The air in the Sub-Level didn't just vibrate; it began to **tear**.
As I stood before the Founder, my hand outstretched in a gesture of impossible forgiveness, the glass pods around us didn't just shatter—they screamed. The billions of "failures"—the versions of me that were too weak, too strong, or too broken—weren't just data anymore. They were ghosts of a life that never was, and they were being sucked into a vacuum of absolute zero.
"The Delete command..." the Founder whispered, her composite form flickering like a candle in a hurricane. For a moment, she looked like the girl she had been before the Multiverse—scared, small, and desperately lonely. "Elara... I can't stop it. I built the failsafe to trigger if the Source was ever compromised by 'Irregularities.' I built it to kill me.
