100 years left: The Unseen Executioner

The facility was in lockdown. That much was clear.

Not the loud kind—not red lights and alarms. This was the quiet kind. Lights remained dim but constant. Hallways emptied. Autonomous systems rerouted traffic paths, subtly guiding patrols away from certain corridors.

Away from him.

[Status: System Recovery Mode - 2% Restored]

[Core Suppression: Active - 6 hours, 22 minutes remaining]

[Skill Access: Shadow Step (Restricted), Disruption Blink (25% efficiency)]

[New Title Retained: Ghost Subject]

[Access Tag: Level 3 - Passive Override in Effect]

The wound in his side throbbed with each step. The synthetic fibers in his coat had partially sealed the puncture, but internal bleeding had already begun to slow his reflexes. Not enough to stop him. Just enough to be fatal if underestimated.

He didn't limp. He moved like pain was just another weight in his stride.

The MC descended through Sublevel-3, cutting through inactive drone chambers and bypassed weapon lockers. There was no route forward. Not in the traditional sense.

But his new tag—Level 3 Passive Override? That opened paths that weren't meant to exist anymore.

A faded corridor blinked into existence through the HUD's peripheral layer. Not a physical door—a data-threaded projection. Something only those tagged at a certain level could see, much less interact with.

He reached out, placed his palm on the cold wall.

[Verifying...]

[Override Key Confirmed: Project Proxy Access Granted]

[Initializing Hidden Pathway]

The wall peeled back, folding like paper. A narrow stairwell appeared, descending into rusted, uneven silence.

He went down.

---

There were no lights in the Proxy Archive. Only filament lines across the ceiling—like nerves. Like veins.

The room was circular, half-collapsed, filled with rows of half-functional data tubes. Inside them?

Clones.

Failed ones.

Some were malformed. Some were nearly perfect. Others were just shells. But every one of them bore a tag across the chest:

Subject 9-2x

Proxy Thread Incomplete

He stared at them for a long time.

One bore his face.

Not exactly. But close enough. A little younger. Thinner. Eyes vacant.

[Memory Triggered: System Vault Echo]

> "All variables must be tested. Clones provide controllable iterations. But there's only one constant: the original anomaly."

> "All others are disposable."

He didn't flinch. Not even when the tube nearest him sparked, and the clone inside began to twitch involuntarily.

He simply pulled the override key from his jacket and inserted it into the core console at the room's center.

[Manual Control Established]

[Project Proxy Archive Decryption: 12%...]

[Security Response Imminent - ETA 8 minutes]

The system had known he would come here. They wanted him to.

Why?

---

> "Because you were never the only one."

The voice echoed from behind the chamber.

He turned, instantly activating what little Disruption Blink he had left. A short dodge. He reappeared behind a column—only to see a shadow detach itself from the wall.

The man who stepped forward wore the same janitor uniform. Same clearance badge. Same gait.

Same eyes.

> "You're late," the figure said.

[Status: Proxy Entity Detected - Class Unknown]

[Trace Result: Match - 91% DNA Convergence]

[Alert: System Echo Present - Monitoring in Passive Loop]

The MC didn't draw a weapon.

Neither did the Proxy.

They stared at each other like two sides of a broken mirror.

> "We were made to test possibilities," the Proxy said. "You succeeded. I failed. But failure makes me free."

The MC finally moved. Not an attack. A step forward.

> "They want me to kill you?"

> "No. They want you to become me."

[System Conflict Detected - Identity Layer Disruption Incoming]

And then the Proxy vanished. Not into thin air. Into him.

A data injection. A merge attempt. A rewrite.

The MC collapsed, system flooding with false inputs, memories he didn't own, kills he never committed. Voices. Screams. Training loops. Rejections.

[Error: Conflict Overload - Executing Memory Firewall Protocol]

[Proxy Merge Rejected. Retaining Host Integrity.]

[New Trait Unlocked: System-Linked Intuition - Battle Predictive Pathfinding (Lv.1)]

[Path Branching Active: Dual Existence - Locked]

He gasped, coughing blood, but stood.

The proxy was gone. Dissolved. Absorbed. Not by his will. By design.

Another test.

Another variable.

The archive behind him began to melt—literally. A timed failsafe had triggered, releasing nanite degradation across the chamber.

He ran.

No looking back.

---

[System Recovery: 7% Complete]

[Core Power Locked: 5 hours, 38 minutes]

[Kill Progress Paused: New Thread Initiated]

They hadn't built him alone.

They'd built many.

But only one was still rewriting the system from the inside.

And now, Terminal-0 had gone dark.

The real game had just begun.