Darkness. That was all Reever could see.
It wasn't the kind of dark that came from closed eyes or a power outage — it was deeper, heavier. It felt alive, swallowing him whole. Every so often, a flicker of pain tore through whatever was left of his body — sharp, electric, like lightning ripping through ghostly veins. But after what felt like an eternity suspended in that void, even pain became routine. It was the only thing reminding him he still existed at all.
He tried to move. Nothing. Tried to speak. Nothing. Tried to breathe — no air, no lungs, no heartbeat. Just thought. Endless, echoing thought.
"Great," he muttered inside his mind, his own voice sounding distant and metallic. "So much for 'continue playing.' Either the system crashed, or I'm the world's first consciousness floating inside a loading screen."
Time didn't pass here. Or maybe it did, and he just couldn't tell. Seconds and centuries blended together until they meant nothing. The only rhythm left was his mind chasing its own tail — questions looping endlessly.
Maybe I died, he thought. Maybe I'm just a ghost in the machine. The first gamer to respawn in hell.
He tried to laugh, but the sound never came. Only silence. A silence so vast it felt like it could swallow thought itself.
Then came the memories — blurry and weightless. His granddaughter's wedding. The faint smell of lilies on the hospital table. His son's tired smile. The soft buzz of monitors. The doctor's voice, half-concerned, half-scolding: "You're too old for games, Reever."
"Maybe he was right," he admitted to no one. "Should've stayed in bed and watched the world from a safe, heart-attack-free distance. But no — old fool wanted one more match."
If he could've sighed, he would have. "Too late to regret now. I'll face it like a man."
Time, or the illusion of it, stretched on until even regret faded into numbness. He couldn't sleep — there was no body to rest, no eyelids to close. Just a spark of awareness, drifting somewhere between existence and deletion.
Then — a flicker.
At first, it was faint, like a pulse deep inside the void. Then brighter. Stronger. Until light burst through the dark like a sunrise tearing open the night.
He flinched instinctively — though there was nothing left to flinch with. Slowly, the light softened, took shape, and the nothingness began to breathe.
He was standing.
A floor beneath him — metallic, cold, humming faintly. The air buzzed with mechanical rhythm. Around him stretched a colossal chamber that seemed to go on forever — steel pillars, conveyor lines, robotic arms moving in eerie precision.
And on those lines… were people.
No — copies. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Each one identical. His face. His build. His scars. His eyes. His younger self, replicated with perfect, machine-born precision. The conveyor belts carried their bodies like factory stock, lifting them upright into formation. Rows of him, lined up like soldiers waiting for a war.
"What the hell…" His voice sounded both his and not his — younger, smoother, filled with echoes.
He looked down. His hands — no wrinkles, no tremor, no age. His skin was taut, strong. His heart — if he even had one — beat fast and steady.
"I'm… young?"
He tried to take a step, but something fought back — like invisible restraints anchoring him in place. His limbs moved sluggishly, bound by unseen code.
The sight around him was both mesmerizing and terrifying. Each version of himself blinked in perfect sync, eyes empty, expressions blank. Machines adjusted their stances, scanned their vitals, marked them ready for deployment. The sound was mechanical poetry — hums, clicks, and hydraulic sighs blending into a strange symphony of creation.
"What if I'm high?" he muttered. "Maybe the VR fried my brain. Or this is some weird neural afterlife experiment." He tried to laugh. "I'll sue the company if I ever get out of this."
The laugh echoed hollowly in his head. It didn't sound human.
He tried to reason again, clinging to logic like a lifeline. "Maybe they cloned me… or I'm data. A simulation inside a simulation. Hell, maybe this is the afterlife — corporate edition."
He tried to reason it out again. "Maybe they kidnapped me… cloned me… testing some military AI? Nah, I'd make a terrible soldier. I'm 90. I nap between loading screens."
But deep down, under the sarcasm, something in him knew. This was too detailed. Too precise. Too organized to be chaos.
And then — the noise stopped.
Every machine arm froze. The belts halted mid-motion. Every clone — every him — went still.
The silence was worse than the noise.
Then came a voice. Cold. Genderless. Inside his mind.
"Welcome, Bot 067."
Reever's pulse — or whatever counted for one — spiked. The voice was eerily familiar. The same one that had whispered to him in the void.
"Wait… Bot? Did you just call me a—"
"Initializing neural stability," the voice continued, unfazed. "Preparing Bot 067 for combat initiation. Entering practice arena. Objective: survive."
"Hold on—wait—"
He didn't finish.
The world shattered.
The chamber around him dissolved into streaks of light, reality tearing apart like shredded paper. His body spun weightlessly, pulled through tunnels of data and color. Then — impact.
Air slammed into his lungs. Wind howled past his ears. The ground was solid again, gritty and cold beneath his boots.
Reever gasped, looking around.
He stood in the middle of a vast battlefield — or what used to be one. Cracked streets, half-buried vehicles, skeletons of skyscrapers piercing a grey, churning sky. The air reeked of ozone and burned metal. A faint, electronic thunder rumbled in the distance.
And surrounding him — dozens of soldiers. Each one him. Clad in the same golden digital armor, rifles in hand, visors glowing faintly. Silent. Perfectly still.
Reever turned slowly, his weapon raised. "You've got to be kidding me."
Every clone turned its head in unison. The motion was perfectly timed, perfectly unnatural. Their eyes locked on him — hundreds of Reever's own eyes, cold and empty.
A faint hum trembled through the ground. Then the voice returned — louder now, all around him.
"Begin simulation."
The silence shattered. Gunfire erupted from every direction. The clones moved with inhuman precision — his precision — flanking, firing, reloading exactly as he would have.
Reever ducked behind cover, breath coming fast. The irony hit him like a punch: after a lifetime of outsmarting every player alive, his final battle was against himself.
He grinned faintly, teeth gritted, adrenaline surging through digital veins.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's see which one of us is better."
And the world descended into chaos.