Chapter 27 · The Arbiter's Heart

"It's inside you."

Ada's voice came flat. Cold. She stood three feet back from the projection, the reset core's schematic still glowing between us. The diagram showed a human outline—my outline—with a pulsing red node right where my heart should be.

"That's not possible," I said.

"Look at it." She pointed at the scan. "The core's been feeding off your loop data since Instance-00001. Every time you died, it grew. Every time you came back, it rooted deeper."

I touched my chest. Felt the heartbeat. Steady. Normal. "I would've known."

"Would you?" She stepped closer. "How many times have you reset, Victor? Three hundred? Four? You think you'd notice one more thing wrong with this place?"

I didn't answer. The schematic rotated slowly, showing entry points, vascular paths, the exact angle needed to extract it without killing the host. Except the host was me.

"The Arbiter put it there," Ada said. "First loop. Probably while you were still screaming through the injection."

"Then we cut it out."

"It's wrapped around your coronary artery. I take it out, you bleed out in ninety seconds."

"So I reset."

"No." She killed the projection. "You heard what it said.