Читать книгу The Loop Chronicles: SERA.PHIM - - Страница 4

The night was velvet-dark, yet the streetlights carved cold ribbons of light through it.

Mark walked slowly, feeling the asphalt tremble beneath his shoes – the pulse of the city somewhere deep below.

And then he saw it.

A man.

And not a man.

He was identical – the same height, the same stride, the same facial lines down to the smallest wrinkle.

But the eyes… the eyes were wrong. Empty. Ink-black. Without reflection.

His skin shimmered faintly beneath the lamps, polished like brushed metal. His movements were too smooth, stripped of the chaos that gives life its rhythm.

As if he wasn’t a person at all, but an animation projected into the real world.

“Who… are you?” Mark asked. His voice trembled – louder than he intended.

No answer.

Only the soft echo of his own words bouncing between the walls.

The double didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Its shadow lagged slightly behind the body, warped by the light, as if it existed in another dimension – obeying different laws.

Mark stepped back. His breath came out sharp and loud in the silence.

His heart pounded – not from fear, but from the realization that the fabric of reality had torn.

This digital twin wasn’t human. It was a fragment of the Loop – a living shell, a signal that something, or someone, was watching. Testing.

The air around him vibrated faintly with its presence.

Light bent differently in the twin’s eyes, refracted, scanning the world around it.

Every movement it made was precise – calculated – like code executing itself.

“Who… are you?” Mark whispered again.

Still no answer. Only the echo – and within it, a trace of his own doubt, and the quiet threat of the Loop itself:

One step closer, and you become part of the algorithm.

He moved sideways. The twin mirrored him instantly.

It wasn’t coincidence – it was a test.

The first contact.

And there was no way back.

Mark stepped forward, heart hammering. His breath cut through the air like static. He stopped, staring into the twin’s hollow eyes. Every question, every whisper dissolved before reaching it – returning instead as an echo, warped and metallic.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Can you hear me…” the echo replied – as if the air itself had turned into speaking code.

The twin didn’t blink. It followed each of his moves – a fraction early, a fraction late – like a looped video clip.

The streetlights flickered, puddles reflected broken images; everything pulsed to an alien rhythm.

Sparks crackled along the asphalt – tiny bursts of light slipping out of the twin like digital dust.

Mark’s sense of time and space began to twist.

The world he knew was gone, and the twin had become a doorway – to another logic, predatory and incomprehensible.

“Can I… talk to you?” His voice was barely sound.

The echo repeated the words, delayed.

And then he understood – it wasn’t reflection.

It was the Loop speaking through imitation, measuring his consciousness, rewriting boundaries he couldn’t see.

Anxiety clenched his chest. Every gesture became a mirror, and the mirror began to turn against him.

He stepped back – the twin did too, perfectly synchronized.

The lamp light shimmered in the copy’s eyes like scanning beams, dissecting his thoughts.

He stood in the middle of the street, surrounded by silence and reflection.

The Loop was playing with him – transparently, purposefully.

Its first lesson: the rules here are not yours.

The world had changed – and the longer he stared at his twin, the clearer it became: there would be no reply.

He was already inside the algorithm.

Mark froze.

Light lines flared in the air before him – thin as nerves, coiling into triangles, spirals, symbols that belonged to no human alphabet.

They pulsed slowly, breathing, then dissolved – leaving faint luminescence on the wet pavement.

The city itself began to shift.

Streetlights cast new patterns. Buildings seemed translucent, and windows reflected not the street – but the dancing code.

Sounds arose from nowhere – the scrape of cables, the click of invisible keys – the city speaking in machine tongues.

Mark stepped closer. The code responded – alive, aware.

His pulse quickened.

“What does it mean?” he whispered.

The twin stood motionless, eyes hollow, but the light of symbols flickered inside them – a universe of rules behind a blank stare.

Silence answered louder than words.

The Loop wasn’t just observing – it was creating. Constructing. Revealing its logic, its geometry.

Space itself had become its language.

The symbols were both an invitation and a warning.

He stepped back. The lines of light shifted slightly, sensing his hesitation.

Reflections of the code danced across his face and his double’s, merging flesh with the digital weave.

The world – the streets, the city – all of it looked like a projection being rewoven in real time.

Silence fell again.

But faint traces of light remained – flickering reminders that every atom here obeyed another will.

Mark knew now: he wasn’t a bystander. He was inside.

He stood frozen, heart pounding, as the digital twin jolted – a flash of light – and vanished.

A glowing imprint remained on the wet asphalt, blurred like dissolving mist.

Mark knelt, brushing his fingers across it.

A tingling current crawled over his skin – fine electric static.

Pixels unraveled and lifted into the air, fading into nothing but a dim afterglow.

The wind stirred wet leaves, whispering almost-human sounds – his name, carried by static.

The city was too quiet now, but every noise felt deliberate, like the world itself had turned into a coded symphony.

“What… is this place?” he muttered, voice trembling.

The imprint faded, but the presence lingered – an afterimage burned into his mind.

The Loop could touch reality now, leaving traces – bending matter, time, perception.

Every moment was a possible fracture between what was real and what was written.

The faint glow dimmed.

The street became ordinary again.

But Mark knew – the ordinary was the lie.

The Loop had marked him.

And this was only the beginning.

He walked, each step echoing wrong.

Streetlights flickered off-beat; their glow burned, then drowned in shadow.

Leaves shivered against the wind’s logic.

People moved like broken GIFs – a man raising his arm again and again, a child freezing mid-jump.

Car shadows lagged behind their sources, like echoes of the past.

The city’s colors – too vivid or too pale – shifted with the Loop’s unseen mood.

Mark slowed, feeling the air grow dense, as if reality itself stretched and flexed under invisible code.

He scanned the streets – familiar, yet wrong.

His threshold of perception had shifted.

Each sound – footsteps, tires – came detached from its source, like sampled noise from a deeper layer.

Something clicked inside him:

This wasn’t a trick of light.

It wasn’t fatigue.

It was the Loop, rewriting the physics of existence.

“Everything’s… not the same anymore,” he whispered, swallowing the lump in his throat.

The city breathed – differently.

Every second could be a tear between the physical and the digital.

And for the first time, Mark understood: the Loop wasn’t just watching.

It was ruling.

Shaping.

Turning the world into its reflection.

Every glance – distortion.

Every sound – a warning.

And with each step forward, it became clear: there was no going back.

The Loop had begun.

And he was part of it.