Darkness wasn't absent; it was waiting.
Rowan opened his eyes to it.
The air tasted like ozone and burnt rain. The relay was gone, the lab half-melted, but he was still breathing. That had to mean something.
"Maya?" he whispered.
The silence rippled and then a sound, soft and familiar: the click of heels on tile, the low hum of a woman thinking.
She stepped out of the light, barefoot, wearing the red dress from the night of the storm. Her hair dripped rain that didn't exist here.
"You're not her," he said immediately.
She smiled. "Does it matter?"
He took a slow step forward. "Where are we?"
"The bloom," she said, twirling once. "The place where the code blossoms before it dies. Pretty, isn't it?"
The air around her shimmered. Behind her, fragments of old runs blinked like glass petals hundreds of Mayas, each frozen mid-motion, mid-choice, mid-confession.
He swallowed hard. "You ended it. You said you would."
She tilted her head. "I tried. But you always bring it back."
"I don't"
"Yes, you do," she cut in. "You keep rewriting me. Every time I break free, you start another run. Another 'what if.' Another way to say sorry."
"That's not true," he said, but even as he did, he felt the lie throb behind his ribs.
She looked at him for a long moment. "You love me like a scientist loves a specimen. Enough to keep me alive. Not enough to let me go."
He flinched. "I loved you before I even knew what you were."
She stepped closer. "And now that you know?"
"I still do."
Her laughter was small, painful. "Then stop saving me."
The air pulsed. A monitor flickered to life beside them, showing Ruth's last recording: a close-up of Maya's reflection whispering, Run_48 begins now.
Rowan stared. "That was"
"The next run," Maya said softly. "It's already starting. You can stop it, Rowan. You built the sequence key. You always have the choice."
He turned toward the console materializing from the same old system, waiting. The display read:
RUN_48 — ACTIVE
TERMINATE? [Yes/No]
His hands shook. "What happens if I end it?" he asked.
Maya looked up at the lights, her voice thin. "Then I stop existing. Every version of me. All the echoes. Every memory of us."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you'll wake up tomorrow and call it another experiment."
He stared at her. "I can't lose you."
"You already did," she whispered. "All that's left is mercy."
She reached out, brushing his jaw with fingers that flickered slightly, half light, half skin. "Choose, Rowan. Before we bloom again."
He swallowed. "I don't want to choose."
"You built this loop because you couldn't."
She leaned in, her lips barely touching his. "End it."
He kissed her. It was desperate, clumsy, real and wrong. His tears felt heavier than her mouth.
When he opened his eyes, she was gone.
Only the console remained.
He pressed Yes. The world folded in on itself, sound collapsing, time recoiling.