Kael Voss had three problems.
One: The server room was on fire. Not the normal, slow, "call the fire department" kind of fire, flames sprouted in perfect ninety-degree angles, licking up the walls like someone had copy-pasted the same orange square over and over again.
Two: His left hand was gone.
Well… it's not that gone… that you think. It was still attached. But the skin had turned translucent, and he could see his own tendons flexing like piano wires….
Three: The floating blue screen in front of his face.
He'd worked with screens his whole life. Monitors, tablets, AR overlays. This was none of those. This was a slab of light hovering two inches from his nose, refusing to blink away when he waved his remaining hand through it.
[SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED]
Welcome, Anomaly #47.
You have been selected for the Samsara Convergence Protocol.
Current iteration: 1.
Remaining cycles: 1,000.
Time until the next scheduled death: 00:42:13.
Kael blinked. "That's not a real number."
The fire didn't care. It kept spreading, square by perfect square, melting the server racks into slag that looked like modern art.
He stumbled backward, tripped over a sparking cable, and landed hard on his tailbone. The screen followed him down. Rude.
[TUTORIAL PROMPT]
Would you like to view your Status? [Y/N]
"No," he said. Then, because he'd worked in QA for six years and knew how these things went: "Actually, yes. Fine. Show me."
The screen exploded into a cascade of data. Kael's vision swam.
STATUS: KAEL VOSS
Attribute Value
Iteration 1 / 1000
Class Unassigned
HP 87 / 100
MP 0 / 0
Stamina 64 / 120
Crimson Tide 0.00%
Active Skills 0
Passive Skills 1
PASSIVE SKILLS:
Anomaly Persistence (Rank F):
Upon death, retain 0.1% of cumulative experience. Does not prevent memory loss.
"Zero point one percent?" Kael read the line twice. "That's insulting."
The screen flickered.
[NOTICE]
Your first death is imminent.
Cause: Thermal Deconstruction (Server Room).
Recommendation: Run.
"I am running!" He wasn't. He was sitting on the floor, watching his left hand fade back into opacity. Then out again. Like a bad lightbulb.
He forced himself up. The emergency exit was twenty meters away, past three rows of burning racks. The fire hadn't reached the ceiling yet, but the smoke was already thick enough to chew.
Kael took a step.
[SKILL LEARNED: Desperate Sprint (Rank F)]
Increases movement speed by 15% when below 30% HP. Duration: 10 seconds. Cooldown: None (you'll be dead anyway).
He laughed. Genuinely, stupidly laughed. The system had a sense of humor. Great. He was being haunted by a snarky spreadsheet.
He ran.
The next thirty seconds were a blur of heat, ash, and the distinct feeling that his lungs were being seasoned from the inside. He made it past the first two rows. His shirt caught fire. He slapped it out with his see-through hand, which did nothing because the hand wasn't really there half the time.
Eight meters to the exit.
Then the floor collapsed.
One second it was concrete. The next second it was not, and Kael was falling through a hole that hadn't existed a moment ago, dropping into darkness with a sound that was mostly his own surprised wheeze.
He hit something wet.
Water. A drainage channel. Beneath the data-farm.
For a full ten seconds, he just floated. The fire was a distant orange glow above him. The water was mercifully shallow. His left hand was solid again, which was nice.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Immediate death avoided.
Time until the next scheduled death: 00:31:47.
Cause recalculating…
"Recalculate this," Kael muttered, and crawled toward a metal ladder.
He emerged into an alley behind the data-farm. Night sky. Sirens in the distance. The fire hadn't spread outside, someone had activated the emergency containment shields. Standard corporate protocol. Burn the server room, save the building.
Kael leaned against a dumpster and threw up.
When he finished, the screen was still there.
[STATUS UPDATE]
You are no longer in immediate danger.
However: 47 other Anomalies have awakened in Neo-Hangzhou within the last hour.
Average survival time for Anomaly #47 across all previous iterations: 6.2 hours.
Current iteration survival time: 0.4 hours.
He wiped his mouth. "Previous iterations? This is iteration one."
The screen was silent for three whole seconds. That felt like a long time for a screen.
[WARNING]
Correction: You are Iteration #47 of Anomaly #47.
Anomaly #46 was terminated 72 hours ago. Memory wipe: complete.
You have inherited their cycle count.
You are not the first Kael Voss. You are the forty-seventh.
The world tilted.
Kael sat down hard on the wet asphalt. The dumpster smelled like rotten vegetables and regret. Above him, the stars were wrong, too bright, too close, arranged in constellations he didn't recognize.
"I've died before," he whispered.
[AFFIRMATION]
Forty-six times.
You remember none of it.
Something in his chest cracked, the part of a person that holds their identity together.
He was a copy. A backup file restored from a corrupted drive. And the original had been deleted forty-six versions ago.
The screen pulsed.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
Remaining cycles: 954.
Every death accelerates the Crimson Tide.
At 100% corruption, this timeline collapses permanently.
No more reboots.
No more Kaels.
Kael looked at his transparent hand. Looked at the blue screen, and gazed at the burning building that had tried to kill him.
He was going to die again.
He stood up. Spit out the last of the bile. And said the only thing that made sense.
"Show me the skill tree."
[SKILL TREE: UNAVAILABLE]
You must die at least once to unlock skill progression.
Suggested cause of first death: Anything except fire. You've done fire three times already.
Kael closed his eyes. "Three times? I don't remember….."
[CORRECTION]
You don't. But the system does.
And you're getting predictable.
He was going to kill whoever built this nightmare.
First, though, he had to survive long enough to die properly.