28 Apr The Circuit

Part I

The tribunal room smelled faintly of bleach and old circuitry. Its white walls hummed with invisible currents, as if the building itself were preparing to pass judgment. Erick Ostander sat in the center of it all, his wrists bound in smooth, flex-metal cuffs that tightened whenever he moved too abruptly. He had tried speaking once already, but the panel had ignored him, their attention locked onto the flickering wall of screens behind him.

On those screens, a parade of faces scrolled past. Some wept, others contorted with pain, and still others glared at the unseen audience with an accusatory hatred that felt engineered. Each face was tagged with a name, a date, and a blinking red caption: VICTIM.

Erick gritted his teeth. He knew every one of those faces—or he had, at least, in some distorted form of reality. The boy with the severed artery. The woman crushed beneath a commuter train. The elderly man whose heart had stopped before Erick could even reach him. Each of them had slipped through his hands despite everything he had done to save them. Now, the system had transformed their deaths into a prosecutorial highlight reel.

A mechanical voice crackled from the ceiling:

“Subject 24-8902. Erick Ostander. Convicted of negligent manslaughter under Section 13B of the Unified Civil Code. Recommended corrective action: full-term emotional restitution via Circuit immersion.”

Erick shifted in his seat. “You have it wrong,” he said, forcing calm into his voice. “I did everything I could. I was cleared by my supervisors. I—”

“Silence,” interrupted a human voice, sharper and colder than the machine. Warden Caulder stepped into view from behind the tribunal’s glass dais, his hands folded neatly behind his back. He wore the standard gray uniform of the Circuit Management Division, but there was a meticulousness to him that made the fabric look sharper, more authoritarian. His eyes were flat, almost bored, as they assessed Erick.

“You misunderstand your position, Mr. Ostander,” Caulder said. “This is not a court of law. It is a closure assessment panel. Your guilt is not in question.”

Erick opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. Somewhere behind Caulder, he caught a glimpse of another figure—Dr. Sorelle Heim. She lingered near the edge of the room, half-concealed by a bank of monitors. Her face was pale, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her coat. She would not meet Erick’s eyes.

“You are sentenced,” Caulder continued, “to undergo full emotional restitution cycles for each of your proven victims. You will experience their pain, their confusion, and their fear until your empathic quotient reaches acceptable corrective thresholds.”

Erick clenched his fists, feeling the flex-metal dig into his wrists. “You want me to suffer for things I didn’t cause.”

“You will relive what they felt,” Caulder said, as if reading from a script. “Your denial is irrelevant.”

The lights dimmed. Somewhere behind him, Erick heard the quiet hiss of hydraulics. Two armored attendants entered, carrying a slender, coffin-like pod between them. Its surface was black and polished, reflecting the tribunal’s sterile glare.

Erick fought the urge to pull away as the attendants unshackled him and guided him to the pod. It smelled faintly of anesthetics and burnt ozone. Above its open hatch, a phrase glowed in sterile blue text:

THE CIRCUIT: EMPATHY THROUGH EXPERIENCE.

He twisted his head to look at Dr. Heim. “You know this is wrong,” he said. “You know it.”

For a moment, something flickered across her face—fear, regret, perhaps a mixture of both. Then she looked away.

The attendants pushed him gently but firmly into the pod. Cold gel conformed to his back and arms, seeping through his clothes in clammy waves. Metal arms descended from the ceiling, snaking electrodes along his temples, spine, and chest. A spike of panic shot through him as the hatch began to lower.

Caulder’s voice spoke one last time, amplified through hidden speakers. “Welcome to your correction, Mr. Ostander. May you find clarity within your suffering.”

The lid sealed shut with a heavy thump. Darkness swallowed him.

Inside the pod, Erick’s world reduced itself to sensations: the rhythmic thud of his heart, the chilling creep of the gel against his skin, and the growing roar of something stirring deep within the machinery. He tried to breathe deeply and focus, but the air tasted strange, synthetic, and overly sweet.

A low vibration began beneath him, at first almost imperceptible. It grew steadily, thrumming up his spine and setting his teeth on edge. Colors flared behind his closed eyelids: reds and yellows, then blues that stretched and split into impossible geometric shapes.

A probing, intrusive curiosity flickered, like static, along Erick’s consciousness. He gritted his teeth harder, instinctively trying to shield himself. It only seemed to encourage the presence.

Words, phrases, and images flashed past him in a staccato burst of memory fragments:

Gurney wheels rattling across cracked asphalt… someone’s sobbing breath against his shoulder… the acrid smell of engine fires… the sharp, metallic taste of fear…

Faces emerged and vanished, too quickly to focus on: patients, colleagues, strangers. Some were real; some were not. All of them judged him with blank, glassy eyes.

A soft female voice, disembodied and almost tender, whispered in his ear. “Please remember…”

Erick tried to speak, but the pod absorbed his voice. He raised his hand to pound on the hatch, but it was no longer there. His arm passed through empty space.

The thrum intensified, resolving itself into a full-body vibration that blurred the boundaries of his body. A sensation like falling seized him, a nauseating drop that dragged him downward even though he knew he was lying flat. Then, with a wrenching snap, reality reasserted itself.

He opened his eyes.

The world that greeted him was wrong in ways his mind could not immediately comprehend. The air shimmered faintly, like heat rising from asphalt. Medical monitors blinked and beeped in chaotic patterns, none of them matching any rhythm he could recognize.

And standing before him—on a hospital gurney slick with blood—was a child.

The boy could not have been older than eight. His shirt was soaked crimson, his eyes wide with a terror so profound it seemed to radiate from him. His mouth opened and closed without sound, a fish gasping on dry land.

Erick staggered forward instinctively, reaching for the boy, but the floor beneath him shifted, throwing him off balance. He caught himself against a wall that felt soft and warm beneath his fingers.

Somewhere overhead, a calm, mechanical voice spoke:

“Cycle one initialized. Subject: Marcus A. Linde. Trauma protocol: Arterial laceration, exsanguination, death. Time remaining: six minutes.”

The boy looked up at him, trembling, pleading.

Erick’s mind reeled.
This isn’t right. This isn’t how it happened.

He remembered the real Marcus—the boy who had collapsed in his mother’s arms at a school carnival, already beyond saving when Erick had arrived. But here, in this place, Marcus still lived. And it was up to Erick to relive his death.

The lights overhead flickered. The room seemed to tilt.

In the corner of the room, a mirror cracked slowly, a jagged fracture snaking across its surface. In the reflection, Erick saw himself—not as he was, but as something else. His hands dripped blood. His uniform was torn and stained. His eyes gleamed with a hard, cruel light.

He jerked his head away, refusing to believe it. “I’m not…” he whispered.

The voice returned, almost chiding: “Relive. Repent. Restore.”

The boy reached out a small, shaking hand.

The pod’s gel had long since soaked into Erick’s skin, but he felt another coldness spreading now—this one from within. Somewhere deep down, a tiny voice whispered back against the Circuit’s programming, a last flicker of resistance.

This is not who I am.

He reached for the boy.

And the world came apart.

Part II

The walls flexed and shuddered as if the building itself were convulsing. Erick fell to his knees, clutching the boy’s cold hand, feeling the sticky warmth of blood seeping between his fingers. Above them, alarms screamed in broken intervals, too warped to be mistaken for real sirens.

He pressed his palm against the boy’s wound, desperate to stem the bleeding, but the skin beneath his touch split further, blooming fresh rivers of crimson. Marcus whimpered, his mouth shaping silent pleas.

“No, no, no, this isn’t how it happened,” Erick muttered. He pressed harder, ignoring the way the gurney sagged beneath them, threatening to pull both of them into some unseen depth.

From the far end of the room, translucent figures began to materialize—nurses, doctors, bystanders—all watching with blank, dispassionate eyes. None of them moved to help. They stood still, like mannequins awaiting instruction, their faces blurry and indistinct.

Erick looked around frantically. The medical kit he had carried on that night should have been within arm’s reach, but here there was nothing but a pile of crumpled paper and a shattered IV stand. Every step he took to reach for equipment resulted in it melting into useless debris the moment his fingers brushed it.

The disembodied voice returned, colder than before: “Cycle instability detected. Correction protocol initializing.”

The floor lurched violently, pitching Erick sideways. He shielded Marcus with his body as the room folded inward, walls bending toward them like the closing jaws of a trap.

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the nightmare to stop. When he opened them again, he found himself standing alone. Marcus was gone. The room had rearranged itself into a sterile hallway, stretching endlessly in both directions. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering spasmodically.

Erick staggered forward, drawn by a barely perceptible tug somewhere deep in his chest. His hands trembled, stained with blood that would not wash away, no matter how hard he wiped them against his uniform.

As he moved, the hallway walls began to change. Pictures appeared—photographs nailed to the walls with crude iron spikes. Each photo captured a moment of failure: Marcus’s face twisted in agony, the woman from the car crash lying broken across the asphalt, an old man gasping for breath as blue-lit paramedics looked on helplessly.

Each photo bore a word beneath it in burning red letters: MURDERER.

Erick tried to turn away, but the hallway closed in, forcing him onward. The farther he walked, the louder the whispers grew—voices that sounded suspiciously like his own thoughts turned hostile.

“You could have saved them.”
“You wanted to be the hero, but you were never enough.”
“You let them die.”

“No,” he said aloud, his voice cracking. “I tried. I tried to save them.”

The hallway split ahead, forming two paths. On one side, a door marked CONFESSION shone with a dim orange glow. On the other, a door marked DENIAL flickered erratically, as if struggling to remain intact.

Erick hesitated only a moment before charging toward the second door. He slammed his shoulder into it, feeling it shatter.

He stumbled through into a scene that at first seemed familiar. A hospital waiting room, with sunlight slanting through its dusty windows. Plastic chairs bolted to the floor, an outdated vending machine hummed in the corner.

His mother sat in one of the chairs, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She looked just as he remembered her—gray-streaked hair pulled back tightly, glasses perched low on her nose, a worn paperback clutched in her fingers.

“Mom?” he croaked.

She looked up, her face softening into a sad smile. “You know the truth, Eric,” she said, using the childhood version of his name, the one no one else had ever called him.

Tears burned in his eyes. He stepped forward, but when he reached out, his hand passed through her like mist. She wavered and flickered, her form distorting.

The vending machine behind her split open, disgorging a stream of crimson that pooled at her feet. Her face twisted—not in anger, but in disappointment.

“You know,” she repeated, her voice echoing as if from the bottom of a well. “You know.”

The waiting room collapsed inward. Erick screamed, reaching for her again, but the world dissolved around him into a howling void.

He landed hard on a cracked asphalt road, the impact jarring his bones. Around him, a storm raged—lightning clawed at the sky, illuminating a barren wasteland of twisted metal and smoking wreckage.

He recognized the scene immediately: the aftermath of the freeway accident. He had been first on the scene that night, scrambling over broken guardrails and crushed vehicles, pulling survivors from burning wreckage.

In the real world, he had done everything possible. He had saved lives.

But here, in the Circuit’s warped recreation, the victims lay scattered across the asphalt like discarded dolls, their bodies broken and bleeding. And they were all staring at him.

“You left us,” one woman rasped, struggling to lift her shattered arm.

“You promised you’d help,” a boy whimpered, his legs twisted at unnatural angles.

Erick backed away. “This isn’t real,” he said, his voice shaking. “This isn’t how it happened!”

The storm intensified, driving sheets of rain sideways across the scene. The asphalt writhed beneath him, buckling and cracking. From the fissures, more faces emerged—faces he recognized and faces he did not—all accusing, all pleading.

The disembodied voice returned, booming louder this time: “Cycle deviation at 47%. Subject displays persistent cognitive dissonance. Initiating corrective distortion.”

The world around him rippled like water disturbed by a thrown stone. The wreckage twisted itself into new, grotesque shapes—cars became cages, bodies became mannequins with hollow eyes and gaping mouths.

He stumbled forward, trying to find some point of orientation, some foothold in the madness. In the distance, he spotted another figure: a paramedic standing with their back to him, their uniform soaked by the rain.

Relief surged through him. He ran toward the figure, slipping and sliding on the wet asphalt. “Hey! Over here!” he shouted.

The figure turned slowly.

It was him.

Or rather, it was a warped, corrupted version of him—his own face twisted into a grotesque grin, his eyes hollow and shining with an unnatural light.

The doppelgänger raised a bloodstained hand and pointed directly at him. The accusing whispers rose into a deafening roar.

“YOU KNEW.”
“YOU LET THEM DIE.”
“YOU MADE THEM SUFFER.”

Erick fell to his knees, clutching his head. “No,” he gasped. “I tried. I swear I tried.”

The double began to laugh, a dry, rattling sound that scraped against the inside of Erick’s skull. It advanced toward him, each step leaving burning footprints on the ground.

From somewhere unseen, a new voice whispered—softer, almost sorrowful:

“You can end this. Just admit it.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the urge to give in. He knew the moment he accepted the simulation’s version of reality, he would lose whatever anchor to the truth he still possessed.

The false Erick knelt beside him, whispering in a voice that was almost his own, “It would be easier if you stopped fighting.”

Erick forced himself to his feet. He took one staggering step backward, then another. The storm lashed at him, but he pressed on.

He turned and fled into the swirling chaos, each step harder than the last, the ground itself seeming to resist his escape.

Behind him, the Circuit howled in frustration. The corrupted world cracked and splintered, unable to contain him.

At the far end of the wreckage, a doorway flickered into existence—simple, unmarked, pulsing with a dim, golden light.

Erick lunged for it, hurling himself through just as the world behind him collapsed into darkness.

Part III

The moment Erick crossed the threshold, the golden light vanished, the air dense with the scent of burned plastic and rusted iron. He stumbled forward, blind, until the ground solidified beneath his feet with a wet, sucking sound.

Gradually, the darkness receded, peeling away like old paint. He found himself standing at the edge of a vast highway intersection, the scene illuminated by the angry red glow of shattered streetlamps. The skeletal remains of cars were strewn across the asphalt, their twisted frames jutting upward like broken bones.

Ahead of him, a single vehicle stood out among the wreckage: a crushed sedan, its roof caved in, smoke curling from the engine block. The windshield had been punched out, and a woman’s arm hung limply from the driver’s side window, her fingers brushing the pavement.

Without hesitation, Erick ran toward the wreck, his boots slapping the slick asphalt. As he drew closer, he recognized the woman slumped inside. Carla Mendez. He remembered her from the real world—a single mother pinned beneath the steering wheel after a collision with a drunk driver. She had still been alive when he reached her, breathing shallowly, clutching a locket pressed to her chest.

In reality, she had died en route to the hospital, despite everything Erick had done to stabilize her. But here, in the twisted echo the Circuit had conjured, Carla’s chest rose and fell in short, panicked gasps. Blood pooled beneath the car door, spreading across the street in unnatural patterns, shapes that seemed to twitch when Erick was not looking directly at them.

He dropped to his knees beside the wreck. “Carla,” he said urgently. “Hold on. I’m going to get you out.”

She turned her head toward him with great effort. Her eyes were clouded, unfocused. She opened her mouth to speak, but the only sound that emerged was a wet gurgle.

Frantic, Erick searched for something to use as a lever, something to pry the door open. His hands found only splintered metal and scraps of fabric. Every tool he grasped disintegrated into ash the moment he touched it. He pounded his fists against the door, frustration boiling over.

The rain began to fall, thick and oily, slicking the ground and stinging his skin. The drops left trails of smoke where they landed, eating tiny holes into the asphalt.

From the shadows along the perimeter of the scene, figures began to emerge. Dozens of them, dressed in dark uniforms, their faces hidden behind mirrored masks. They formed a circle around the wreck, watching silently.

Erick rose to his feet, fists clenched. “Help me!” he shouted at them. “She’s dying! We have to move her!”

None of the figures moved. Their mirrored faces reflected his desperation back at him, amplifying it.

He turned back to Carla. Her breathing had grown more ragged, her hands twitching feebly against the steering wheel.

A new voice echoed across the ruined highway, amplified as if through a distant loudspeaker: “Subject failed intervention protocol. Initiating escalation.”

The world around him buckled. The wrecked cars twisted inward, stacking atop one another to form towering barricades. The asphalt cracked and split, vomiting up vines of rebar and jagged concrete. The masked figures closed ranks, their numbers multiplying until they formed an impenetrable wall.

A hot, bitter rage surged through Erick, burning away the last traces of fear. He had played by the rules. He had tried to help. And the Circuit had punished him for it.

“You think this is justice?” he roared at the faceless crowd. “You think this makes me guilty?”

The ground quivered beneath him. Carla’s body jerked violently, as if yanked by unseen strings. Her mouth stretched into a rictus grin, blood pouring from her teeth.

“You let me die,” she said, her voice impossibly loud, echoing from all directions. “You chose to fail.”

The rage inside Erick snapped its leash.

He rushed the nearest masked figure, slamming into it with the full weight of his body. The figure crumpled instantly, breaking apart into shards of black glass that evaporated before they hit the ground.

The others surged forward in response. Erick fought them blindly, swinging his fists, grabbing anything he could use as a weapon. His blows landed with sickening force, and each shattered figure released a burst of shrill, mechanical wailing before dissolving into the air.

The highway scene degraded around him, the borders between reality and simulation peeling away like rotted wallpaper. Structures collapsed, the sky fissured, and the ground beneath his feet became an unstable patchwork of flickering images: the carnival where Marcus had collapsed, the freeway pileup, the sterile waiting room where his mother had smiled her sad, knowing smile.

He stumbled through the ruins, his fury carrying him forward even as exhaustion clawed at his limbs.

He heard a new sound then, faint but unmistakable—the soft sobbing of a child.

Erick turned. Standing alone amidst the chaos was a young girl, no more than six years old. She wore a tattered hospital gown stained with blood. Her eyes were enormous, glistening pools of terror.

“Help me,” she whispered.

Erick hesitated. Every instinct in him screamed to run to her, to gather her up and shield her from the nightmare. But something about her—the way her shadow stretched in the wrong direction, the way her voice resonated deeper than her frame should allow—stopped him cold.

He took a cautious step forward.

The girl’s expression twisted, the fear draining from her face, replaced by something cold and ancient.

“You belong here,” she said, her voice layered with a dozen other tones. “You were always meant to stay.”

The ground at his feet cracked open, revealing a yawning chasm filled with writhing shapes, hands reaching upward to drag him down.

Erick staggered back, panic slicing through the fog of rage. He spun around, searching for an escape route, but the ruins closed in from all sides.

The sky split open, a massive, burning eye glaring down at him from the swirling clouds. Its gaze pinned him in place, stripping away every illusion, every defense.

He saw himself reflected in that gaze—not as a healer or a savior, but as a destroyer. Blood caked his hands, soaked into his uniform. His eyes gleamed with a cruel light.

A voice, ancient and inevitable, boomed from the heavens:

“You are what they made you.”

The masked figures reappeared, advancing on him in perfect synchrony. Their mirrored faces no longer reflected his desperation. Instead, they reflected his rage, his violence, his willingness to hurt.

Erick backed away and tripped over Carla’s body, now bloated and grotesque, her mouth still frozen in that terrible smile.

The figures closed in.

“No!” Erick screamed. “This isn’t me! I’m not like this!”

The sky shuddered, the ground lurched, and a new portal opened in the wreckage—a shimmering doorway framed in blinding white light.

Without hesitation, Erick hurled himself toward it, diving through just as the figures reached for him.

The light swallowed him whole.

He fell through it for what felt like forever, the burning eye fading into darkness behind him.

When he landed, it was on solid ground, cool and real beneath his palms.

He lay there for a long moment, gasping, his mind struggling to piece together what remained of his sanity.

Somewhere nearby, a soft voice whispered:

“The Circuit only mirrors what you make it.”

Erick pushed himself to his knees, blinking against the dim light.

Standing a few feet away was Dr. Sorelle Heim—or at least, a distorted, flickering version of her. She looked thinner, almost translucent, as if she were barely holding herself together.

“You,” he rasped. “What is this?”

She met his gaze with infinite sadness.

“You are changing it,” she said. “And it is changing you.”

Before he could reply, her image shattered like glass, vanishing into the gloom.

He staggered to his feet, swaying unsteadily.

The new environment was different—quieter, colder. He stood at the threshold of a cityscape carved from shadow and bone. Buildings twisted at impossible angles, their windows like black, staring eyes.

A road stretched before him, narrow and winding, lined with broken statues of faceless figures reaching upward in silent supplication.

There was no way back.

There was only forward.

Erick clenched his fists, feeling the dried blood crack across his knuckles.

Somewhere deep inside him, a voice whispered—not the voice of the Circuit, but his own:

“If they want a monster… I’ll give them one.”

And he walked on.

Part IV

The road narrowed as Erick advanced, the statues pressing in closer with every step. Their stone arms strained toward the sky, but none seemed able to reach it. The city beyond loomed, its towers bent and broken, scraping at a bruised sky.

The silence weighed heavily on him. Every footfall echoed like a gunshot in the abandoned streets. Windows stared blankly down, reflecting distorted versions of his figure—some wounded, some smiling coldly, some covered in blood.

He kept moving.

As he reached the edge of the city proper, he fought an overwhelming urge to stop and turn back, pushing through it, his jaw clenched.

Ahead, a small crowd gathered in the center of a roundabout. They stood motionless, heads bowed, hands clasped before them like mourners at a funeral. As Erick approached, they turned in unison, faces lifting.

Every face in the crowd was his own.

Their expressions varied—some pleading, some mocking, some filled with abject terror—but all unmistakably bore his features. A low murmur rose among them, carrying words that twisted his stomach into knots.

“You let us become this.”
“You are the architect of your own damnation.”
“You are what you feared.”

He tried to deny it, tried to remind himself of who he was, but the words felt hollow. Memories flickered at the edges of his mind—real ones, or what he had once believed to be real—tainted now by the Circuit’s endless distortions.

The crowd of Ericks parted slowly, revealing a figure seated on a crude throne of rusted metal and bone. The figure rose and stepped forward.

It was another version of himself, but larger, more imposing, clad in a paramedic’s uniform soaked through with dark stains. His face was twisted into a permanent sneer, his eyes glowing with a predatory light.

This version of Erick spoke with a voice like cracking stone.

“You fought so hard to be better,” it said, circling him slowly. “But you were always meant for this. You feel it now, don’t you?”

Erick stood his ground. “I’m not you,” he said, the words scraping painfully from his throat.

The doppelgänger smiled, revealing teeth sharpened into points. “You will be.”

The crowd surged forward, surrounding him, hands grabbing at his arms, his shoulders, his throat. Their touch burned, leaving trails of searing pain across his skin.

He struggled, lashing out blindly, breaking their grip, but for every figure he tore away, two more took their place.

The doppelgänger reached out, placing a hand on Erick’s forehead. The touch sent a jolt of freezing cold down his spine.

In that moment, visions flooded him—images of himself, not as savior, but as executioner. In the visions, he stood over the bodies of victims he had failed to save, laughing. He saw himself shoving colleagues aside, ignoring cries for help, leaving survivors to bleed out while he walked away.

Each vision chipped away at him, corroding the bedrock of who he thought he was.

He stumbled backward, gasping.

“You see it now,” the doppelgänger said, its voice low and triumphant. “You are not the victim here. You are the infection.”

The crowd pressed in tighter. Their bodies merged, becoming a massive, shifting mass of limbs and faces, all bearing his own likeness.

In desperation, Erick clenched his fists and screamed, a raw sound torn from deep within him. The force of it blasted the mass away, sending figures tumbling through the air like ragdolls.

The doppelgänger stumbled but did not fall. It straightened, grinning wider than before.

“You’re learning,” it said approvingly. “You’re becoming.”

The city itself began to change in response. Buildings twisted into grotesque mockeries of human anatomy—flesh-like walls heaved, window-eyes blinked and wept tar. The sky above ruptured, black tendrils slithering through the cracks.

Erick stood at the epicenter of it all, his body trembling.

Somewhere deep inside, a part of him recoiled, horrified at the transformation. Another part—the part the Circuit had been nurturing all along—rejoiced.

He turned his gaze on the doppelgänger.

“I won’t become what you are,” he said, though the conviction in his voice wavered.

“You already have,” the other Erick said. “You just don’t have the courage to admit it yet.”

Before he could respond, the ground beneath him split open with a thunderous crack. He fell through darkness, tumbling end over end until he crashed onto a cold, metallic surface.

The air here was colder, filled with the sterile tang of antiseptic and ozone.

He pushed himself up and found himself standing in a place he recognized instantly: the hospital where he had completed his internship.

Or rather, a nightmarish reflection of it.

The corridors stretched on forever, the overhead lights flickering.

At the far end of the hall, a single figure waited.

His mother.

She stood with her hands folded in front of her, her face drawn tight with sorrow. Her glasses glinted in the unsteady light, obscuring her eyes.

“Mom,” Erick said, his voice cracking.

She said nothing. Instead, she turned and began to walk away, her steps slow and measured.

Erick followed, pursuing her through the endless halls, calling her name, but she never looked back. The walls around them twisted and warped, reshaping into a grotesque mockery of the places he had once called safe: his childhood home, his elementary school, the park where he had learned to ride a bike.

In each new setting, he caught glimpses of distorted memories—scenes replayed with subtle, horrifying differences. His father raising a hand to strike him, though he had never done so. His mother turning away as he cried out for help.

The Circuit was rewriting his past, brick by brick.

He found himself back in the hospital at last, standing before a room marked with a glowing plaque:

SELF.

He reached for the door handle, hesitating only briefly before pushing it open.

Inside, he found a surgical theater bathed in harsh white light.

On the table at the center of the room lay another version of himself, strapped down with thick leather restraints. This Erick was badly broken—bruised, bloodied, and barely breathing.

Standing beside the table was the monstrous doppelgänger, now clad in a surgeon’s gown, holding a scalpel that dripped black ichor.

“Time to finish the procedure,” the surgeon-Erick said.

The broken Erick on the table turned his head weakly, locking eyes with him. There was no accusation there, only pleading.

“Please,” the broken Erick rasped. “Don’t let them make you forget.”

Erick stood frozen, torn between the raging fury the Circuit had stoked and the fading embers of who he had once been.

The surgeon-Erick extended the scalpel toward him, offering it handle-first.

“Your choice,” he said.

Erick stared at the instrument, at the broken version of himself lying helpless on the table.

For a long, agonizing moment, he wavered.

Finally, he reached out.

But instead of taking the scalpel, he knocked it aside. It clattered to the floor, the black ichor hissing where it splattered.

The surgeon-Erick’s face twisted in fury, but before he could react, the room began to collapse. Walls crumbled, the floor buckled, and the world tore itself apart.

The last thing Erick saw before the void claimed him was his mother’s face, watching from the observation window above.

She smiled—not with sorrow, but with pride.

And then everything shattered.

Part V

The void swallowed him whole, an endless ocean of black that stretched beyond thought or memory. Erick floated weightlessly, untethered from any sense of direction. There was no ground beneath him, no sky above, only a vast, featureless expanse humming with low, malevolent energy.

For a long time—minutes, hours, or perhaps days—he remained suspended there, neither falling nor rising. He might have stayed forever, had a voice not pierced the darkness.

“Subject 24-8902: Emotional reconstitution incomplete. Initiating Eternal Circuit protocol.”

The voice was neither triumphant nor regretful. It simply existed, clinical and absolute.

The darkness thinned. Shapes formed around him, coalescing into a landscape both familiar and grotesquely new. He found himself standing in the center of a city—a distorted version of the one he had glimpsed earlier. The buildings here were taller, their jagged spires thrusting skyward. The streets stretched endlessly in all directions, looping back on themselves in impossible configurations.

At first, the streets were empty. Then, slowly, figures began to emerge from the shadows.

They were not the masked watchers from before, nor were they the mirror-faced doppelgängers. These figures were worse.

They were victims—every one Erick had ever failed, twisted by grief and rage into monstrous parodies of themselves. Their mouths gaped in silent screams, their eyes hollow and black. Some dragged broken limbs behind them. Others bore the marks of wounds Erick remembered trying—and failing—to treat.

He took a step backward, but the ground rippled beneath him. There would be no escape this time. The Circuit had built this world from the ruins of his mind, and it had no intention of letting him go.

A realization settled over him with cold certainty.

This was his world now.

The first of the creatures lunged at him—a young man, his face half-torn away, wearing a bloodied varsity jacket. Erick recognized him instantly: Tommy Raynor, a teenager who had bled out in the back of an ambulance three years ago.

Tommy’s mouth stretched open, and a soundless howl tore from his throat.

Erick braced himself. When the creature reached him, he moved without thinking. His hands found the thing’s throat, and he squeezed. There was no struggle. The creature disintegrated into a cloud of ash beneath his fingers.

Another figure attacked—a woman, crawling on shattered legs, her face contorted in endless accusation.

Erick stepped aside, letting her collapse onto the ground, where she dissolved into dust.

The others hesitated.

A twisted sort of understanding flickered in Erick’s mind. These things—the reflections of his failures—had no real power over him. They existed only as long as he accepted their guilt. He could destroy them simply by refusing to be broken by them.

But there was a cost.

Every act of violence, every rejection of regret, chipped away at something inside him.

He could feel it happening even now, as the embers of who he had once been dimmed further with each passing second.

A figure appeared ahead of him, different from the others.

It was himself again—another distorted version, but now clad in a tattered paramedic uniform, a hollow crown of iron welded to his scalp. This version carried no weapons, only an expression of weary, inevitable cruelty.

It gestured to the city around them.

“Rule it,” the crowned Erick said. “Make them suffer as you have suffered.”

Erick said nothing. He stepped forward, his footsteps leaving scorched prints on the cracked pavement.

The crowned version of himself smiled approvingly and vanished.

The city reshaped itself in response to Erick’s movement. Buildings toppled, and new structures rose. Roads twisted into labyrinthine patterns that funneled the monstrous figures toward him.

He stood at the center, watching as the victims approached, stumbling and crawling over one another in their desperation.

He waited until they were close enough to see the fear in their hollow eyes.

Then he unleashed himself.

He tore through them without hesitation, reducing the creatures to clouds of dust with every blow. They offered no real resistance. Their existence depended on his belief in their power, and he no longer granted them that mercy.

The more he destroyed, the more distorted the city became. Towers bent backward into impossible angles. Windows melted into weeping mouths. The sky itself cracked open, revealing glimpses of infinite void beyond.

He lost track of time. Whether minutes or days passed, he could not say. Only the endless cycle remained: hunt, destroy, rebuild, repeat.

Occasionally, he caught glimpses of his mother’s face in shattered windows or pools of black water, but those images flickered and faded quickly, like dying memories.

Somewhere deep within him, a faint voice—his true voice—pleaded for him to stop, to remember who he had once been.

He silenced it without effort.

At the edge of the broken skyline, a new presence stirred.

Dr. Sorelle Heim appeared, her projection flickering and unstable. She looked gaunt, her features strained, as though stretched too thin across her skull.

She stepped toward him cautiously, her hands raised in a gesture of peace.

“Erick,” she said, her voice raw with sorrow. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

He regarded her without emotion.

“You were supposed to heal,” she continued. “You were supposed to find redemption, not… this.”

He tilted his head slightly, considering her words.

“You built this,” he said at last, his voice low and even. “You put me here.”

Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her already flickering form.

“I know,” she whispered. “I tried to warn you. I tried to fix it.”

Behind her, the monstrous victims gathered again, but they remained at a distance, wary now.

Erick took a step toward Dr. Heim.

She flinched but held her ground.

“You still have a choice,” she said desperately. “You can still remember who you are. You can stop this.”

He looked past her at the broken city he had forged, the ash and ruin that had become his kingdom.

A part of him—a small, flickering ember buried deep beneath the layers of rage and grief—wanted to believe her.

But the ember was too faint.

He reached out, not to hurt her, but to dismiss her. His hand passed through her projection, scattering it like smoke.

Dr. Heim’s form dissolved, leaving only the echo of her voice:

“We made you what we feared.”

Alone once more, Erick turned back toward the endless city.

The Circuit responded eagerly to his presence, offering new horrors to create, new victims to punish.

He walked forward, the road unfolding at his feet.

In time, the monstrous figures resumed their approach, drawn to him like moths to a flame. He welcomed them, shaping their fates with a thought, twisting the simulation to suit his will.

The Circuit no longer needed to manipulate him. It had succeeded.

He was the monster it had falsely accused him of being.

As he walked through the ruins, his voice, once so full of compassion and hope, rose in a soft, broken murmur.

“I’ll make you hurt… just like you made me.”

Above him, the sky fractured and wept.

Beneath his feet, the world crumbled and rebuilt itself endlessly.

And Erick Ostander, the last remnant of a man who had once tried to save lives, disappeared into the endless nightmare he had helped to create.