OBSIDIAN

The Archives

When I wake up, I'm in a room I don't recognize.

The walls are lined with file boxes. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Each one is labeled with a date and a version number. V1. V2. V3. The dates go back fifteen years. They go forward into future dates that haven't happened yet.

Sienna is sitting at a desk in the center of the room, and she's older. Not old, but aged in a way that suggests she's been waiting here for a long time. Or she's been waiting for me for a long time. The distinction is becoming irrelevant.

"Welcome to the archive," she says. She doesn't look up from the file she's reading. "This is where I keep all the versions of you."

"All the versions?"

"All of them. Every iteration. Every failed attempt. Every successful reconstruction." She finally looks at me. Her eyes are tired in a way that suggests she hasn't slept in years. "You're version seventeen."

I want to ask what happened to versions one through sixteen, but I'm afraid of the answer. Or I'm not afraid because I already know the answer and I've forgotten that I know it.

"Come here," she says.

I walk toward her, and my legs feel like they belong to someone else. The movements are too smooth, too rehearsed. I wonder how many times I've walked this path. I wonder if I've always been walking this path.

She opens the file in front of her. It's a dossier. My dossier. Or a dossier of someone who looks like me. There are photographs. Surveillance images. Psychiatric evaluations. Medical records.

"This is you from three months ago," Sienna says, pointing to a photo. "You don't remember him, but you were him. You looked different. You believed different things. You had different triggers."

"What happened to him?"

"I killed him. Or he killed himself. Or he evolved into you. Depends on your perspective."

She pulls out another file. "This is you from two years ago. You were working for Castellano directly. You were in love with someone else. You were happy, which is a problem because I needed you to be broken."

Another file. "This is you from five years ago. You didn't know me yet. You were still intact. You still had a coherent sense of identity. You were functional."

She spreads the files across the desk like a tarot reading. Each one is a different version of my face. Older. Younger. Scarred. Clean. But always me. Always someone wearing my face, living my life, making my choices.

"Why are you showing me this?" I ask.

"Because you need to understand something." She stands and walks to one of the file boxes. She opens it and pulls out a photograph. "This is what you're going to become."

The photograph is of a man who looks like me but isn't. His eyes are empty. Completely hollow. He's smiling, but there's nothing behind the smile. It's the smile of someone who's been completely hollowed out and refilled with exactly what someone else wanted him to contain.

"That's the goal," Sienna says. "That's the version of you that I'm working toward. Not broken anymore. Not fractured. Just... empty. Just perfectly, beautifully empty. A vessel. A weapon. A thing that I can use without worrying about your consciousness interfering."

"You're insane."

"I'm thorough." She replaces the photograph and pulls out another box. This one is labeled with my name, but underneath it says: "VARIATIONS AND ALTERNATE TIMELINES."

She opens it, and inside are dozens of files. Each one documents a different version of me. In one file, I'm a doctor. In another, I'm a serial killer. In another, I'm dead.

"I like to experiment," Sienna explains. "I like to see how many different versions of you I can create. How many different ways a person named Dante can exist. Some of them work out. Some of them don't. When they don't work out, I start over."

"How many times have you started over?"

"With you specifically? Seventeen times. But before you, there were others. I've been doing this for a long time. I've gotten very good at it."

She closes the box and turns to face me. "Do you want to know the secret?"

I don't answer. But she answers anyway.

"There is no original Dante. There's no version of you that's more real than any other. You're not a person who's being manipulated. You're a person being created. And every time I break you down and rebuild you, I'm not destroying who you are. I'm determining who you get to be."

"That's not love," I say. "That's ownership."

"Yes," she agrees. "But that's what love is. Love is ownership. Love is the desire to control another person completely. Love is the need to make sure that no one else gets to have them, that no one else gets to change them, that no one else gets to own them. I love you in the most authentic way possible. I love you by erasing you and replacing you with something that only I can understand."

She walks closer. "Do you know what the worst part is?"

"What?"

"That it's working. That you're becoming exactly what I want you to become. That the Dante in front of me right now is more in love with me than version sixteen was, and version sixteen was more in love with me than version fifteen was. That with each iteration, you love me more desperately, more completely, more obsessively."

She touches my face. "You're not fighting anymore. You're not trying to remember who you were before I got to you. You're not trying to escape. You're just... accepting. You're just letting me reshape you. And that acceptance is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced."

"What if I want to see the files on you?" I ask.

She smiles, and it's not a nice smile. "There aren't any."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not version seventeen of anything. I'm not a reconstruction. I'm not a careful arrangement of broken pieces. I'm the architect. I'm the one who designed this entire system. And architects don't get files."

She walks to another section of the archive. "But I can show you something else. I can show you the template. The original design document. The blueprint for how to break a person and rebuild them in your image."

She pulls out a massive file. It's handwritten. Old. The paper is yellowed and fragile.

"This is from my therapist," Sienna says. "The first person who broke me. She was brilliant. She understood that trauma is just opportunity. That if you break someone at exactly the right moment in exactly the right way, you can reshape their entire consciousness."

She opens the file, and I can see notes. Diagrams. Photographs of Sienna from years ago. Young Sienna. Intact Sienna. The version of her before she became this.

"She did to me what I'm doing to you," Sienna continues. "And when she was finished, she told me something that changed my life. She said: 'The only way to survive being broken is to learn how to break others. The only way to make the pain stop is to inflict it on someone else and become the predator instead of the prey.'"

"So you're recreating your trauma," I say.

"I'm perfecting it. She was crude. She didn't have the sophistication that I have. But the principle is the same. Break someone. Own them. Love them in the only way that obsessed, broken people can love."

She closes the file and looks at me directly. "I need you to understand something, Dante. Version seventeen. All the versions. Every configuration of you that exists in these files and in my mind. I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to save you. I'm trying to give you a purpose. I'm trying to make you into something that matters, something that's essential, something that only I can create and only I can control."

"That's the same thing," I say.

"I know."

She opens a locked drawer in the desk. Inside is a photograph. Just one. It's me and Sienna together. We're smiling. We look happy. Genuinely happy. And I can't remember when this photograph was taken, which means either it never happened or it's a memory I've completely lost access to.

"This is my favorite photograph," Sienna says. "This is from version seven. You looked at me on that day like I was the only person in the world who mattered. You would have done anything for me. You would have killed anyone. You would have killed yourself if I asked you to."

"What happened to version seven?"

"I killed him. He was getting too attached. Too functional. Too close to becoming his own person. So I had to start over. You're better now. You're more malleable. You're perfect, actually. I think version seventeen might be the one I keep."

"Keep for what?"

"For the next phase. For the real work. For the reason I actually brought you here in the first place."

She opens another file. This one contains photographs of people I don't recognize. Men and women. Different ages. All of them with the same empty expression I saw in the photograph of future-me.

"These are my successes," Sienna says. "These are the people I've completely remade. They all work for me now. They all love me. They're all connected to me in ways that go beyond conventional attachment. They'd die for me. They'd kill for me. They'd burn down the entire world if I asked them to."

"You've done this seventeen times with me," I say, understanding dawning. "How many other people have you done this to?"

"Lost count around forty. But the quality was better with you. You were more receptive. Your baseline trauma was more useful. Your capacity for obsession is exceptional."

"I want to leave," I say.

"No, you don't."

"I do. I want to get out of here. I want to—"

"You want nothing that I don't want for you." She interrupts me like I haven't even spoken. "You've been asking the wrong questions, Dante. You keep asking if you're real. You keep asking if your feelings are real. You keep asking if any of this is real. Those are the questions of someone who still thinks they have agency. Those are the questions of someone who still believes they could choose differently if given the chance."

She stands and moves toward me. "The real question is: are you me? Am I you? Have we been the same person this entire time, and this elaborate dance we've been doing is just us trying to figure out how to be a single entity split across two bodies?"

"That's insane," I whisper.

"So was everything before it. And you accepted it. And you'll accept this too. Because that's what version seventeen does. That's what all the versions do eventually. They accept. They surrender. They stop fighting the inevitable and just let it happen."

She takes my hand. "Come with me. I want to show you the new reconstruction chamber. I want to show you the equipment I've built. I want to show you how I'm going to remake you into something even better. Something that doesn't need to question or doubt. Something that just is, completely and entirely, exactly what I need it to be."

I follow her because I can't not follow her. My legs move because she's moving. My breath syncs with hers because she's breathing. The distinction between where she ends and I begin is so blurred that it doesn't matter anymore.

We walk deeper into the archive. The file boxes fade behind us. The walls change. Now we're in a space that looks like a hospital. But it's also a bedroom. But it's also a prison. But it's also a temple.

In the center of the space is a chair. It looks exactly like the chair I was strapped to in the white room. But it's also different. It's evolved. There are more restraints. More monitoring equipment. More places for needles and tubes and things that will dissolve my sense of self more completely than anything that's come before.

"This is where we go from here," Sienna says. "This is where version seventeen becomes version eighteen. This is where I finally break you so completely that there's nothing left but me."

"And if I refuse?" I ask, knowing the answer.

"Then I'll find another version of you who doesn't refuse. There are always more versions. There will always be more people who look like you, who have your capacity for destruction, who have your need to be loved. I'll keep creating versions until I get the perfect one."

She hands me a file. It's labeled: "THE CONTRACT - VERSION EIGHTEEN."

"Sign it," she says. "Make it official. Agree to the reconstruction. Agree to the dissolution. Agree to become exactly what I'm designing you to be."

I open the file, and there are pages and pages of text. Medical procedures. Psychological protocols. Physical modifications. It's a detailed blueprint for erasing myself completely.

At the bottom is a blank line. A place for my signature.

My hand moves toward the pen, and I realize I've already made this choice. Version seventeen made it the moment he walked into this room. All the previous versions made it the moment they met Sienna. And all the future versions will make it for all the eternity that's left.

The pen is in my hand.

The page is in front of me.

And I can hear Sienna's voice, or it might be my voice, or it might be the voice of every version of me that's ever existed:

"Welcome home, Dante. You're finally going to stop being broken and start being built."