Chapter 22

All timelines were illusions.

Ains sat on the steps at the door, staring blankly as seven people rushed over from the city gate. She couldn’t see anything chasing them; she only saw that the group looked exceptionally disheveled.

Moroz shouted breathlessly, “So we chose the truth—two futures, only one real. Did the experiment succeed or fail?”

“It failed!” Han Ya yelled loudly. “Damn it, I get it now! The game’s goal is to exit the city gate, but the rule is not to exit the city gate. To win the game, we have to fail first!”

At that point, Han Ya spilled his personal task all at once. “On the evening of November 30th, I was temporarily called back. The fourth experiment was originally scheduled for 2051, but for some reason, it was suddenly advanced ahead of time! I—I fucking messed up. Before that, I’d been sending strings, but on the 30th, Victor told me to send a whole basic particle, and I sent two!”

“Fuck!” Victor cursed. “Why require secrecy and then make us say it out loud?”

Xu Hua said softly from the side, “Maybe because if we don’t say it, the story can never be complete. But saying it out makes humanity seem extremely dark.”

It was an entire process of reverse thinking. The game required players to leave but not to leave. Players chose the goal of piecing together the truth, so their hints were all backwards—requiring secrecy actually meant requiring disclosure.

Requiring Moroz to kill Horne actually meant protecting Horne.

Horne’s footsteps paused. His gaze quickly locked onto Ains. His personal task was to protect Ains, but actually, he needed to kill Ains.

Fed up with the group’s stupidity, Moroz explained to them while running.

Horne dashed past layers of ghosts and charged straight toward Ains.

While running, he added, “Before the experiment started, I tried to stop Victor from conducting this impromptu experiment, but he threatened me, and I compromised.”

Wen Yu, who was the farthest away, said in a somewhat muffled voice, “I took money. The review didn’t pass—I took Moroz’s money!”

Victor was shocked. “Fuck, it can be like that? I—if your guess is wrong, I’ll kill you after we get out of the game!” His gaze glared viciously at Horne. In the midst of running, he stumbled and fell to the ground with a wail, then scrambled up, legs weak as he ran forward, screaming while fleeing. “Who knew the promotion list would be moved up to the 1st overnight? On the evening of the 30th, I requested the experiment on the spot. The AI predicted a 99% success rate too—it had always succeeded before; there shouldn’t have been a problem! Didn’t Xu Hua keep saying everything was normal?!”

Xu Hua was exhausted. She wanted to rest for a bit, so she stopped to catch her breath. Seeing the ghosts closing in, she bolted again. “If the tasks are reverse, then I’ve already failed. Fine, I’m not the psychologist you hired. I came voluntarily to observe. I knew this experiment violated ethics, but for psychological data, I wanted to see how humanity collapses in extreme situations—as social experiment data. Actually…”

She was almost out of breath. “Actually, every one of you has psychological issues. I’ve been saying all along that your states were fine.”

After she finished, Gao Qie howled, “I can’t say!!”

Han Ya punched him. “Say it quick! The ghosts are multiplying; no time to carry you through again!”

Gao Qie fell to the ground from the punch. Seeing the ghosts wrapping around him again, he screamed in terror, “Save me, save me! Save me and I’ll say it!”

The ghosts were tolling their bells. Han Ya lunged over, rolled forward with him several times, dragging him out of that ghost’s range, but immediately entering another ghost’s tolling range.

From that distance, Han Ya punched Gao Qie again. “Say it!”

Gao Qie howled, “My—my AI system has issues. Its predictions have always been off, but I can’t say my system has problems, or I’ll lose my job and never hold my head up in the AI field!!”

As he spoke, Horne had already rushed behind Ains. He half-knelt on the steps, panting fiercely, sweat dripping down his reddish-brown hair drop by drop, the sharpness in his eyes unyielding.

He stepped forward. A small knife popped out from his sleeve, looping around Ains’s neck from behind.

Ains didn’t move.

Horne said softly, “Only my clues involved negotiations with Algernon, so I know Algernon isn’t the lab rat they said, but you.”

Ains nodded lightly. “Mm… Actually, in the story, I had leukemia. I thought they brought me here for treatment, but they took the experiment money to travel the world. Only that technician truly cared about me during the experiment.”

“Your task is to conceal all the information you know?”

Ains shook her head. After a moment, she said softly, “It’s to make everyone leave.” She paused. “That is, to keep you all here and merge you into one with me.”

Horne was stunned for a moment.

He suddenly thought of the immortality particles and ghost particles, and the two futures manifested in quantum mechanics.

So that was it.

With the small knife against Ains’s neck, Horne asked in a low voice, “You deliberately brought me into this game, right? Who are you?”

Ains hadn’t expected him to suddenly ask that. Her body tensed up. After a moment, she said softly, “Yes, deliberately. But I just wanted to find someone who could lead me to win. When you stepped onto the stage and said ‘Don’t be afraid’ to me, I… I decided on you. But I was afraid if I told you directly, you’d refuse.”

“Was your mother’s illness real or fake?”

“It was real.”

Horne pressed the knife a fraction into her neck, his tone slightly apologetic. “Alright. If I win, the victory condition will still be handed to you.”

“But…” Ains said softly, “you’ve already lost.”

Horne’s hand stiffened. He asked curtly, “What do you mean?”

“You can’t kill the environment,” Ains said. “When you realized this, you should have killed me directly instead of letting me know that you knew.”

At the same time, on the other side, the stacked ghosts pursued relentlessly down the street, their wails echoing.

Gao Qie had long been swallowed into the muck, his screams resounding through the entire street. Xu Hua and Victor couldn’t run anymore and sat on the ground awaiting judgment. Han Ya and Wen Yu were drenched in sweat on the other side, still sprinting. Moroz was chased from the second floor, leaping down and rolling several times on the street before standing up to run again.

Horne suddenly relaxed his body and smiled faintly.

With that, he had pretty much pieced together the entire story.

In the mid-21st century, humanity’s last decade of mastering its own fate, scientific physicists discovered a novel particle never seen before in the collider—the immortality particle. It was called “immortality” because this particle wouldn’t decay spontaneously. Even when subjected to strong and weak interactions, electromagnetic forces, quantum tunneling, and other means to force decay in experiments, it would self-repair instantaneously.

This phenomenon sparked human curiosity. Later, they suspected that each immortality particle was in quantum entanglement with an invisible ghost particle, making unilateral destruction impossible.

Experimenters later tried implanting immortality particles into living organisms, and magical things happened. It began self-replicating and overwriting within the organism, giving cells the properties of immortality particles, reversing entropy increase, maintaining life in its current state as if time had stopped—achieving biological immortality.

They began mass-producing immortality particles and succeeded on plants. The next step was humans.

Of course, in their reports, they claimed to be using lab rats.

In the preparation phase of this experiment, they first manipulated businessman Moroz, who had been brought in through bidding. Using Victor’s desire for promotion, the two reached a mutually beneficial agreement. Moroz used money to bribe Wen Yu in the review department, pushing through a project that originally shouldn’t have passed.

During the experiment, Gao Qie used his flawed AI system to predict success rates, while Xu Hua encouraged them—her words as a psychologist made them believe they were right.

Except for Horne, who disagreed but compromised due to life pressures and cowardice.

They found lab rat Ains. Perhaps because the name was too human-like, they renamed the test subject “Algernon.” This lab rat came from a poor family, already afflicted with leukemia upon arrival, burdened with unfinished family debts. Her parents sent her here, and she met all the test criteria.

She thought she was gaining a new life, but she was merely her parents’ sacrificial pawn. While she screamed in agony in the lab, her parents vacationed in South America with the money from selling her.

She hated the deception. Among them, only Horne showed her a shred of human emotion.

After three experiments, Ains began talking nonsense, constantly asking about things not in the present. Because the immortality particles in her body repaired damage while also reading a healthy state from some past time, reverting her to an undamaged form. This caused her consciousness to shuttle across timelines with the particles, her body in spatiotemporal disarray.

Horne, closest to her, discovered this first. He proposed that the scientists’ hypothetical ghost particles might truly exist, but only in past timelines, entangled quantumly with immortality particles. Thus, they couldn’t observe them on the macroscopic level. This also explained Ains’s behavior and memories, always reverting to infancy, toddlerhood, or some time prior.

Victor rejected this theory.

They prepared for the fourth experiment in 2051, but things took a turn then.

The promotion list, originally due later, was advanced overnight to the next day. Promotion-hungry Victor immediately decided to conduct the fourth experiment that very evening, changing from string injection to basic particle injection.

That evening, everyone was present.

Wen Yu came to observe the experiment and asked, “Are you sure about proceeding?”

Victor replied, “Everything’s under control.”

Gao Qie pointed to the AI’s displayed success rate: 99%.

Horne finished the final checks and came over to remind Victor, “I think the risk is more than 1%. Otherwise, let’s stick to the original plan.”

Victor shoved him to the ground and berated him. “You think you became my technician because of your skills? It was my pity for you! My judgment is never wrong! Scientific progress requires personal sacrifice!”

Horne compromised.

Xu Hua said, “Everyone’s full of vigor.”

Moroz said, “The world is about to change.”

Han Ya sent particles into Ains as usual, but he’d never tried a whole basic particle before, so he mistakenly sent two.

All the instruments wailed. Horne tried to hit the emergency stop, but Victor blocked him. Xu Hua said this was human fear.

Gao Qie laughed, “Horne’s an AI pro.”

Ains’s screams echoed through the entire lab. Her body began tearing apart, but those outside thought it was just intense drug effects.

Suddenly, the ground shook violently. The lab teetered on the brink of collapse, and the planet they were on shook as well.

Ains’s body couldn’t bear the past, present, and future—all timelines existing simultaneously in the now. The tearing unleashed massive energy, gravitational chaos. It pulled a planet from another space near Earth, which was swiftly captured by Earth’s gravity. The two planets attracted each other, exceeding the Roche limit, mutually tearing apart.

In that instant, Ains’s body became that street, forever cursing those who came here to stay, becoming part of her, looping infinitely in her time.

Everything on this street was people who had once come here. They failed and stayed behind. Only after reminding later players to succeed could they return to the human world, but no one ever understood their hints—they just thought it was haunted.

Even if they understood, they’d die from each other’s concealments, ultimately becoming part of the street.

Unless they faced themselves.

The moment the story was spoken, the ghosts vanished abruptly.