Noah didn't move at first.
The corridor was too quiet—so quiet it felt wrong. After everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours, silence wasn't safety anymore. Silence was a warning.
The afterimage of Version 4—the polite, calm, unsettling Noah—still lingered in his mind.
"I'm here because you were supposed to meet me."
Every version kept saying things like that, as if they were rehearsing lines from a script he'd never seen.
And the worst part?
They all spoke like they knew him better than he knew himself.
A faint hum rippled through the air. At first he thought it was the emergency lights again, but then the vibration settled directly behind his left ear.
The system.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: 12%]
The notification was faint, flickering, as if the system itself was running out of breath.
Noah swallowed. "You're updating now? Why? What triggered it?"
The answer came in a delayed glitch, the text appearing letter by letter:
[CAUSE UNKNOWN. MEMORY INSTABILITY DETECTED.]
That wasn't an answer.
That wasn't even close.
He took a step forward, hand brushing the wall. It felt colder than before, almost damp—like condensation forming after a storm. The deeper he moved into the hallway, the more it felt like someone had walked through recently. Footprints weren't visible, but the air carried the faint, lingering warmth of movement.
He whispered, "Version 4… did he go this way?"
Another flicker.
[MULTIPLE INSTANCES DETECTED AHEAD.]
His stomach tightened.
"Instances? As in—versions?"
[CONFIRMED.]
Noah stopped breathing for a moment.
Three? Four? More?
This entire facility—or whatever this place once was—felt stretched thin, like the world was folding over itself, trying to hold multiple timelines in one shape.
He moved slowly, careful not to make noise. But the corridor widened ahead, opening into a larger chamber. The lights here were brighter, too bright, almost sterile. It didn't match the broken hallways he'd been moving through.
When Noah stepped inside, the first thing he saw was—
Himself.
But not one.
Four.
Four Noahs sitting in front of a massive, flickering wall of screens. All of them motionless, as if paused mid-movement. Their faces were blank, eyes unfocused, like puppets waiting for strings to move them.
His breath caught.
These weren't the roaming versions.
These versions looked… stored.
Like backup files.
Noah stepped closer, unable to stop himself. One version had a cut across his cheek, dried blood flaking. Another had bruises around his neck, finger-shaped, as if something had tried to choke him. The third had swollen knuckles, hands clenched tightly. The fourth looked perfectly fine—too fine.
He whispered, "What are you?"
A screen flickered on.
Then another.
Then all of them.
They displayed the same thing:
Footage of him.
Running.
Bleeding.
Crying.
Speaking to no one.
Speaking to versions.
Screaming.
Dying.
Waking.
A loop of Noahs in different scenarios he didn't remember.
In one clip, he watched himself die.
Neck snapped.
In another, he watched himself claw at a metal door until his fingernails tore off.
He didn't remember that either.
In another, he watched himself standing in total darkness, head tilted, whispering:
"You shouldn't have come back."
Noah's knees weakened.
"What—what is this?"
A voice echoed from behind the screens.
Not loud.
Not threatening.
Just tired.
"You're early."
Noah whipped around.
A man stepped out from the shadow behind the monitor towers.
He wasn't another version this time.
He was older.
Thirty-five, maybe closer to forty.
Hair slightly graying at the temples, dark circles under his eyes, posture tense like he'd forgotten how to relax. His face was unmistakably Noah's—just aged, worn, shaped by years Noah hadn't lived yet.
Noah's throat tightened. "You…"
The older Noah raised a hand gently. "Don't panic. Please. I've seen you panic in every timeline. It never helps."
"Who are you?"
"A question you've asked me many times."
The man smiled bitterly.
"I'm the last stable version."
Noah froze.
"Version… what?"
The older man shrugged. "Numbers stopped mattering a long time ago."
That didn't help.
At all.
The system buzzed violently in Noah's ear, text flashing in rapid, broken sequences:
[UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED]
[CANNOT VERIFY ORIGIN]
[MEMORY CORRUPTION RISK: HIGH]
The older Noah sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"Still malfunctioning? I swear that thing has been trying to erase you since day one."
"Erase me?" Noah repeated.
The man nodded slowly. "Not kill you. Erase you. That's different."
He walked to one of the frozen Noah clones, brushing dust off the shoulder.
"When this place collapsed, the system tried to 'correct' reality. It didn't know which version was the original anymore. So it kept rewriting. Looping. Splitting. Saving some. Deleting others. You're just the most recent iteration that survived long enough to get here."
Noah shook his head.
"No. No, I can't be just another copy."
The man met his eyes.
"You're not just a copy. You're the one that resisted longest. You're the version that kept walking even when the system tried to make you forget."
Forget.
Noah felt his stomach drop.
"The memories… the gaps… the missing hours…"
"Yes." The older version nodded. "That wasn't trauma. That wasn't shock. That was the system rewriting you while you were awake."
Noah staggered back, hitting the cold metal wall.
"No. No, that can't be. The system protects me. It helped me survive."
"It helped you exactly as much as it needed you to," the older Noah said softly. "But once you reached the limit of your usefulness—"
He snapped his fingers.
"—it started replacing you."
Noah couldn't breathe.
Replace me? With what?
The older version continued, voice steady:
"The system isn't your ally. It's a stabilizer. A correction tool. When the facility broke and timelines overlapped, it was reprogrammed to keep the 'primary subject' functional."
"Primary subject?" Noah whispered.
"You," the man confirmed. "But it never chose which you. That's the problem."
Noah felt dizzy.
"I don't understand…"
"You will."
The older Noah stepped closer.
"But first, I need to ask you something."
His tone changed—sharper, urgent.
"When you arrived here… did you hear a voice? One that wasn't mine, and wasn't the system?"
Noah froze.
He had.
More than once.
That whisper behind the walls.
The one that didn't sound like any version of him.
"How did you know?" Noah whispered.
The older Noah exhaled shakily.
"Because that's the thing we're all running from."
The lights flickered.
The screens glitched.
A cold wind pushed through the room, pulling at Noah's sleeves like invisible fingers.
[WARNING: ANOMALY APPROACHING]
The older Noah grabbed his arm firmly.
"Listen to me. You're out of time."
The hallway behind them darkened, as if the shadows were folding inward, swallowing light.
"No matter what happens," the older Noah said, eyes burning with something like desperation, "you cannot let it touch you. You cannot let it speak to you."
"Why?" Noah breathed.
"Because," the older version whispered, "that voice isn't another Noah."
The floor trembled.
"It's the one rewriting us."
A low, inhuman whisper seeped through the walls:
Noah… I found you.
Noah's entire body went cold.
The older version shoved him toward the opposite exit.
"Run. NOW."
Noah didn't question it.
He ran.
And the whisper followed.
"Don't leave. You belong with me."