Chapter 17 - The Man Inside the SystemLogan died in my arms.
At least that's what I thought.
But when I turned him over, there was no bullet wound.
Only blood.
Fake blood.
A syringe lay beside him.
I looked up.
Evelyn stood on the roof.
“Where is he?”
She smiled.
“Safe.”
“You staged his death.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make the Wardens believe he was gone.”
I wanted to hit her.
Instead I demanded:
“Where is the central server?”
She pointed below.
“The evidence archive.”
We rushed there.
Inside, every monitor displayed the same symbol.
The Helix tattoo.
Then my face appeared.
My own recorded voice spoke:
“I knew this day would come.”
I stepped toward the screen.
“This is not an AI,” Evelyn said.
“Then what?”
“A distributed neural archive.”
She looked at me.
“Every memory you've ever stored became part of it.”
I stared.
“Memories?”
“Yours.”
“The system learned from you.”
My blood ran cold.
“That means…”
“You are the authentication key.”
She placed my hand on the scanner.
The doors opened.
The server room was enormous.
Rows of machines hummed in darkness.
At the center was a chamber.
Inside...
hundreds of tiny screens.
Each one displayed a memory.
Children.
Families.
Police officers.
Criminals.
Presidents.
Witnesses.
The lives of thousands of people.
I realized what my father had meant.
Helix wasn't inside the system.
The system was built from memories.
From people's lives.
From mine.
Then the central screen showed a final file.
COLIN CARTER: ORIGINAL MEMORY
I opened it.
My younger self appeared.
He was sitting beside Logan.
“We can't destroy Helix.”
Logan looked at him.
“Then what do we do?”
My younger self smiled.
“We hide it inside me.”
Logan stared.
“That's insane.”
“It's safer than leaving it online.”
I watched in horror.
“I became the vault.”
Evelyn nodded.
“Exactly.”
“So when they reset me…”
“They lost access to the key.”
“Until now.”
She nodded.
The system recognized me.
Every monitor lit up.
A voice came from the speakers.
My voice.
Older.
Colder.
“You have returned.”
I stepped back.
“Who are you?”
“I am the part of you they couldn't erase.”
The screens showed thousands of memories.
Then one final image appeared.
Eli.
Sleeping.
A countdown began.
RESET 8 COMPLETE IN 00:07:00.
I looked at Evelyn.
“How do I stop it?”
She whispered:
“You can't.”
“Why?”
“Because the system isn't resetting you.”
May you like
She pointed at Eli's image.
“It is resetting everyone else.”
