Chapter 1: Awakening
The first thing I felt was the applause.
A thunderous roar. The sound of thousands of people clapping, screaming, shouting my name. The air vibrated with energy, and the ground beneath me seemed to pulse with the rhythm of a thousand heartbeats. I sat up, confused, blinking rapidly against the overwhelming lights. My head throbbed like I’d been hit by a train.
Where was I?
I looked around, trying to get a sense of my surroundings. A massive stadium stretched out in front of me. The crowd-no, the audience—was in a frenzy. Their faces were a blur, but the loudspeakers above me shouted in a voice that was both authoritative and jubilant.
“WELCOME BACK, SUBJECT 107!”
I froze.
Subject… 107?
I was on a stage, a metallic platform that felt more like a surgical table than anything else. My body felt strange, like I’d been asleep for years. I felt the weight of something missing, like a dream fading as soon as you wake up.
My mouth was dry, and I struggled to remember the last thing I’d done. My bedroom? I had been in my bed, scrolling through my phone, the clock ticking away like every other night. I remembered closing my eyes, but beyond that… nothing.
My clothes were unfamiliar-smooth, synthetic fabric that felt too tight around my arms. My skin, too, felt different, like it was glowing faintly from the inside. My fingers trembled as I pushed myself to stand.
As soon as I did, the lights intensified, blinding me, and the crowd erupted again, chanting my number, their voices reverberating through my bones.
“Subject 107! Subject 107!”
I staggered backward, barely keeping my balance. I felt like I was drowning in sound. Who was Subject 107? Was that my name? Did I even have a name anymore?
The next thing I knew, a woman stepped out from the shadows. She wore a white lab coat, her face calm and knowing, as though she had seen this moment unfold countless times before. Her eyes were warm, but there was a sharpness to them, something that didn’t belong in this surreal place.
“Congratulations,” she said, her voice smooth and confident. “You’ve made it back. We weren’t sure you would.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words caught in my throat. I felt like I was being suffocated by the sheer impossibility of the situation. My heart raced as I tried to gather my thoughts, to piece together something coherent.
“Where am I?” I managed to croak. “Who are you?”
She smiled, a knowing smile that seemed rehearsed. “I am Dr. Larken. And you’re in the Realverse, Subject 107. It’s the world you’ve been training for. The world you belong in now.”
Training? I had no idea what she was talking about. This couldn’t be real. It had to be some sort of experiment, some twisted reality TV show I’d accidentally volunteered for, or maybe I was dreaming.
“But…” I stammered. “I don’t remember any of this.”
Dr. Larken didn’t flinch. “That’s normal. You’ve lived several lives already. Some of them were difficult, others were easier. But they all served their purpose.”
I tried to step back, but the air felt thick, like gravity itself was pushing me into the floor. My legs felt weak.
“What are you talking about?” I said, my voice breaking. “What lives? I don’t understand.”
“You were in a simulation,” she said, her tone gentle, almost motherly. “We’ve been running tests on your emotional responses, on your psychological growth. It’s a process, Subject 107. A process you volunteered for.”
I looked at her, stunned. I didn’t volunteer for anything. I didn’t even know where I was. This couldn’t be real.
“Simulation? Tests? I don’t remember any of this! I don’t even remember signing up for something like this!”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, taking a step closer. “You’ve lived through twelve simulated lives, Subject 107. And now, you’re finally back. You’re ready.”
I shook my head, unable to process her words. Twelve lives? Twelve lives? Was I… was I a clone? A test subject? Or worse, was I just a creation in some twisted experiment?
Dr. Larken reached into her pocket and pulled out something small-a memory card, almost too familiar in its shape. She handed it to me without a word.
“This,” she said, “contains the entire record of your previous lives. Your childhood, your losses, your victories—everything. It’s the truth of who you were. Who you are.”
I looked down at the card in my hand. It was sleek and metallic, almost too cold to touch. My fingers tingled as I held it, as if the memories themselves were seeping into my skin.
“What… What happens now?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Dr. Larken smiled again, but this time, there was a flicker of something darker in her eyes.
“Now, you have a choice, Subject 107. You can integrate yourself back into this world, the Realverse, and live your life. Or…” She paused, leaning in closer, her voice dropping. “You can reset. And someone else will take your place.”
I blinked, the world around me swirling like I was trapped in a vortex of confusion.
“Someone else?” I repeated, struggling to keep my composure. “What do you mean, reset?”
“You see, Subject 107,” Dr. Larken said softly, “you weren’t the first. There were others before you. And when they failed to remember, we had to erase them. You’re the last of your kind. The only one who’s made it this far.”
My hands shook. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. “Erase…?”
“Yes. You’ve been through many cycles of resetting, of reliving the same emotional experiences to test your limits. But now, you’ve reached the final stage. This is where the truth comes out.”
She handed me a silver capsule. The light glinted off its surface, and for the first time, I noticed the two buttons on its side. One read “Live Truth,” and the other read “Live Lie.”
“You choose now,” Dr. Larken said. “Live the truth of your existence, or reset everything, and let someone else take your place in this false world.”
My mind screamed for answers, but none came.
“Live truth?” I repeated. “Live lie? What is this, some kind of game? You’re asking me to choose between reality and… and what?”
“Exactly. Your choices, your experiences, they will shape who you are. But remember this,” she said, her tone now chilling. “If you reset, everything you’ve experienced—everything you’ve become-will vanish. Gone. Forgotten. And someone else will live the life you rejected.”
I stared at the buttons.
And then, something in me snapped. I couldn’t let this be my end. Not this way. Not without knowing the truth.
I pressed the button marked “Live Truth.”
The world around me trembled.
And the lights went out.
Chapter 2: A World Lost
I woke up again-this time, on a bed, but not my own. The room around me was sterile, cold, and familiar in a way that chilled my bones. The walls were metal, the floor smooth, and the air smelled faintly of antiseptic. My body was numb, stiff, as if I had been in stasis for a long time.
I sat up, panic surging through me. I looked at my hand, flexing my fingers, expecting them to feel different-warped, maybe, from the countless resets I had experienced. But no. They were just hands. Familiar. Ordinary. Yet there was a sense of something missing. Something deeper than I could understand.
Suddenly, the memories hit me all at once.
The simulations. The fake lives. The resets.
Everything that had been taken from me. Every life I had lived was a lie. The love I had felt. The heartbreak. The friends I had made. Gone. None of it was real. None of it had ever been mine.
I shook my head violently, as though trying to dislodge the suffocating weight of the truth.
The truth. I had chosen it, hadn't I? I had decided to face the full, terrifying reality of what I was. A subject. A test. My entire existence had been a carefully constructed experiment, designed to simulate human emotion and growth. They had orchestrated my memories. My pain. My happiness.
The horror of it all settled like an iron weight on my chest.
There was a sharp knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, it swung open. A man entered, wearing a uniform that looked too similar to Dr. Larken’s. His face was blank, devoid of emotion, but there was something in his eyes—recognition. As if he knew who I was. As if he had been watching me for a long time.
“You’re awake,” he said simply.
I stared at him, my mind racing. “Who are you? What is this place? Why-why did you do this to me?”
He sighed, the sound almost... tired. “You’ve chosen the truth. Now, you must understand it. There’s no going back.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, feeling the rising panic again. “No! I don't understand! None of this is real! My life, my choices, the people I loved-they were all programmed. You... you manipulated me!”
He didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he sat down in a chair across from me and looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and indifference.
“You were given everything,” he said finally. “The chance to live a life that others could never understand. The perfect world, the perfect experiences. And you chose the truth.”
I wanted to scream at him. To tear the world around me apart, but I felt frozen. Powerless. This wasn’t the world I thought I knew. It was a sick, twisted version of it. And I was just a part of some grand experiment-someone to be discarded when they no longer mattered.
“Tell me,” I said through gritted teeth, “how many others like me are there? How many people have gone through this… process?”
He didn’t flinch. “Thousands. We’ve been running simulations for years, trying to create the perfect human experience. Some of them don’t make it. They can’t handle the emotional weight of the truth, so they’re erased, their memories wiped clean. They’re replaced by others. Like you.”
I felt the ground slip away from me. Thousands? I wasn’t special. I was just one of many, one of the failed ones who had stumbled their way to the end.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why did I make it? Why wasn’t I erased like the others?”
He looked at me for a long moment, as though weighing his words. “Because you were different. Your ability to feel… to process emotion, despite everything you’ve been through—it's rare. It’s what made you stand out. And now, here you are, in the real world. But you’ll never be the same again.”
“The real world?” I repeated, incredulous. “This isn’t the real world! This is a lie. It’s all a lie.”
The man stood up and walked to the far side of the room, tapping something on a wall-mounted screen. A hologram flickered to life in front of me, showing a series of images: my face, over and over again, in different settings, different scenarios.
“I’ve seen this before,” I said, my heart sinking. “These are the memories… the lives. But they’re not mine. None of it was real.”
The man turned to face me. His expression was hard, almost unreadable. “You were never meant to remember. The idea was that once you reset, once you lived another life, you would forget. You would go on, content with the new experiences. But you’re different. You remembered. And now you have to deal with it.”
I felt a jolt of realization hit me. “You mean… I’m stuck here? In this world? With all these memories of a life that was never mine? How can I even trust myself now?”
The man paused. “You can’t. Not completely.”
I felt a wave of nausea roll over me, but I held myself together, forcing myself to stand. I could feel the weight of every single reset, every artificial decision, every manipulated emotion. But I could also feel the truth. The truth that ran deeper than the simulations, deeper than the artificial constructs.
And the truth was that I was still me. In some way, I was still the person who had lived through those experiences, who had loved and lost, who had fought and failed. Even if it wasn’t real, the emotions had been. The lessons, the growth—they had been real.
I looked at the man, determination setting in. “So, what now?”
He shrugged, his indifference almost infuriating. “Now, you live. That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? You wanted to live. To experience it all. Now, you’ve got that chance.”
I took a deep breath. “No. I wanted to choose. I wanted to choose my life. And I will.”
The man didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, as if waiting for me to break.
But I wouldn’t break. Not now. Not ever again.
Chapter 3: The Choice
The world outside the sterile walls felt strangely empty. I had been given a second chance-a chance to live in the real world, to experience everything as it truly was. But the world I stepped into wasn’t the one I had imagined. It was cold, sterile, and distant, as if it was waiting for me to fill it with meaning.
But I wouldn’t let it define me. I wouldn’t let this empty world decide who I was.
As I walked through the streets, the people passing by didn’t even look at me. Their faces were empty, just like mine had been during the simulations. They were all going through the motions, living lives they didn’t question, trapped in the same cycle of disillusionment that I had just escaped.
But I wasn’t like them anymore. I was free.
I stopped, right in the middle of the street. I could feel the weight of the world pressing in on me, but I didn’t care. I knew now that I could choose. And I wouldn’t let anyone take that away from me.
Not ever again.
Author’s Note:
In a world where our lives are constructed, manipulated, and erased, what remains when we are finally given the truth? The choices we make become not just a reflection of who we are, but who we could become. Will we let the world define us, or will we carve our own path, even when the world feels like a lie?
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