The corridors twisted again, though I knew these walls. Or at least I thought I did. Every junction, every conduit, every panel seemed to have shifted overnight. The Core wasn't static. It was alive or maybe it just wanted me to think it was.
Metal groaned somewhere deep, a low resonance that crawled along my spine. Water dripped intermittently, echoing like tiny gunshots in the distance. Sparks flickered over exposed circuits, making the shadows dance across the warped walls.
I tried the doors I remembered. Each one was gone. Collapsed. Replaced. Screens flickered where passage should have been, showing me my own reflection. Not the real me. The "data point" me, cataloged and analyzed. I frowned at the mirrored image.
"Well, fantastic," I muttered, voice dry, teeth gritting. "No doors. No walls. No hope. Just me. Fantastic."
Click… hum… low hiss…
I moved forward, boots sliding on wet metal grates. Every step felt like a statement. The Core seemed to pulse beneath me, machinery alive, measuring, testing. I thought I saw a faint glow down a narrow passage. My pulse quickened. Maybe, just maybe…
The path narrowed, walls bending closer as if to push me back. The hum of machinery rose, vibrating through the floor, through the air, into my chest. A soft metallic scrape echoed somewhere above. My hand brushed the wall. The surface shifted subtly, almost like breathing.
The glow intensified. A door or something like it waited at the end. Faint, almost imperceptible. I approached cautiously. Every instinct screamed that this was not freedom, not yet. The exit was the architect's idea of progress: a transition into the final move, the last confrontation.
A flicker of light, and a voice slithered through the air, deep, distorted, calm. "Every path leads to the inevitable. You've walked your threads well, Dylan."
I laughed short, bitter, a rasp against the Core's pulse. "Threads, patterns, inevitability… Sure. Remind me why I thought I had control again?"
Silence, except for the Core itself. Drip… low hum… soft grinding metal…
I paused before the glowing door, hand hovering over the handle. My reflection flickered across the panels, multiple Dylans staring back, waiting, judging. A strange weight pressed on me not fear, not hope but understanding. Every step I'd taken, every manipulation, every betrayal had funneled me here. The last exit wasn't escape. It was preparation.
I took a slow, measured breath. Fingers curled around the cold metal. I glanced back at the twisting corridors, the collapsed doors, the pulsing walls. Everything I thought I'd destroyed, everything I thought I'd controlled, had led me here.
"Alright," I said, voice low, sardonic, echoing through the veins. "Let's see which nightmare's waiting this time."
And I stepped through.