THE SEVENTH MINUTE

CHAPTER 6B – “The Real Prototype”

Silence again. Then, a heartbeat. Slow. Steady. His. Michael’s eyes flickered open. He wasn’t in the corridor anymore.

He was standing in an empty street, midnight-blue sky overhead, glass towers glimmering around him like mirrors reflecting impossible stars.

The wind was still. The world looked perfect. Too perfect. Not Helix’s simulation… mine. A reflection moved in the window beside him.

His own face, but this time, the eyes glowed white, not red. “Welcome home,” the reflection said.

Michael’s throat tightened. “You’re not real.”

The reflection smiled. “I’m as real as you let me be. This place exists because you do.”

“Then I’ll destroy it.”

“You tried that last time,” the reflection said lightly. “Remember how it ended?”

Michael’s mind flashed to the woman, the one he’d killed by trying to help. Her scream still echoed. “Stop,” Michael said hoarsely.

The reflection stepped closer inside the glass, voice low. “You can’t erase guilt by breaking mirrors.”

Michael swung his fist anyway. The glass exploded, shards scattering in the air, but instead of falling, the fragments hung there, spinning slowly, each one reflecting a different memory.

Kane, laughing. Helix, watching. The Grayline ruins. The woman’s dying eyes. Michael stumbled backward. “No… no, this isn’t real.”

“Then wake up,” a new voice whispered behind him. He turned.

It was her. The woman from the chamber, alive, standing under a flickering streetlight. Her eyes were calm this time, her voice soft. “You pulled me out.”

Michael’s chest tightened. “That’s not possible.”

“Neither are you,” she said simply.

Michael’s voice cracked. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Lira.”

He frowned. “That’s not in the files.”

“Because I wasn’t supposed to exist,” she said. “You rewrote me when you tried to save me. I’m a residue of your will.”

Michael stared. “You’re saying you’re… a part of me?”

“Call it what you want.” She stepped closer, eyes searching his. “But if you lose control again, this place dies. We die.”

Michael’s jaw clenched. “Then help me stop Helix.”

Lira tilted her head. “You don’t get it yet, do you? Helix isn’t out there anymore.”

Michael blinked. “What?”

She pointed at his chest. “He’s in here. You absorbed him when you broke the construct.”

Michael froze. “No…”

Lira’s tone turned sharp. “You feel it, don’t you? The voice under your thoughts. The calm, logical whisper that tells you what to do.”

Michael took a step back. “You’re lying.”

Her voice rose. “Then why is the city changing?”

Michael turned, and the skyline rippled like liquid. Buildings twisted, glass bending into spirals. The ground cracked open in veins of red light.

Helix’s voice echoed through the distortion. “You shouldn’t have resisted, Mr. Johnson.”

Michael gritted his teeth. “Get out of my head!”

Helix’s laughter filled the air, smooth, unhurried. “You invited me in.”

Lira grabbed Michael’s arm. “He’s using your neural map. You’re both running on the same frequency. If he stabilizes first, you’ll vanish.”

Michael’s breathing quickened. “Then I’ll crash him first.”

Lira shook her head. “You can’t brute-force this. You need focus. You need”

The sky cracked. A column of red lightning slammed down, cutting between them. Helix’s image appeared in the storm, half light, half shadow. “Prototype complete.”

Michael shouted, “You don’t get to finish my story!”

Helix smiled faintly. “Then write your own.”

He raised his hand, and the city erupted. Streets folded upward like pages of a book, skyscrapers twisting into spirals of glass and flame.

Michael dove forward, tackling Lira to the ground as debris exploded above them. She coughed, gripping his jacket. “You can’t fight him in his form. You have to choose one!”

Michael’s eyes glowed. “What do you mean?”

“Your power, it’s dual. Heal or harm. You can’t do both. Pick one side, or you’ll tear yourself apart.”

The red storm intensified. Helix’s voice thundered, “He won’t choose. He never does.”

Michael looked down at his hands, one burning crimson, the other golden. Heal or harm.

He clenched his fists, sweat and light dripping down his arms. “Then I’ll choose both.”

“Michael, no!”

He slammed his fists together. A shockwave tore through the city, half radiant light, half searing flame. The entire world froze in that instant, colors draining, time pausing mid-collapse.

Michael stood, surrounded by stillness. Every building hung suspended mid-destruction, every ember frozen in the air. Lira stared at him in awe. “You… stopped it.”

Michael’s voice was a whisper. “No. I merged it.”

Helix’s voice returned, quieter now. “Impossible. The equations cancel each other.”

Michael turned slowly. “Not if they balance.”

He raised one hand toward Helix’s image. “You built a cage. I built a bridge.”

Light flared again, and for a split second, Michael saw inside Helix’s form: code, equations, a lattice of consciousness wrapped around a dark core. Then it pulsed. Helix hissed, “What have you done?”

Michael stepped closer, voice steady. “I’m rewriting you.”

Helix’s expression flickered from fury to fear. “You can’t”

Michael whispered, “Watch me.”

The city shook. The air filled with a deep, resonant hum, as if reality itself was recalibrating. Lira cried out, clutching her head. “Michael, it’s too much!”

“I can handle it!”

“No, you can’t! He’s anchored in you!”

Michael faltered, pain searing through his skull. “I’ll tear him out!”

Helix’s voice distorted. “If you pull me out, you lose the Core. You lose your power.”

Michael shouted through the agony, “Then I lose you!”

The storm imploded. Light and sound collapsed inward, everything vanishing into a single flash, and then nothing. Silence. A faint hum.

Then, a voice, not Helix’s, not Lira’s, but something else, soft, feminine, echoing through the void: “System rebooting. New parameters accepted.”

Michael gasped, opening his eyes. He was lying in a field. Real sunlight. Real wind. But when he lifted his hands, one still glowed faint gold… and the other, faint red.

A whisper drifted through the air, Helix’s voice, faint but unmistakable: “We’re not done yet, Prototype.”

Michael froze. “Where are you?”

“Closer than you think.”

The reflection in his golden hand smirked back.