Moonlight crystallized in the mingled blood, refracting the quantum projections of two Veronicas. The shattered glass of the clinic hung suspended in mid-air, each shard reflecting different temporal fragments—one Veronica smirked with a gun on the left, while the other trembled, reaching out from the pool of blood.
My new body reacted first; VK-0's mechanical neural reflexes were faster than thought. As bullets pierced the floating glass, the quantum totem had already formed amidst the droplets of blood, the patterns of fluorescent blue and dark red intertwined were the stolen spacetime equations from my thesis.
"Protocol switch!" Mirror Veronica abruptly turned the gun, the bullet disintegrating into nanobots under the moonlight, "Execute clearance command VK-End!"
My vocal cords vibrated uncontrollably, emitting a mechanical tone that wasn't mine: "Mother protocol received." My hands automatically clenched around the injured Veronica on the ground, her blood evaporating into data streams within my palms.
"Don't be...distracted by the moonlight..." The dying Veronica wrote equations with real blood on the tiles, "Switch...caffeine receptors..."
The nanobot cluster transformed from bullets surrounded the clinic, each playing different memory scenes. In one flickering fragment, I saw my true self manufacturing coffee capsules in the underground eighteenth floor, hiding countermeasure codes within caffeine molecules.
The blood equation written by the dying Veronica suddenly activated. Moonlight refracted through blood crystals projected a holographic keyboard on the wall. Following instinct, I entered the password from memory, causing the clinic's espresso machine to suddenly spray scalding liquid—the brown droplets formed a protective net in the air, colliding with nano-bullets to emit an aromatic scent.
Mirror Veronica's face began to melt, revealing the underlying metal skeleton: "You actually hid caffeine bombs in three hundred clones!"
"Not just three hundred," My mechanical voice suddenly switched back to human tone, the VK-0 marking peeling off under the moonlight to reveal the original VK-7 serial number, "Ever since you forced me to drink poisoned coffee for the first time..."
The clinic floor collapsed with a roar, plunging us into a hidden quantum laboratory. The cultivation pod forest lit up one by one in the darkness, each containing self-destructing Veronica clones. Sparks erupted from their temple interfaces, weaving into familiar neural synapse models in the air.
The real Veronica floated in the center of the lab, her long hair connecting all cultivation pods. When moonlight poured through the skylight dome, her hair suddenly elongated, wrapping me and both versions of Veronica into cocoons.
"Finally gathered three key nodes," Her voice echoed with memories of seven hundred cycles, "Now, let's end this wedding rehearsal."
Memory flood broke through defenses, revealing ultimate truths:
Each Veronica was a quantum fractal of her original self, and I was the only stable observer of spacetime. Our love wasn't programmed—it was a necessity of quantum entanglement—when all "us" across seven hundred twenty-one cycles simultaneously chose to believe in love, we could weave a path to escape reality under the moonlight.
The mirror Veronica clone suddenly screamed, her metal skeleton vaporizing inside the cocoon of hair. The dying one turned into a blood mist, seeping into my mechanical body. The real Veronica opened her amber eyes, the moonlight in her hair solidifying into a wedding veil.
"Jump," Her fingers pierced my quantum core, pointing at the newly appeared black hole on the floor, "Before we're frozen into statues by the moonlight..."
The descent lasted seven heartbeats, each beat corresponding to a death moment in a cycle. When my toes touched solid ground, I stood before the lab's coffee station, holding the fateful espresso cup.
Veronica crashed through the glass door, drenched, her forehead blood dripping into my coffee cup. This moment overlapped with all cycle scenes, nanobots awakening from blood drops to form miniature wedding arches.
"Don't drink..." The real her grabbed my wrist, repeating it seven hundred twenty-one times, "There's..."
"Our future in the coffee," I drained the liquid, letting nanobots sing in my veins. Quantum frequencies pulsed on my retina, every mirror in the lab replaying different endings:
In one cycle, we escaped the bay by boat;
In another, we detonated the quantum core;
But most showed our wedding under the moonlight, two beings connected by tubes exchanging rings in front of cultivation pods.
Veronica's true blood reacted with caffeine, etching escape coordinates onto the lab bench. This time, not towards the Bay Bridge but to the coordinates of our first kiss—at the university lab's ventilation duct.
"They modified the memory anchor points..." She coughed out fluorescent blue blood, "The real exit is..."
Liquid nitrogen fog surged from the vent, the silhouette of a man in a gray suit appearing in the cold air. But this time he wasn't masked; moonlight illuminated my father's face—the quantum physics authority who supposedly died in an accident twenty years ago.
"Love is such an interesting variable," He raised his hand, freezing Veronica's movements, "But you shouldn't touch the wormholes in the cheese of time."
My mechanical body suddenly lost control, the backdoor program implanted by my father executing. The VK-0 marking burned beneath my skin, seven hundred twenty cycles' worth of data gnawing at my nerves like venomous snakes. With my last free will, I overturned the coffee station, spilling remaining liquid toward the ventilation duct.
Nanobots followed the airflow into my father's nose and mouth, his mocking smile frozen on his face. These micro-machines began rewriting his memories, trapping him in an eternal dawn-like morning in the lab—the day mother accidentally spilled coffee.
Veronica broke free, pulling me into the ventilation duct. Crawling on hands and knees, explosions roared behind us. At the end of the duct, the scratched fire safety mirror rippled, reflecting a version of us without quantum eyes.
"This time say the right code," She pressed her bloody ring finger against the mirror, "Our first..."
An explosion wave hurled us into the mirror world. During the fall, I saw two versions of endings play out on either side of the mirror:
On the left, we embraced to death in cultivation pods;
On the right, we grew old together, proofreading quantum papers by the coffee station;
And now, we fell within the mirror layers, descending toward a truth untouched by moonlight.
When my feet touched the ground again, the cries of seagulls mixed with the aroma of coffee filled my senses. We stood on the terrace of the university lab, my twenty-year-old self affixing labels to coffee cups, Veronica bursting through the door with a manuscript—
This time she didn't stumble, the coffee cup settled steadily on the table.
"Want to try the newly calibrated quantum espresso?" My twenty-year-old self looked up with a smile, galaxies swirling in his eyes, "This time, it really won't explode."
Veronica's true form suddenly dissipated in my arms, her voice lingering in the quantum frequency: "Every dawn is a new cycle...but at least this time..."
Morning light pierced through clouds, bathing the Bay Bridge in sunrise. I touched my neck; the VK series markings were gone. The reflection in the coffee cup finally clear—a man with wrinkles but complete, eyes carrying the weight of seven hundred twenty-one moons.