alison squeezed the trigger, Sophia burst from the flames, slamming into the gun's muzzle. The bullet grazed Jack's ear; she stumbled and fell, blood soaking her lab coat.
"His plan was for me to die three years ago." Sophia gasped. "But I chose to help you. Because your rebirth… isn't revenge. It's rewriting."
The servers' destruction roared like doomsday. Alison knelt beside Sophia, trembling hands inserting the USB. The merger agreement's black market clauses, Richard and Jack's revenge loop, all manipulated life trajectories… flickered across the screen.
"Stop the detonation." She screamed at Jack, terminating the countdown with the keycard. In the final moment before flames died, she dragged Sophia out, all three escaping alive.
In the hospital ward, Sophia's condition stabilized. Alison stared at her bandaged arm, finally understanding the loyalty in her eyes—a self-destructive form of redemption.
"Why didn't you tell me the truth earlier?"
Sophia smiled faintly, her voice as hoarse as old paper. "Because true redemption requires you to tear open the abyss yourself."
The next morning, Alison stood in the boardroom, the merger agreement and evidence chain projected on the giant screen. Amid shareholders' gasps, she pushed the gun and USB forward:
"This isn't the end of revenge. It's the start of reckoning. All deals, all lives—will be repriced."
In the epilogue, she walked through the burned data center ruins. Richard's ambition, Jack's revenge, Sophia's sacrifice—all turned to ash in the charred servers. Her phone rang with news of Jack's arrest, and an unread email appeared—sent the night of the accident three years ago, titled: "If you're reborn, remember: Hell and heaven are both human choices."
Alison deleted the email, gazing at the rising sun on the horizon. She finally understood: rebirth isn't fate's gift, but a wager to rewrite the cycle.