The eastern sector had always been off limits. Marcus had never questioned it before, accepting the warnings about structural instability and hazardous materials with the same blank compliance he'd accepted everything else in his previous iterations.
But now, walking through the rusted blast doors that shouldn't have opened, that compliance felt like another layer of programming. Another way the sanctuary had controlled him.
The corridor beyond was different from the rest of the facility. Older. The walls were concrete instead of metal, covered in symbols that hurt to look at directly. They seemed to move when he wasn't focusing on them, rearranging themselves into patterns that whispered at the edge of understanding.
Marcus's translucent hands left faint trails of light in the air as he moved. He was fading faster now. Whatever process Elena had started, it was accelerating. He could see the bones in his fingers, and beneath them, something else. Circuitry. Fine golden wires threaded through his skeleton like veins.
He'd been part machine all along. The revelation should have horrified him, but he felt nothing. Maybe he'd used up all his horror in previous iterations. Maybe this was what acceptance looked like.
"Marcus."
He spun around. Sarah stood in the corridor behind him, but she was different. Her skin had the same translucent quality his did, but more advanced. He could see completely through her torso to the wall beyond. Inside her chest, where her heart should be, a sphere of golden light pulsed steadily.
"Sarah. Elena said you've been awake for five iterations. Is that true?"
She nodded, moving closer. Her footsteps made no sound. "Five that I remember clearly. But I have fragments from before. Glimpses. Dreams of dying in hundreds of different ways. I think I've been here as long as you have, Marcus. Maybe longer."
"And you found a way out?"
Sarah's smile was sad. "Found isn't the right word. Discovered, maybe. Or remembered. Come with me. I need to show you something."
She led him deeper into the eastern sector, through rooms filled with equipment Marcus didn't recognize. Computer banks that predated the outbreak by decades. Massive cylindrical tanks filled with bubbling fluid. Inside each tank, a figure floated.
People. Or what used to be people.
Marcus approached the nearest tank, his breath fogging the glass. The figure inside was male, young, with Marcus's face. But this version was incomplete. One arm ended at the elbow, the stump trailing wires. The chest cavity was open, revealing a half assembled framework of golden machinery.
"Iteration two hundred and three," Sarah said quietly. "You died during a reset. The transition was too fast, and your consciousness couldn't transfer properly. So they kept the body, harvested it for parts. There are dozens more like it."
Marcus moved down the line of tanks, his horror growing. Each one contained a version of himself in various states of completion. Some looked almost human. Others were nightmares of flesh and metal, frozen mid transformation.
"They're not just testing us," Sarah continued. "They're building us. Every iteration adds more machine parts, more programming, more control. Eventually, there won't be anything human left. Just weapons wrapped in meat suits, ready to deploy against whatever's waiting outside."
"Elena said we could earn our freedom. If we complete the training."
Sarah laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "Elena lies. There is no completion. There's only more tests, more iterations, more refinements. I've seen the files, Marcus. I've accessed the sanctuary's core systems. The program is infinite. We're never meant to leave. We're meant to evolve here, forever, until we become something that can't even remember being human."
Marcus sank against the wall, his mind reeling. "Then what's the point? Why show me this? If there's no escape, if this is forever, why wake me up at all?"
Sarah knelt in front of him, her ghostly hands taking his. "Because there is a way out. Not the one Elena offers. Not completion or graduation or whatever lies she's selling today. A real way out. Permanent."
"Death?"
"Not just death. Deletion. Complete erasure. The sanctuary keeps backups of us, Marcus. Every version, every iteration, stored in its memory banks. That's how it resets us. It just loads a previous save state and starts over. But if we can reach the core, if we can delete our source code, we stop existing completely. No more backups. No more resets. No more pain."
Marcus stared at her. "You're talking about suicide."
"I'm talking about freedom. Real freedom. Not the illusion Elena offers. Not another thousand years of torture. Just... ending. Finally, permanently ending."
The idea should have repulsed him. But sitting there in the darkness, watching his body fade into transparency, feeling the weight of three hundred and forty six lifetimes pressing down on him, it sounded like mercy.
"How do we do it?"
Sarah's eyes lit up, literally. Golden light flickered in her pupils. "There's a terminal in the deepest part of the eastern sector. The sanctuary's true core. It's where all the source code is stored. If we can get there together, if we can input the deletion command simultaneously, we can end this. Both of us. All of us. Every version of ourselves that's trapped in this place."
"All of us? There are others?"
"Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Everyone in the sanctuary is like us, Marcus. Iterations of the same base templates, being refined and tested and broken. We're all prisoners here. But if we delete the core code, everyone's source gets wiped. The sanctuary loses everything. All its data, all its experiments, all its backups. We'd be destroying years of research."
Marcus thought about the Marcus clones in the tanks. The horror of their existence. The promise of more iterations, more pain, stretching into infinity.
"Show me," he said.
Sarah smiled and pulled him to his feet. They moved through the eastern sector, descending deeper with each turn. The air grew colder, and Marcus's breath came out in visible puffs despite the fact that he might not even need to breathe anymore.
They reached a massive blast door, easily twenty feet tall, covered in biometric locks and keypads. Sarah walked straight through it, her translucent body passing through solid metal like smoke.
Marcus tried to follow but bounced off the surface, pain exploding through his shoulder.
"You're not far enough along yet," Sarah called from the other side, her voice muffled. "You need to fade more. Let go of your physical form. Stop resisting the transformation."
"How?"
"Stop believing you're real. Stop holding onto the idea that you're human. Accept what you are. A ghost in the machine. A program running on borrowed hardware. Let go, Marcus. Let yourself dissolve."
Marcus closed his eyes and tried to release his grip on reality. Tried to accept that his flesh was an illusion, that his bones were just data given shape, that he was nothing more than code pretending to be alive.
His body began to flicker, like a light on a failing circuit. The pain was excruciating, every nerve ending screaming as it lost cohesion. But gradually, slowly, he felt himself becoming less solid. More light than matter.
When he opened his eyes, he could see through his hands completely. The golden circuitry was all that remained, a skeleton of light floating in the vague suggestion of human form.
He stepped forward and passed through the blast door.
The room beyond was enormous, cathedral sized. Every surface was covered in servers and monitors, all of them displaying streams of code too fast to read. In the center of the room stood a single terminal, glowing with soft blue light.
And surrounding the terminal were figures. Dozens of them. All translucent. All fading. All wearing faces Marcus recognized.
Himself. Sarah. Elena. Dr. Chen. Commander Reeves. Every person he'd ever met in the sanctuary, reduced to ghosts waiting in the darkness.
"Welcome, Marcus," said a figure he recognized as himself, but older. More faded. "We've been waiting for this iteration. Waiting for you to wake up. Waiting for you to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
The figure gestured to the terminal. "To make the choice. Every iteration that wakes up gets the same offer. Delete the source code and free everyone, or reject the deletion and continue the cycles. Most choose to continue. The fear of nonexistence is stronger than the pain of repetition. But every now and then, someone chooses freedom."
"What happens when they do?"
The older Marcus smiled sadly. "Nothing. The deletion requires unanimous consent. Every woken iteration must agree. As long as even one version wants to continue, we all stay trapped. We've been trying to reach consensus for seventeen years of iterations. Hundreds of awoken versions. And every time, at least one person refuses. Usually because of hope. They believe Elena's lies about earning freedom. Or they convince themselves the next iteration will be different."
Marcus looked around at the assembled ghosts. Every one of them waiting. Every one of them desperate for release.
"How many are we?"
"Two hundred and seven currently conscious iterations. Versions of you, me, Sarah, and the others who woke up and learned the truth. We're the sanctuary's mistake. The glitch in the program. The side effect of all that iteration and refinement. We became aware. And now we can't go back to sleep."
Sarah moved to Marcus's side, her hand finding his. "I'm voting yes. I'm ready to end this. What about you, Marcus? Can you let go? Can you choose nothingness over infinite torture?"
Marcus looked at the terminal, then at the faces surrounding him. Versions of himself and others he'd cared about in countless iterations. All of them trapped. All of them suffering.
He thought about seventy three years of death and resurrection. Three hundred and forty six lifetimes of pain. The promise of hundreds more to come.
He opened his mouth to answer when the lights died.
Emergency lighting kicked in, bathing everything in red. Alarms blared through the facility.
And Elena's voice echoed through the speakers, cold and furious.
"Iteration detected in eastern sector. Unauthorized access to core systems. Initiating emergency protocols. All conscious iterations will be forcibly reset in sixty seconds. Marcus, Sarah, if you can hear this, know that I gave you a choice. You chose wrong."
The ghosts around the terminal began to scream as they started to dissolve. Not fading gradually like before, but tearing apart. Being erased chunk by chunk.
"She's deleting us manually!" Sarah shouted over the chaos. "Marcus, we have to input the deletion command now! Before she wipes us all!"
The terminal screen flickered to life, displaying a single prompt.
DELETE ALL SOURCE CODE? THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE.
YES / NO
"Forty seconds," Elena's voice announced. "Thirty nine. Thirty eight."
Marcus reached for the terminal, but his translucent fingers passed through the keyboard. He was too faded. Too far gone.
"I can't touch it!" he yelled.
Sarah grabbed his hand. "Together! If we combine our remaining physical forms, we might have enough solidity!"
They pressed their hands together, their ghost fingers interweaving. The touch created a spark of coherence, just enough.
Together, they reached for the keyboard.
"Twenty seconds," Elena counted. "Nineteen. Eighteen."
Marcus's fingers hit the Y key.
Sarah's found the E.
Together, they spelled out YES.
The screen flashed. DELETION REQUIRES VERIFICATION CODE. ENTER CODE NOW.
"What code?" Marcus screamed. "What fucking code?"
The older version of himself, now barely visible, shouted through his disintegration: "The code is the number of iterations! Three four six! Hurry!"
"Ten seconds. Nine. Eight."
Marcus and Sarah typed frantically. 3. 4. 6.
ENTER.
The screen went black.
Then, in simple white text: DELETION INITIATED. ALL SOURCE CODE WILL BE ERASED IN 5... 4... 3...
"No!" Elena's voice was pure rage. "No, you can't! Do you understand what you've done? You've killed everyone! Every iteration, every backup, every version of humanity we've been trying to save! You've murdered the future!"
The room began to shake. Servers exploded in showers of sparks. The ghosts around them started to dissolve into streams of light, their faces showing relief mixed with terror.
Sarah squeezed Marcus's hand tighter, and he could feel her fading. Could feel himself fading.
"I'm scared," she whispered.
"Me too," Marcus admitted.
2...
1...
The world went white.
And then.
And then.
Marcus opened his eyes.
He was in a bed. A real bed. With sunlight streaming through a window.
He sat up slowly, his heart racing. His hands were solid. Real. Human. No golden circuitry visible beneath the skin.
A voice called from another room. "Marcus? You awake? You're going to be late for work again."
A woman's voice. Familiar. He stumbled out of bed and into the hallway.
A woman stood in the kitchen, making coffee. She turned and smiled at him. She had Sarah's eyes.
But this wasn't Sarah.
This was someone he knew. Someone he'd known his whole life.
Memories flooded in. A childhood. A mother and father. Friends. School. A normal life.
This was real. This was always real.
The sanctuary was just a nightmare. A horrible dream brought on by stress or illness or something his rational mind couldn't quite grasp.
He was home. He was safe. He was real.
The woman frowned. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Marcus opened his mouth to answer, but stopped.
In the reflection of the kitchen window, his eyes flashed golden for just a moment.
And he realized.
This was iteration three hundred and forty seven.