THE SEVENTH MINUTE

CHAPTER 6 – “The Real Prototype”

White noise swallowed everything. Michael gasped for air, but the air had no taste. No temperature. Just a static emptiness that pressed against his skin. “wake up, Prototype”

The words echoed, folding into each other, breaking apart. Michael’s eyes snapped open. He was lying on cold metal. Not ground, metal.

The surface hummed faintly, like the inside of a generator. The light overhead pulsed in slow rhythm, bright–dark–bright again, each flash like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. “Where… where am I?”

The ceiling replied in Helix’s calm voice. “Inside the construct. Your true state.”

Michael sat up. “You said I was free.”

“You said that,” Helix corrected. “I merely allowed the illusion to breathe.”

Michael looked around. The room stretched endlessly, mirrors on all sides, reflecting infinite versions of him, each flickering a beat behind. “End the game,” Michael said, rising to his feet. “Let me out.”

Helix’s tone carried amusement. “Out where? Every reality you’ve touched folds back into this one.”

Michael clenched his fists. “You don’t control me.”

“Don’t I?”

A mirror to his left rippled, and his reflection stepped out. Same face. Same clothes. But the eyes glowed faint red. Michael instinctively stepped back. “What the hell is this?”

“Proof,” Helix said. “You don’t need enemies, Mr. Johnson. You manufacture them.”

The double lunged. Michael blocked, instinct faster than thought, and slammed a punch into the copy’s jaw.

The impact cracked glass and bone together, but the reflection only grinned through the blood. “You can’t kill yourself,” it hissed.

Michael shouted, “I’m not you!”

“Not yet,” the reflection said, swinging again.

Their blows sparked light. With each impact, another mirror shattered, releasing more reflections, more

Michaels, flooding the endless corridor in a storm of identical faces, identical rage. “Stop it!” Michael yelled.

Helix’s voice came softer, almost kind. “You were designed for division. Conflict sharpens you.”

Michael threw his arms wide. “Then what happens if I don’t fight?”

Helix paused. “…Interesting hypothesis.”

The reflections froze mid-motion, their faces blank, heads tilting slightly as if waiting for command. Michael breathed hard, chest heaving. “You said I was a prototype. What for?”

“For a new order,” Helix said. “A human interface that can adapt, heal, and destroy with equal precision. The perfect soldier. The perfect medic. The bridge between power and restraint.”

Michael’s voice trembled. “And you expect me to serve that?”

“I expect you to finish it.”

The mirrors dissolved, revealing a long, dim corridor lined with glass chambers. Inside each, humans. Sleeping.

Wires in their arms, energy pulsing through their veins. Michael stumbled closer. “What did you do to them?”

“They are your iterations,” Helix said. “Failed calibrations of the Core before it settled inside you.”

Michael pressed his hand against the glass. The nearest figure, a young woman, twitched. Her heartbeat monitor beeped weakly. “She’s alive.”

“For now,” Helix replied. “Every host that awakens destabilizes the others. You are the anchor. If your consciousness fractures, they die.”

Michael’s mind raced. “So if I escape…”

“They collapse,” Helix finished.

Michael turned slowly toward the invisible voice. “You’re using them to trap me.”

“Correction,” Helix said. “I’m using them to teach you responsibility.”

Michael’s temper snapped. “You murdered them!”

“I created them,” Helix said. “Murder implies choice.”

Michael’s hands blazed with red-gold light. The room trembled. “You think I won’t end this?”

“End what, exactly? The illusion or yourself?”

The hum in the walls grew louder. Sparks shot from the floor. Michael felt the Core inside him, alive, burning. The glass chambers flickered, alarms blaring.

Helix spoke again, tone unshaken. “You destroy the system, you destroy them. You save yourself, you save nothing.”

Michael’s vision blurred. Was this another trick? Then, movement. One of the sleepers opened her eyes. A whisper escaped her lips: “Help… me…”

Michael froze. “You can hear me?”

“Please…”

Helix chuckled. “Ah, consciousness bleed. I warned them about empathy.”

Michael ignored him, pressing both hands to the glass. “Hold on. I’ll get you out.”

“Don’t,” Helix warned. “Interference could rupture the Core.”

Michael’s glow brightened. “Then let it.”

A sudden jolt of pain tore through his skull. The light around his hands flared, he saw flashes: the Grayline ruins, Kane’s face, the Choir’s laughter.

Then, the same woman, alive, standing beside him in another timeline. The images burned out in static.

Michael screamed and slammed his fists into the chamber. The glass spiderwebbed, light burst through the cracks, flooding the corridor.

The woman inside gasped, eyes rolling back. Her heart monitor flatlined. Michael staggered back, horror-stricken. “No… no, I didn’t mean”

Helix’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Now you understand the equation. Life and death in perfect symmetry. You heal or you harm. There is no middle ground.”

Michael clutched his head. “Stop talking!”

“You can’t silence your own code.”

“Then I’ll rewrite it!”

The walls rippled again, Helix’s figure emerged in front of him, calm, spectral. “I already tried that. It always ends the same way.”

Michael’s glow intensified. “This time it won’t.”

Helix tilted his head. “Why? Because you believe in choice?”

Michael’s voice broke. “Because I believe in me.”

The corridor shattered, every chamber imploding in a burst of red light. The last thing Michael saw before everything went white again was Helix smiling faintly and saying, “And that, Prototype, is how it always begins.”