The caffeine boiled into nebulae within my veins, the blue light patterns beneath my skin piercing through the darkness. The self-destruction countdown of the underground level eighteen reflected in my pupils; the pulsing numbers were rearranging into my mother's last words: "The real anchor point was in your sixth birthday cake."
The glass of the cultivation pod suddenly shattered, fluorescent blue nutrient fluid flooding over my ankles. Inside each pod was engraved the same equation—the missing key page from my thesis: a formula to calculate temporal folds using caffeine metabolism rates.
A gray-suited silhouette emerged from the liquid nitrogen mist, my father's face becoming quantumized, silver nanoclusters flowing beneath his skin: "So you found that madwoman's safe."
"Mother wasn't insane!" My vocal cords trembled from caffeine overdose, "She was the first to discover your theft of time..."
An electromagnetic pulse grazed past my ear, burning a blackened birthday cake pattern into the wall. My father's hand penetrated the quantum shield, nanobot-formed fingers gripping my throat: "There were twenty-two candles on your cake that day when you turned six, remember?"
Memories were forcibly accessed, childhood scenes overlaying reality: my mother's trembling hands inserting twenty-two candles into the chocolate cake, a miniature quantum interferometer hidden in the cream. As I blew out the candles, my father gestured "mission successful" outside the surveillance camera.
"The device in that cake wasn't poison," my father's fingers oozed silver liquid, "it was a genetic lock to make you the perfect vessel."
Level eighteen suddenly tilted, cultivation pods exploding like dominoes. Amidst the splashing fluorescent liquid, I saw the truth—each pod was the embodiment of a time anchor, and Veronica's clones were merely batteries maintaining the anchor's operation.
The countdown suddenly froze at 00:07:12. Data turbulence appeared in my father's nano-body, his pupils reflecting abnormal energy reactions on the Bay Bridge—Veronica stood atop pier number seventeen, her hair burning amber in the quantum storm.
"You actually taught her to manipulate the time anchor..." my father's voice cracked for the first time, "but don't forget I backed up..."
A coffee can suddenly flew out from the shadows, my mother's hologram awakening amidst a swarm of nanobots: "You backed up seven hundred twenty times, but you always missed this." She pointed to the blue light pattern over my heart, "The core of the maternal protocol is a mother's love."
Level eighteen began to plummet vertically, we fell toward the quantum abyss with the collapsing building. My father desperately tried to reassemble his body, but my mother's nanocluster was devouring his code. In his final moment, he hurled a memory bomb at me—images of Veronica killing me across seven hundred cycles.
The quantum storm swallowed the pain nerves. As I fell, I tapped into the Bay Bridge's surveillance cameras. Veronica was cutting the quantum device on the bridge pier with her wedding ring, each movement precisely replicating the escape plan from my thesis. When the twelfth blue light lit up, she suddenly turned to look at the camera, her pupils dancing with the morning light from when she was twenty-two.
"Now!" Her voice came simultaneously from seven hundred twenty timelines.
I tore open my chest, letting the maternal protocol's blue light pierce through the quantum storm. My father's last nanocluster evaporated in the intense light, his twisted face freezing into the image from my sixth birthday—on that day's group photo, his hand behind the cake held an injector.
Time and space suddenly sank into viscous silence. The falling debris solidified into sculptures, Veronica leapt down from the pier, her long hair spreading into a path of light in the still quantum storm. As our fingertips touched, the virtual images of twenty-two candles ignited around us.
"Blow them out," her tears crystallized in the still spacetime, "This wish will come true."
Caffeine overload projected multiple realities onto my retina: in one version, we died in each other's arms; in another timeline, we grew old together; but most scenes showed my mother smiling with the cake, traces of humanity still lingering in my father's eyes.
When the last wisp of candlelight went out, the quantum abyss began to fold in on itself. Veronica pushed me into the spacetime fold she created, our bodies merging into light as they collapsed. Seven hundred twenty broken endings intertwined at this moment, weaving the seven hundred twenty-first possibility—
No alarms blared in the morning lab; a coffee cup steamed quietly on the desk. I opened my eyes to see my twenty-year-old self calibrating equipment, while familiar footsteps approached from outside.
"Your express delivery," the real Veronica burst in, hugging a cardboard box, rain-soaked ponytail exuding freshness, "Marked 'Sixth Birthday Gift Resent.'"
Inside the box was a slightly melted chocolate cake, twenty-two candles stuck crookedly. When my fingers touched the cream, the quantum interferometer hidden in the frosting automatically activated, my mother's hologram gently leaning over: "It's time to wake up, Alan."
The laboratory suddenly became quantumized, all equipment transforming into flowing data. Fluorescent blue liquid seeped from the corners of Veronica's eyes, tears of joy: "You've finally broken free of the Möbius strip."
The Bay Bridge stood intact outside the window, no outlines of clone cultivation pods in the morning mist. Looking at the reflection in the coffee cup, that face belonged neither to VK-0 nor my twenty-year-old self, but to a new existence that had experienced seven hundred twenty-one moons.
Veronica's fingers brushed over the candles on the cake: "Now you can choose again—to be an ordinary scientist, or..."
I blew out the candles, letting the quantum ashes fall into the coffee cup: "Or become the guardian of spacetime folds?"
Her smile suddenly froze, amber pupils reflecting a new threat—the void reflected by the cake knife revealed a quantum projection of a child in a suit clapping. It was my six-year-old face, holding my father's last nanocore.
"Splendid counterattack," my childlike voice said, "But do you really think what ended was only the 721st cycle?"
The coffee cup suddenly exploded, spacetime folding again. But before the fragments hit the ground, Veronica had grabbed my wrist, and we leapt into the quantum passage deep within her pupils—there lay my mother's ultimate sanctuary, an eternal dawn constructed from cake cream and caffeine.