Chapter 4 The Wrong Kol

"You really should have stayed dead this cycle," my own voice echoed from the darkness beyond the corridor, and every muscle in my body locked instantly as the synchronized footsteps outside resumed slowly, measured and controlled and not quite human. The older man beside me backed into the wall hard enough to nearly trip over himself, and the teenage girl covered her mouth to stop herself from screaming while the woman in black looked not scared but furious. "That should not be possible," she muttered.

The footsteps stopped again, and then he stepped into the light, me, the same height and same face and same gray hoodie soaked from rainwater, but not entirely the same because his movements felt cleaner somehow and sharper, as if every motion had been practiced hundreds of times. I felt cold the second I saw his eyes because they looked exhausted, not physically but existentially, like someone who had seen too much for too long. The other Kol glanced around the room calmly before his gaze settled on me. "You are destabilizing faster than expected," he said. Nobody spoke as my brain struggled to process what I was looking at, and the other me tilted his head slightly. "You really do not remember anything, do you?" he asked. "What are you?" I said. A faint smile crossed his face. "That is the wrong question," he replied, and the tunnel lights flickered overhead so that for a brief second I noticed something glowing beneath his wrist, a timer unlike ours because his showed no numbers, only one word repeated endlessly in faint white text, the word 

PERSISTENCE.

The woman stepped in front of me immediately. "You should not be here," she told him. "Neither should he," the other Kol replied calmly, and his eyes shifted toward my wrist where the glowing timer pulsed once, the numbers reading 02:31:44. The other Kol sighed quietly. "Earlier every cycle," he said, and I clenched my jaw at that word again. "Start explaining," I demanded. Another tremor shook the tunnels, dust drifting from the ceiling while distant metallic screams echoed somewhere deep underground, but the other Kol ignored the noise completely. "The city collapses in approximately two hours," he said. "The second breach reaches the lower sectors shortly after. Most survivors die before the third reset." The teenage girl stared at him in horror. "Reset?" she asked, and the woman snapped sharply, "Stop talking." He looked at her with mild annoyance. "You are still trying to delay it?" he asked, delay what, I wondered, but nobody answered as my pulse hammered painfully. The older man slowly raised his shaking hand. "How many cycles?" he asked. The other Kol looked at him. "Enough," he said, and the man's face drained of color instantly, as if that answer alone terrified him. I took a step forward carefully. "Why do I have this mark?" I asked. The other Kol finally looked directly at me again, and for the first time something resembling emotion flickered across his face, pity. "Because you survived when you were not supposed to," he said, and the timer beneath my wrist suddenly burned painfully so that I hissed and grabbed my arm instinctively.  New text appeared around the glowing symbol, the words 

Pattern Divergence Increasing

flashing in pale white letters, and the room fell silent as even the woman looked alarmed now. The other Kol noticed immediately. "Oh," he said softly. "That is worse than before," he added. Before I could demand answers, the tunnel lights abruptly shut off again so that darkness swallowed the room, and then came the sound of breathing, not one person but dozens, slow inhalations echoing through the corridor outside. The teenage girl started crying quietly as flashlights switched on shakily around the room, and in the weak beams of light shadows stretched unnaturally across the walls, moving independently of the people who cast them. The older man whispered, "They found us." The other Kol remained completely calm. "They are not here for you," he said. Every flashlight flickered simultaneously, and then the emergency lights flashed red so that for half a second I saw figures standing in the corridor outside, human shaped and motionless and wrong, their bodies distorted around the edges like unfinished sketches struggling to remain solid. Then darkness returned and the breathing outside stopped instantly, the silence feeling worse than any sound. I looked toward the other version of myself. "You know what those things are," I said. "Yes," he replied. "Then tell me," I demanded. "They are what remains after too many resets," he said, and the words hit the room like ice water as nobody moved.

The woman cursed under her breath quietly. "You are accelerating the collapse," she accused, but the other Kol ignored her, his eyes staying fixed on me. "You need to survive longer this cycle," he told me, and something about the way he said it made my stomach twist. "This cycle," I repeated slowly. "How many times has this happened?" I asked. He did not answer immediately, instead reaching into the pocket of his hoodie to pull out an old photograph worn soft at the edges, and he tossed it toward me so that I caught it instinctively. The moment I looked at it, my chest tightened because five people stood in the picture beside a wooden settlement surrounded by massive walls, the woman in black and the older man and even the teenage girl, all alive and all smiling, and standing in the center was me, not this version of me but someone older and sharper and different. On the back of the photograph, written in faded black ink, were four words, Cycle 73 and then beneath them Final Attempt. My breathing stopped because seventy three was not possible.

The teenage girl grabbed the photo from my hands, her face going pale instantly. "I remember this place," she said, tears filling her eyes as everyone turned toward her. "I have been there before," she added, and the room suddenly vibrated violently, not the tunnels but reality itself, the walls distorting sideways for one horrifying second before the other Kol moved instantly. "Get down," he shouted, and something crashed through the ceiling above us as concrete exploded across the room.

One of the distorted humanoid creatures landed between us with a sound like twisting metal, and up close it looked even worse, its body constantly shifting shape as if reality could not decide what it was supposed to be. Its face looked human, almost, like an unfinished copy, and the creature slowly turned toward me as every timer in the room began counting down faster, the numbers skipping violently downward from 02:28:41 to 02:28:38 to 02:28: 34. The other Kol's expression changed for the first time, fear, real fear, and then the creature spoke using a voice made from overlapping whispers that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Deviation confirmed," the creature said.