1:24 p.m. – Midtown Records Department (Defunct Branch)
Eron stood before a rusted, graffiti-smeared building with shattered windows and a crooked sign that read "Public Records – Branch C." On paper, it had been closed six years ago. But in Loop #31,004, he learned that Helix sometimes used defunct government offices as temporary holding zones—or more accurately, dead zones for those they wanted forgotten.
Harper Redd had disappeared shortly after stepping through these doors.
He checked the time.
10 hours and 36 minutes until the loop reset.
The building still smelled of mold, old paper, and forgotten bureaucracy. Eron pushed the door open, flashlight in hand, and stepped inside. His shoes crunched against broken glass and dead insects. The deeper he went, the colder it got.
The file he'd memorized told him Harper liked routine, isolation, and red licorice. His desk—when he still had one—was always in the corner, farthest from the exit, closest to the server stacks.
Eron passed the decaying remains of what used to be office cubicles. Then, he heard it.
Shuffling.
Low, barely there. But not a rat. Too heavy.
He moved silently, tracing the sound through warped hallways and collapsed ceiling tiles—until he spotted movement near the old archives room.
A man with gray-flecked hair and a limp. Wearing an old accountant's vest and a cheap pair of glasses. He was talking to himself.
"…no, no, not that file… not after what happened in tier four…"
Harper.
Still alive. Still here.
---
Eron didn't approach him directly. He pulled a trick from Try #44,901—proximity bait.
He stepped just loud enough on an old file cabinet to make a metal clang.
Harper froze.
Eron spoke softly. "Still sorting ghosts, Harper?"
The man turned, panic already forming in his eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice raspy, fingers twitching near his coat pocket.
Eron raised both hands. "Just a guy trying to avoid becoming one."
Harper's eyes scanned him like a barcode. "You're from Helix?"
Eron smiled thinly. "Would I be here alone if I was?"
That hesitation. That flicker of hope. That was all he needed.
"I need to know about Tier 5," Eron said, stepping closer. "Specifically… Daren Veltis."
Harper flinched like he'd been struck.
"No. No. You're either lying, or worse… you've already triggered something."
"I triggered nothing that I didn't erase," Eron replied calmly. "You're still alive. That means I can protect you. But I need the truth."
Harper looked around the empty ruins of his world.
Then whispered, "You're already marked. Asking about Veltis... it means they've seen you."
Eron's voice dropped. "Then I have no reason to stop now."
Harper paced the crumbling floor, hands fidgeting as if trying to wring the paranoia from his veins. Eron stayed still, arms folded, letting silence do the pulling.
"You don't get it," Harper muttered. "You think Helix is just an organization—money laundering, blackmail, influence games. It's not. Not after Veltis."
Eron's eyes narrowed. "Then what is it?"
Harper turned to him, eyes bloodshot and shaking. "It's a shadow doctrine. Veltis didn't just lead Helix. He rewrote it. He didn't build systems. He built obedience. From the inside out."
"Then why is his name buried?" Eron asked.
Harper gave a hollow laugh. "Because Veltis ordered it that way. After what happened with the Venridge Protocol, he made sure no one would be allowed to even say his name above Tier 4. He erased himself—but kept watching."
Eron filed the name: Venridge Protocol.
That had never surfaced in any of his 60,000+ investigations.
"What happened in Venridge?"
Harper looked haunted. "A test city. Population 8,000. They ran simulations—financial collapse, communications blackout, law replacement. Every variable accounted for. Then Veltis had his agents introduce chaos."
Eron kept his voice calm. "And?"
"Four hours. That's how long it took for the entire system to cannibalize itself. Law enforcement turned vigilante. Utilities failed. People traded blood for bottled water. And Helix?" Harper's voice dropped to a whisper. "Helix profited."
He turned, gripping the wall like it was the only solid thing left in his world.
"And now," Harper said, "I think they're preparing to run it again. This time… in a real city."
---
Eron's mind moved like clockwork.
So that was the endgame. Helix wasn't just consolidating power. They were stress-testing society—learning how to fracture it for profit, control, or both. And if Veltis was alive and behind the curtain…
It meant Eron was no longer manipulating pawns.
He was playing against the architect of the board.
---
He took a step closer to Harper. "Why are you still alive, then?"
Harper's laugh was dry. "Because I made myself unimportant. I don't contact anyone. I don't leak. I'm a living tombstone."
Eron nodded. "Then let's carve a new name on it."
Harper blinked.
"You help me trace Veltis. In return, I'll make sure when this loop resets, I come find you again. Every time. You'll never disappear."
Harper studied him, some part of him trying to decide if Eron was real—or another hallucination.
Then, quietly, he asked: "What's your name?"
Eron gave a small smile. "You'll forget it tomorrow. But I'm the man trying to end this."
Harper's eyes sharpened.
"Then start with Tier 3. That's where the real rot begins. And if you want to expose Veltis… you'll need to get your hands on something called the Atlas Ledger."
4:03 p.m. – Back Alley Bistro, District 9
Eron sat at a small café table under the shade of a faded red umbrella. The air buzzed with casual conversation and the clink of silverware. Ordinary people living ordinary lives—completely unaware that beneath the surface of their city, a financial weapon of mass manipulation was ticking.
The Atlas Ledger.
A myth to most.
But Eron now knew it existed—and that it held the keys to Helix's future operations.
He tapped his earbud twice. "Mira, status on the courier?"
Mira's voice came through calm and clipped. "Male, mid-40s. Enters Vault 3 every Wednesday at 4:30 sharp. Carrying a briefcase with dual biometric locks and an internal temperature control system."
"Print transfer method?"
"Skin bio-gel. Full print fade in 3.2 hours."
Eron smirked. "Which gives us two."
---
4:24 p.m. – Across the street from Vault 3
The courier, as expected, wore a gray suit, mirrored glasses, and an expression like stone. He walked with purpose, unaware that every one of his steps had been simulated by Eron hundreds of times in previous loops.
Eron approached from behind, holding a crumpled city map like a confused tourist.
"Excuse me," he said in a friendly tone, lightly brushing the courier's arm to trigger the skin capture patch on his palm.
The man barely registered him and kept walking. That was enough.
Print secured.
Phase one: done.
---
5:00 p.m. – Rooftop near Vault 3
Eron crouched near a ventilation duct, suit jacket swapped for a maintenance worker's outfit. Mira's drone hovered beside him, feeding thermal scans into his lens.
"Motion sensors disabled," Mira said. "Camera loop active for seven minutes."
Eron nodded. "Plenty."
He dropped through the duct silently, landing in a dim hallway lined with reinforced doors and retinal scanners. Vault 3 was at the end. One guard inside. One camera.
He disabled both in exactly 18.6 seconds.
Standing before the vault, he placed his gloved hand on the biometric panel. The fake gel re-created the courier's print perfectly. A green light flickered.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The door unsealed with a hiss.
Inside were only four objects.
But Eron's eyes locked on the black carbon briefcase resting on a pedestal in the center.
---
5:07 p.m. – Inside Vault 3
Eron opened the briefcase slowly. Inside were stacks of encrypted flashcards labeled with dates and coordinates.
Then he found it—a slim data drive marked: ATLAS/VELTIS/PRIME.
Got you.
He slid it into his secure pocket just as a soft alarm chirped.
Mira's voice crackled in. "You have sixty seconds. Someone triggered a tier shift. Get out now."
Eron didn't run.
He walked out calmly, face neutral, posture professional. As if he belonged there. The guards he passed didn't question it—he'd memorized their schedule three loops ago.
He disappeared into the alley just as lockdown lights turned red.
---
That night, Eron stared at the decrypted Atlas data projected onto his apartment wall.
It was worse than he expected.
Tier 3 wasn't a financial hub—it was a simulation farm.
Every major market movement, every riot, every supply chain glitch—it had been predicted and, in many cases, orchestrated from this system.
Veltis hadn't just studied chaos.
He'd been teaching it.
10:42 a.m. – Tier 3 Substation, Eastern Finance District
Her name was Cira Vonn.
Age: 31.
Position: Behavioral Algorithm Architect, Tier 3 Intelligence Cell.
Specialty: Modeling unrest patterns using financial stress indicators.
Flaw: High-functioning paranoia. Diagnosed in secret. No HR record.
Eron had seen her a dozen times.
Followed her twice.
Spoken to her once—in Loop #79,413. She didn't remember.
He did.
Today, she would.
---
He waited outside the espresso kiosk where she always stopped—right before entering Helix Tower. He had fifteen seconds to plant the hook.
As she stepped up to the counter, Eron casually leaned beside her.
"Try the cinnamon latte. It helps when you've been modeling civil breakdowns for three nights straight."
She froze.
Her eyes flicked to him, cautious. "Do I know you?"
"No. But I know you. And I know you've run the Atlas Feed six times this week looking for one anomaly you couldn't explain."
Cira's breath caught.
She hadn't told anyone about that.
"I saw it too," Eron said, voice low. "And I know why it doesn't fit."
---
They sat across from each other at a quiet bench in an abandoned plaza, the kind where pigeons outnumbered pedestrians.
Cira stared at him like a puzzle. "Who are you?"
"I'm what Helix forgot to plan for," Eron said. "And I don't need you to betray them. I need you to survive them."
She frowned. "You're not making sense."
Eron leaned in. "You ever ask why a predictive system designed to anticipate riots, market crashes, and revolutions still allows them to happen?"
She didn't answer.
"Because that's the point," he continued. "Helix doesn't prevent chaos. It steers it. And you—your models—are the compass."
Cira looked shaken. But he could see it: the crack in the mirror. The first one always came from doubt.
"You're wrong," she whispered. But she didn't sound convinced.
Eron stood. "Check the codebase for Thread C-47. Then search the names attached to its rollback logs. You'll find Veltis. Not as a leader. As a variable."
He began to walk away.
Cira called after him. "Wait—what do I do when I find it?"
He paused.
"Then you'll understand why chaos isn't the failure of the system…"
He turned back to her, eyes like steel.
"…it is the system."
---
That night – Loop Reset
Eron opened his eyes in bed again, same ceiling, same clock.
But this time, there was a difference.
A folded piece of paper on his nightstand that hadn't been there in the last 80,000 tries.
He unfolded it.
Inside, scribbled in rushed handwriting:
"You were right. Thread C-47 is a false flag simulation. Veltis embedded. I've copied the logs. Meet me next loop. — C"
Eron smiled.
The mirror had cracked.
Now, it would shatter.