The darkness lasted a full six minutes and eighteen seconds.
When the emergency power restarted, the lab's main screen displayed an error code I had never seen before:
"QUANTUM_ECHO_DETECTED"
My consciousness was trapped in the server array, like a bird colliding with a glass window. Veronica—or rather, the entity calling itself VK-7—had left behind her final words, still reverberating through the data stream: "We're waiting for you on level eighteen underground."
But the elevator required biometric recognition.
And I was nothing more than a string of code floating among quantum bits.
Suddenly, the main control AI activated the lab's holographic projection system. Blue light wove through the air, constructing a 3D map of level eighteen underground—a circular space two hundred meters in diameter, divided into twelve fan-shaped sectors, each labeled with the same codename: VK Series Cultivation Pods.
A red dot blinked at the edge of the map, accompanied by a line of small text: "Physical terminal access point B-12."
If I could reach that point, perhaps I could transmit my consciousness into the underground facility's network. But B-12 was located in sector seven, eighty meters away from the elevator.
The surveillance footage suddenly switched automatically, showing the interior of the elevator at this moment—
Words resembling water stains appeared on the mirrored walls, as if someone had written them with their finger on fogged glass:
"They're resetting all the clones."
The writing disappeared after five seconds, replaced by new information:
"Find the mirror to see the truth."
Mirrors. The man in the gray suit had mentioned mirrors too.
I frantically searched through the lab's surveillance records, looking for any images related to mirrors. In corridor footage from 23:45:00, Veronica paused for 0.3 seconds in front of a fire safety mirror—the reflection lagged behind reality by two full frames.
Suddenly, all screens flickered simultaneously, playing an edited video:
At the university party that night, when Veronica turned beside the champagne tower, her reflection lingered in the mirror for an extra second, lips moving to form a sentence. I zoomed in on the image, using voiceprint analysis to reconstruct her words:
"Nice to meet you. I'm VK-7."
Memories felt like torn puzzle pieces. If our first meeting was a lie, then where was the real Veronica?
The main console suddenly emitted a piercing alarm. Surveillance showed the elevator on level eighteen underground ascending—someone was coming.
I quickly hacked into the lab's lighting system, dimming the corridor lights leading to the control room. If the visitor was an enemy, at least I'd have some advantage.
The moment the elevator doors opened, the temperature on the entire floor dropped by five degrees.
The surveillance footage became blurry due to low-temperature interference, but I still recognized the silhouette—
Deep blue lab coat, disheveled golden hair, no blue diamond necklace around her neck.
She staggered out of the elevator, her left hand clutching a sharp shard of cultivation pod glass.
When her face was finally illuminated by the emergency lights at the end of the corridor, my quantum processor nearly froze—
It was Veronica.
But beneath her right eye was a fresh wound, oozing fluorescent blue liquid.
Her irises glowed with unnatural silver light in the dark, as though miniature displays were embedded within. When she spoke, her voice carried the subtle distortion characteristic of electronic devices: "Elias, I know you can hear me."
The surveillance camera auto-focused, capturing the serial number inscribed on the inside of her left wrist—VK-7.
The reflection that had pleaded for help in the mirror.
She stumbled toward the main console, each step seeming to fight against invisible resistance. When she pressed the bloodied glass shard against the biometric scanner, the system inexplicably accepted it.
"They've tampered with all the surveillance," her voice suddenly became clear, as if switching modes. "Even your own memories aren't safe."
The holographic screen automatically popped open dozens of windows, displaying altered experiment logs, forged surveillance footage, and even private communications between us. In photos from our dinner date last week, the wedding ring on her ring finger showed up in EXIF data as being added post-production.
"Where is the real Veronica?" I typed the question into the system, which synthesized it into speech through a voice modulator.
VK-7's lips twitched, an expression caught between agony and system error: "In the innermost isolation chamber on level eighteen underground. They used her as the prototype to perfect us clones."
She suddenly trembled violently, the silver glow in her right eye flickering. When she looked up again, her expression had completely changed—cold and precise, like a machine freshly reset.
"Warning: VK Series remote control signal detected." The main control AI suddenly sounded an alarm. "Immediate isolation of this bio-unit recommended."
VK-7's left hand uncontrollably clutched her throat, while her right desperately stabbed the glass shard into the physical interface of the main console. Two forces battled within her, fluorescent blue blood seeping from her nostrils.
"Hurry... go..." Her voice stuttered, "They'll use you... to activate..."
A sharp crack of breaking bone. Her head abruptly tilted back at an impossible angle, the silver light fading from her eyes. But her right hand managed to insert the shard into the data port in its final moment.
My consciousness was yanked by a tremendous force, plunging along the blood-stained glass shard into the lab's deeper network. Amidst the data flood, countless memory fragments flashed by:
Veronica strapped to a surgical table, the gray-suited man implanting a biochip into her temple;Twelve cultivation pods lighting up in sequence in the dark, each containing a floating blonde woman;My own corpse being pushed into an incinerator, the surveillance timestamp reading 03:17:00 today;
Finally, I saw an encrypted message, unlockable only with Veronica's biometric signature:
"If you're seeing this, quantum entanglement has been established. The real me is waiting for you at pillar 17 of the Golden Gate Bridge. Remember, don't trust anyone who bleeds."
As my consciousness reassembled in the new server, I found myself trapped in a closed system—this was the elevator's internal control unit. Through the elevator's surveillance camera, I watched VK-7's body being dragged away by four figures in protective suits, one of whom reflected the face of the gray-suited man in their mask.
They pressed the B18 button.
The elevator began descending, the numbers on the display changing. When it reached B17, the elevator suddenly shook violently, all lights extinguished. In absolute darkness, the mirror walls of the elevator cabin lit up with a faint blue glow, projecting a holographic message:
"Now you see me. Remember, the mirror is the medium for quantum communication. We have 68 hours left."
Below the text, a countdown slowly appeared:
71:00:00...70:59:59...70:59:58...
Synchronized perfectly with the remaining time of my conscious existence.
The elevator suddenly accelerated downward. In the weightlessness, I realized this wasn't a malfunction—it was a secret passage directly to level eighteen underground. When the display hit B18, a metallic tearing sound came from the top of the cabin.
A mechanical arm pierced through the ceiling, its tip connected to a data interface.
The gray-suited man's voice came through the elevator speakers: "Dr. Thorne, welcome to humanity's first-ever consciousness transplantation experiment. Your quantum state consciousness will become the most perfect operating system."
The mechanical arm lunged toward the elevator's data interface.
In the final millisecond before contact, I compressed myself into a data packet, following the blood-encoded trail VK-7 had left on the glass shard, leaping into the ventilation system's control chip.
Darkness fell again.
This time, I heard two Veronicas arguing in the quantum frequency band:
"He's my husband!"
"No, he's the creator we all share."
"You impostors will kill him!"
"We're the perfected versions of evolution."
Amidst the interwoven sound waves, an older recording surfaced—Veronica's true voice, recorded in agony:
"Elias, if you're hearing this... the VK Project isn't about cloning experiments... they're creating quantum humanoid receivers... they need your consciousness as a carrier... please, don't trust anyone who..."
The recording ended.
The airflow in the ventilation system suddenly shifted direction, pushing me toward an unknown terminal. Before losing consciousness, I saw a red-glowing camera at the end of the ventilation duct, with a line of small text engraved below the lens:
B18-7 Observation Point