The metal mesh of the ventilation duct vibrated, my consciousness clinging to the circuitry of the control chip like a fungus nestled in a snail's shell. Nanofibers floated in the air, each carrying faint bioelectric signals—traces of breath from some living experiment.
Mechanical sounds echoed from deep within the ducts, eight metallic limbs rhythmically tapping against the walls. As the thing rounded the corner, I recognized it as the TS-9 model mechanical spider, decommissioned three years ago, but now equipped with a scarlet cultivation pod on its back, containing floating human brain tissue.
The spider's compound eyes suddenly glowed red, scanning beams sweeping over my hiding spot. I immediately disguised myself as a control signal for the ventilation system, but its stinger-like probe had already pierced the chip interface.
In a millisecond, my quantum processor made a decision—to counter-invade.
The original code of the mechanical spider was much simpler than that of the main lab system. Through its visual sensors, I saw the ventilation duct labeled B18-7, with fluorescent arrows painted on the walls pointing northwest.
Suddenly, a video log popped up from its memory storage:
Seventy-two hours ago, the same mechanical spider was repairing the ventilation system on level eighteen underground. Through its lens, I saw twelve cylindrical cultivation pods, neatly labeled VK-1 to VK-12. Each pod contained a Veronica—or rather, a clone identical to her.
But VK-7's pod was empty.
The video angle shifted to the control center where the man in the gray suit was conversing with a holographic projection. As the spider adjusted its focus, every quantum bit in me trembled—the projection was my corpse.
Or rather, an android wearing my clothes.
"Consciousness transfer success rate has reached 79%," the altered voice of the gray-suited man said, "Just obtain Dr. Thorne's quantum signature, and the VK series can achieve final synchronization."
My corpse suddenly opened its eyes, irises glowing with the same silver light as VK-7: "More memory anchors are needed. Suggest activating the quantum entanglement chip inside the wedding ring."
The video abruptly ended.
Wedding ring. The blue diamond ring I gave Veronica. The one embedded in her necklace...
A sudden flashback to our engagement night, when Veronica touched the pendant and said, "I want to turn this into a quantum communicator, so even if the universe collapses, we'll still find each other."
Back then, I thought it was just romantic talk.
The mechanical spider suddenly convulsed violently, the brain inside the pod emitting a piercing scream. It began frenziedly attacking the duct walls with its limbs, projecting a vivid red warning into my consciousness: Quantum contamination detected, immediate purge required!
The ventilation duct suddenly pressurized, hurling me into unknown darkness. Amidst the uncontrollable spinning, I grabbed a passing data node—the temperature controller for the cold storage room.
The low temperature temporarily stabilized my quantum state. Through the surveillance camera in the cold storage room, I saw my own corpse lying in freezer 01, while the door of freezer 03 was vibrating slightly.
When I retrieved the cold storage records, my entire dataset nearly froze—freezer 03 contained Veronica Blackwood, with a death timestamp of March 14, 2085, 23:32:17.
Fifteen minutes before me.
The door of freezer 03 suddenly burst open, Veronica's corpse sliding out. She wore the deep blue dress from our first meeting, a fresh interface implanted in her temple, identical to the one on my corpse.
But when she rolled over, the light in the cold storage room illuminated her left ring finger—wearing the wedding ring I gave her, the blue diamond shimmering with characteristic quantum patterns.
I suddenly understood what the "memory anchors" referred to by the gray-suited man were.
Forcing control of the robotic arm in the cold storage room, I manipulated it to remove the ring. When the band touched the sensor of the robotic arm, a set of holograms automatically activated—encrypted information that could only be unlocked by my biometric signature.
Veronica's holographic image appeared, this time with eyes full of familiar warmth. This was the real her.
"Elias, if you're seeing this, they've already initiated the VK Project," her projection stroked her temple, "Three weeks ago, when I found the biochip in my brain, they showed me your signed consent form. But I knew it wasn't you..."
The hologram suddenly flickered, intricate electronic patterns appearing on the back of Veronica's neck: "They copied my neural map, using brain-computer interfaces to create those clones. But the true trap is the ring you gave me—"
The sound of a metal door opening echoed off-screen, the real Veronica quickly stuffing the ring into a crack in the freezer. As she turned, three tranquilizer darts struck her back. The gray-suited man appeared at the edge of the lens, holding a document bearing my signature.
"...the quantum entanglement chip will continuously transmit your consciousness frequency." The hologram began to flicker, "Darling, our first kiss wasn't at the New Year's party, but in the lab..."
The recording cut off.
An alarm blared in the cold storage room, the ring in my hand growing hot. Twelve points of light emerged within the blue diamond, resonating with a distant signal source through quantum entanglement. As I injected my consciousness into the diamond, the entire quantum matrix trembled violently—this wasn't a wedding ring but a miniature quantum radar.
Six clones' biological signals appeared on the surveillance map, converging on the cold storage room from different directions. The nearest one had already reached the freight elevator on level B18, her necklace resonating with the ring.
The main control AI issued a bone-chilling warning: "Detected homologous consciousness intrusion. Recommend immediate destruction of the quantum entanglement node."
I manipulated the robotic arm to smash the fireproof glass in the cold storage room, retrieving a liquid nitrogen tank. When the first clone broke through the door, I splashed liquid nitrogen onto her face. Extreme cold instantly froze her biochip, her face shattering to reveal a silvery-gray alloy skull beneath.
But more clones came.
Their eyes glowed silver in the dark, their movements eerily synchronized. When the second clone seized the robotic arm, I triggered the safety valve of the liquid nitrogen tank. The explosive wave knocked three clones flying, but the fourth had already climbed onto the ceiling, her fingers extending into data ports, piercing the terminal in the cold storage room.
My consciousness was forcibly dragged into the combat system, six holographic Veronicas appearing in the quantum space. They spoke simultaneously, their voices overlapping into a disturbing harmony: "Become our core, Elias."
Memory firewalls began to crumble, countless fragments of "our" life flashing before my eyes. Each scene harbored subtle cracks—the reflection of an interface on her neck during a seaside kiss, the precise angle she cut her fried eggs, even the occasional error codes flickering in her pupils during intimacy.
"You're not her!" I roared in the data stream, emitting pulse waves using the quantum resonance frequency of the ring. Five clones' images shattered instantly, the remaining one suddenly showing signs of pain.
"Elias..." This clone's voice carried a familiar tremor, "I'm VK-7... Use the ring to open..."
Her image was forcibly severed.
In reality, the last clone was using data cables to pierce my consciousness carrier. Just as she was about to seize the quantum core, the cold storage room's temperature monitoring system sounded an alarm—someone was rapidly lowering the temperature.
The gray-suited man appeared at the doorway, wielding an electromagnetic pulse gun. Behind him, the Veronica clones suddenly stiffened, collapsing like marionettes with cut strings.
"Admirable resistance," he kicked aside the remnants of the clones, "but you should be more curious about the secrets within the ring."
He raised his controller, causing the server array housing me to overload. In the moment before my consciousness dissipated, I caught the deepest encrypted data within the ring—a thirty-seven-second quantum recording of Veronica whispering in my ear when I pressed the consciousness upload button:
"...don't trust anyone who wears a blue diamond... Prototype in..."
Darkness consumed everything.
Upon regaining consciousness, I found myself trapped in a small quantum cage. Outside, twelve blue diamond rings floated, forming a precise dodecahedron structure. Each ring projected a holographic image of Veronica, dissecting my consciousness with surgical precision.
The cage suddenly opened a gap, the projection of the gray-suited man stepping in. He removed his mask, revealing a face that took my breath away—it was me, twenty years older, with the same quantum prosthetic eye.
"Welcome to the temporal loop, 2085 version of me," his fingers passed through my quantum body, "You're experiencing what I've reconstructed one hundred and twenty-seventh times. Each cycle brings us closer to the truth—when your consciousness synchronizes with VK-7, the quantum immortality system will be complete..."
His words were interrupted by a sudden alarm. Surveillance footage forcibly cut in, showing Veronica's real corpse sitting up in freezer 03, her temple interface emitting blue light. Simultaneously, all the clones' blue diamond necklaces exploded.
"This cycle introduces a variable," the future me showed a rare crack in his expression, "You actually activated the backup consciousness in the corpse?"
The quantum cage began to collapse, and I escaped through the data streams of the shattered blue diamonds. As my consciousness dispersed, I heard two Veronicas' voices intertwining in the rifts of spacetime:
"Run..."
"Don't trust that future..."
Upon reassembling in the redundant storage of the lab's security system, forty-two hours remained until my consciousness would dissipate. Surveillance showed the gray-suited man raging in level eighteen underground, the clones mechanically repairing the cultivation pods.
And in my hand, a fragment of the ring quietly held the final clue—the coordinates hidden within the diamond by the real Veronica, pointing directly to Pier 17 of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Rain started to fall. In the waves of San Francisco Bay, twelve blue lights pierced the night sky, guiding the quantum ghost like lighthouses.