Chapter -15  DEAN JUNO POV

“We are shaped most by the wounds we tried to ignore.”

📖 Main Story

CHAPTER -15 [ JUNO POV ]

THE THREE WITNESSES

I saw it three hours before it all fell apart. A tiny anomaly in the prayer buffer. A single line of error code that quietly appeared on the secondary monitor that I only noticed because Arvin was too busy drinking his black coffee and David was too busy being perfect. I could fix it. In seconds. One command, one enter, and that tiny crack would seal shut. But I didn't. "Click..." I moved the log to the trash. A folder no one would ever check. Not because I forgot. Not because I was busy. But because for once I wanted to see David fail. Just a little. Just enough to make him seem human. Just enough to make the team realize that he wasn't the only one keeping the system running. Just enough so I could step up, fix everything, and for the first time in my career... be the center of attention. I had no idea that tiny crack was the gateway to hell.

The lab should have been quiet that day. The three of us, Arvin Hale, Elias, and I were performing routine checks on the Prayer Server. The largest and most mysterious machine we had ever built together. David sat in his chair, occasionally joking with Shayla, who was drawing in the corner. I sat across from him, staring at the same screen, but thinking about something different. Arvin, as usual, was too focused on system stability. Elias was busy jotting down things I would never read. David... David always seemed so calm. So sure. As if he never had a moment's doubt. And me? I sat here, second in command on the team I built with my own sweat. I looked away from the screen. I couldn't stand how perfectly everything was running. Then the indicator lights on the Prayer Server started flashing.

At first, no one was suspicious. A strange flashing pattern? Maybe a normal power fluctuation. But I knew. Something inside me screamed. It was my error. An error I'd allowed. Arvin approached the monitor. His eyes narrowed as he read the data that was starting to spike. "David... there's an incoming intent pattern. It's not from us. It's external feedback. This machine is reading two sources of consciousness." I stared at the screen. The graphs were wild. Uncontrolled. Then I saw something that made my blood run cold. "One of yours..." My voice cracked. "And the other one... belongs to a child." We turned to Shayla. 

The little girl stared blankly at the core of the machine. As if hearing a call no adult could hear. David tried to calm the situation, but his body began to tremble. "Your sensors must be malfunctioning. Shayla just..." A soft tremor cut him off. The Prayer Server dimmed its lights. As if... calling. Shayla stood. She walked slowly. Her tiny hand touched the core panel. And the world changed. A golden light spread across the surface of the machine. It wasn't a warm glow—it was a hungry light. I saw the code I'd spent years building begin to dance as if alive. The monitor flickered wildly. The intensity graph soared beyond safe limits. "DAVID!" Arvin shouted. "HE'S BEEN DRAGEN!"

The room shook. I screamed, but my voice was drowned out by the roar of the machine. David was pale, panicked, trying to pry open the panel. Arvin and I shouted at the same time: "DAVID, DON'T! YOU'LL BE DRAGEN!" But a father never lets go of his child. The vortex opened. David and Shayla were sucked into a vortex of blinding light. And for a moment, just a moment, I felt satisfied. That was it. His failure. Not me. David had failed. But when I turned to Arvin, saw his pale face, full of fear and loss, saw the charred shadows of two people on the metal floor... my remaining conscience throbbed with pain. This was my fault. This was all my fault. Arvin looked at me. His eyes were blank, but there was something there, a sense of determination. "We can't just let them disappear," he whispered. I nodded. But deep down, I knew it was a lie. "We're a team," he added. "We have to try." As my hand gripped the manual lever, I didn't pray for David's safety. I didn't pray for innocent Shayla. I prayed that all my hard work wouldn't be lost with them. That people would remember that I was here too. That my discovery and my contribution wouldn't become a footnote in a book about the great David. I turned the lever. And my most selfish prayer was answered in the most horrific way. The vortex opened wider. The wind swirled. Gravity collapsed. I felt my body being pulled, stretched, thrown through thousands of layers of reality that shouldn't exist. The sound of the lab's alarm turned into a resounding clap of applause. Thousands of applause. Millions.

I opened my eyes. There was no dark hallway. There were no worn doors like I might have expected. I was standing in an infinitely vast hall. The floor, walls, and ceiling were mirrors. Not ordinary mirrors, the most perfect mirrors. They reflected images with painful clarity. I looked to my right. Thousands of myself stood there. Wearing expensive suits. Holding awards. Smiling with teeth too white, too perfect. In another mirror, I saw myself giving a speech in front of thousands of people. In yet another, I saw myself on the cover of a tech magazine. "This is the place," I whispered to my reflection. The paradise I'd always desired. But as I approached, the reflections in the mirrors began to flicker. Glitches. Their faces morphed into lines of error code. The same code I'd deleted three hours ago. Code I'd allowed to grow into a catastrophe. One by one, the reflections decayed before my eyes. Their smiles turned into mocking grins. Applause turned to laughter.

I turned to the mirror behind me. There, I saw the real me, with my rumpled shirt, dark circles under my eyes, and hands still shaking. Beside me, thousands of versions of "successful Juno" pointed and laughed. And I realized something terrible. Here, there was no one else to praise me. No coworker to pat me on the shoulder. No boss to nod in satisfaction. No industry to acknowledge my contributions. Just me. And thousands of reflections of myself. And in each reflection, all I saw was the lie I'd been building. I screamed. But no sound came out. Only the laughter from the mirrors echoed, louder, louder, until I fell to my knees on the glass floor reflecting my own crying, broken, never-quite-enough face.

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