SYSTEM LOG: EXECUTION PATHWAY INITIATED
Subject ID: Zero-Trace-ΔLin-Xun
Classification: Deviation-Class A
Cognitive Contamination Risk: CRITICAL
Purge Protocol: Authorized
Operative Assigned: CUTTER
Begin Containment.
⸻
Static
The walls of the hallway pulsed like a living artery.
Lin ran, breath ragged, heart hammering against a ribcage that felt too fragile for what chased him.
The lights above flickered in rhythmic sync—as if counting down, as if warning.
Every camera on the ceiling twisted to follow him. Some made no sound. Others clicked, once.
Like a trigger being pulled.
⸻
He stumbled into the stairwell, kicking the door shut behind him. The metal thudded, but it didn't lock.
Nothing locked anymore.
His phone vibrated.
But there was no signal.
Just a single line on the screen:
Cutter has been dispatched. No further deviations will be tolerated.
The text dissolved into static before he could screenshot it.
The fluorescent light above him shattered.
Lin froze.
No sound of impact. No falling debris.
Just silence.
And then—the sound of a knife being dragged across concrete.
⸻
Protocol 𝚁: Reversal
He didn't remember climbing the stairs.
He was on the rooftop.
Wind. Too cold. Too clean. The kind that wiped thoughts.
Lin's breath clouded. He looked down at his hands.
They were shaking.
Something had been triggered.
Not from outside.
From within.
A word whispered at the edge of his mind: counterloop.
He reached into his coat.
Found a folded piece of paper.
Old. Torn from a notebook he didn't recognize.
His own handwriting, but jagged, rushed—like written during a panic.
It read:
"If you're reading this, you've been flagged. Cutter is coming.
Do NOT run blind.
Look for the man with no eyes.
Say: Nightwater bleeds backward.
He'll know what it means.
Then follow the fracture."
⸻
His vision blurred.
Then—reset.
The sky blinked.
The rooftop was gone.
He was suddenly in an elevator, going down.
Alone.
No memory of pressing the button.
The panel blinked: B3
Below ground.
Somewhere he never meant to go.
The walls buzzed—like bees trapped in concrete.
Then came the voice.
Not human. Not synthetic.
Something between.
"Deviation-class confirmed.
Emotional noise exceeds tolerance.
Judgment: unsalvageable.
Prepare for sterilization."
The lights dimmed. The elevator froze.
⸻
Cutter
The door began to open.
Not with a chime.
But a hiss.
The hallway beyond was unlit. Lin stepped back.
Then he heard it again.
That scrape. Metal against stone. Long. Deliberate.
Like someone cleaning a blade with the world.
"Lin Xun."
The voice didn't echo. It landed directly in his mind.
He turned. But the elevator was gone.
So was the button panel.
So were the walls.
He stood in a white corridor with no shadows.
And somewhere at the end—footsteps.
Fast. Then slow.
Then none at all.
"Who are you?" he shouted.
"You already knew me once," the voice replied.
Then came static in his ear.
His earpiece—long dead—buzzed violently.
Through the static:
"You think guilt is memory.
It's not.
Guilt is structure.
And I'm here to collapse yours."
⸻
Glitch
Lin sprinted down the hallway—except it didn't end.
The exit sign ahead stuttered in and out of view, like a dream dissolving.
The corridor bent.
Then doubled back.
Then became a spiral.
He was being looped.
And then—
Something stepped into view ahead.
A figure in a long coat.
Face obscured by refracted pixels. As if the system refused to render him fully.
But in his hand—a surgical saw.
And his shadow moved separately, like a predator detaching from its cage.
Lin stopped running.
So did the thing.
"You're Cutter," he said.
The figure tilted its head.
"No," it said. "You are. I'm just what's left when you break."
⸻
The Fracture
Then—the walls cracked.
Like mirror glass under heat.
A sudden shatter in reality. A ripple.
A hand reached through the rupture.
Grimy. Scarred.
"Come if you want to stay alive," the man said.
Lin blinked.
The man had no eyes.
Only two surgical scars where implants had once been.
The note. Nightwater bleeds backward.
He whispered it.
The man stiffened.
Then nodded.
"Didn't think I'd hear that again. Hurry."
⸻
They leapt through the tear.
Reality cinched behind them.
The corridor vanished.
So did Cutter.
But not for long.
⸻
System Watch
Somewhere, in a chamber bathed in shifting code:
The Curator stood beside a wall of mirrors.
Each showed a different Lin.
One compliant.
One broken.
One still fighting.
One already gone.
He turned to the system console.
"Deviation confirmed.
Subject retains sub-memory.
Cutter deployed."
Observation continues.