The moment Mara felt the narrowing hallway, she knew.
This world—her doubts, her discoveries, her resistance—was too coherent. Too narratively complete.
This wasn't the present.
It was a story being written around her.
A final Echo, generated as she lay dying, designed to guide her toward one conclusion:
Mara Kade accepts her guilt.
The gaps weren't flaws.
They were intrusion points.
Her real memories—unsanitized, unedited—pressing through the constructed narrative.
Mara stopped walking.
The world froze.
Rain hung motionless in the air. Voices cut off mid-syllable.
She laughed softly.
"I don't have to understand this," she said. "I just have to refuse it."
She stopped searching for truth inside the memory.
Stopped interpreting.
Stopped playing her role.
The Echo destabilized.
The world tore itself apart in silence.
And as the system lost control, the final line of the story appeared—not written by an algorithm, but chosen by the witness herself:
"The witness did not comply."
END OF NOVEL