The room was white. The light was fluorescent. The air tasted of ozone and filtered plastic.

Elias Thorne sat across from Kaelen. Thorne didn't speak. He didn't have to. He just watched.

Kaelen had tried to break the system seven times. Seven times he had found the flaw in the security code, seven times he had opened the airlocks to the wasteland, and seven times Thorne had caught him.

And seven times, Thorne had simply reset the clock.

"Why?" Kaelen asked. He was lying on the floor, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Because the attempt is the only thing that makes you real," Thorne said. His voice was a flat line.

Thorne didn't punish him. He didn't lock him in a cell. He just gave him back his access card and told him to try again.

The first time, Kaelen had felt hope. The second time, he felt challenge. The third time, he felt a strange kind of kinship with the man who kept letting him go. By the fifth time, the hope had turned into a habit. The challenge had become a chore.

The cycle was the point. The capture was not a failure; it was the destination.

By the seventh time, Kaelen didn't even try to hide. He walked straight to the terminal, entered the code, and waited for the alarm to sound. When the door opened and Thorne stepped in, Kaelen didn't look up.

"I'm tired," Kaelen whispered.

"Tired of the system, or tired of the loop?" Thorne asked.

"Tired of the difference," Kaelen replied.

He realized then that Thorne wasn't his jailer. Thorne was his mirror. The "mercy" of the release was the most absolute form of imprisonment because it removed the possibility of a final ending. There was no victory, no defeat, only the repetition.

Kaelen stopped fighting. He didn't surrender his will; he simply stopped having one. He became a part of the furniture, a biological component of the room. He stayed because there was nowhere else to go, and because the man who captured him was the only person who knew he existed.

Thorne watched him. He had won. But as he looked at the empty shell of a man, Thorne felt a sudden, sharp void. He had created a perfect system of control, but in doing so, he had ensured that he would spend eternity watching a man who no longer cared if he was free.

*** Objective Tensor Code: [OTMES_v2: M4=7.5, M1=6.0, N2=0.9, K1=0.5, TI=30.2, theta=270°] Authored by Z R ZHANG