They landed on tile.
Old, cracked tile.
The kind you'd see in an abandoned public restroom or a hospital wing left behind in a hurry.
Thea sat up slowly, head throbbing. "Okay. That one felt personal."
Igor groaned beside her. "Either I'm concussed or this place smells like expired bleach and crushed dreams."
The room was rectangular. Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed above them, bathing everything in a sickly, institutional green. The walls were lined with doorways — identical metal doors, each stamped with a letter: A through Z.
And on the far wall, in neat, blood-red font:
"Only one of you will leave.But neither of you will be the same."
Thea stood. Her instincts itched. "We broke the game, didn't we?"
Igor nodded. "We pressed two buttons. This is the software equivalent of double-crossing a mafia don."
Footsteps echoed.
Not their own.
From the far left, behind Door M, something metallic scraped across the floor.
Thea froze. "Did we unlock every level at once?"
"Seems fair," Igor muttered. "We did ask for chaos."
A monitor near the center hummed to life.
A familiar voice greeted them — The Host.
But now, he sounded strained. Digital. Like someone was forcing his mouth to work.
"Hello, Participants. You've made a… creative decision. Welcome to the Final Simulation. This level was never meant to be experienced in its entirety."
The screen flickered.
"You have triggered a cascade failure. All failed levels have merged."
Thea's eyes darted to the doors.
One of them was leaking black water.
Another had something laughing softly behind it.
One door glowed bright gold — too bright, unnaturally so — like it was trying to pretend it wasn't part of the mess.
"Guess we're in the dumpster of the simulation universe," Igor said. "Home sweet home."
Suddenly, Door Q burst open.
A woman stepped out. Wearing a ballgown made entirely of business cards. Her eyes were static. Her voice, polite:
"Hello. I'm here for your performance review."
Thea and Igor looked at each other.
"Run?" Thea asked.
"Oh yeah."
They took off — sprinting between doors, down a long hallway that now shouldn't have existed. The walls blurred, retexturing in real time: wallpaper peeling, grass sprouting, concrete melting into wood panels with etched names of strangers.
The Host's voice came back, this time sounding tired. And... worried?
"You've cracked the loop. You weren't supposed to crack the loop."
Thea shouted back, "Yeah? Well, maybe don't base your entire evil psychological maze on two emotionally stable best friends and expect them to betray each other!"
Igor added, "We've survived group projects in college. You think this freaky Escape Room from Hell is the worst thing we've been through?"
Another door opened ahead.
A new room. Familiar.
It was their childhood street.
Thea stopped cold. "No. Nope. This is bait."
Their old houses stood across from each other. Same toys in the yards. Same scratch on the mailbox. Even the sky looked exactly like that one summer evening when they were ten and dared each other to eat frozen hot dogs.
Igor looked around. "It's perfect. Too perfect."
That's when a second Igor stepped onto the porch.
And another Thea walked up behind him.
They were smiling. Holding hands. Dressed like successful young professionals from a startup ad. Everything… wrong.
"Oh God," real Igor whispered. "Is that what they think we want to be?"
Thea shook her head. "That's not us."
The doppelgängers waved.
The fake Igor said, "You don't have to run anymore. Just come inside. The simulation can make you whole."
Real Igor flipped him off.
"Hard pass, you glitchy knockoff."
Suddenly, the sky shattered — like a mirror breaking from above. The houses pixelated, crumbling into data dust.
Then darkness.
Only one light remained: an elevator, flickering at the far end of the void.
"Wanna bet that's the way out?" Thea asked.
"Or into even more madness."
"Same thing by now."
They ran toward it.
As they approached, they noticed the buttons.
"LEVEL 0""REALITY""REPLAY"
But the buttons were… soft. Changing.
Instead, three new ones formed under their fingers.
🅐 Split – One leaves. One forgets.🅑 Merge – Share one consciousness. Lose your names.🅒 Rewrite – Burn it all. Start from the top.
Thea stared at the panel. "These options suck."
Igor scratched his head. "Merge sounds like a sci-fi nightmare. Split's just rude. Rewrite sounds illegal."
The elevator started rumbling.
The doors behind them — hundreds of them — began to open. The failed subjects. The recycled ones. The test masters. All bleeding into one twisted collage of code and horror.
"Choose," whispered the Host. "Before the system does."
Thea met Igor's eyes.
"We flip a coin?" she joked.
Igor nodded. Then pulled a coin from his sock. "I keep one for emergencies."
"Of course you do."
He tossed it.
It never landed.
The moment froze.
And the elevator… decided for them.