Jake's POV
I had thirty seconds to choose between accepting possibly false salvation or watching everyone get deleted, when something inside my dual mind clicked into place.
"Wait," I said, both my voices speaking in perfect unity for the first time. "If the real programmers are about to delete everything, including themselves, then they're not in control either."
"What do you mean?" Kira asked quickly, one eye on the countdown timer that had appeared on the Reality Monitor: 25... 24... 23... "Think about it," I said, Jake-me and Thomas-me finally working together instead of against each other. "If there are programmers above our supposed writer, and those programmers are going to delete themselves too, then there must be something above them as well."
