The blinking crimson light from the ceiling fixture cast long, jagged shadows down the concrete corridor, turning the crude white cross on the security door into a bleeding laceration against the steel.
Arkan didn't stop. He forced his sneakers forward, each step sending a hollow, metallic echo bouncing off the damp walls. Behind his eyes, the gray baseline registry didn't just vibrate; it shattered entirely, overwritten by an unstoppable flood of corrupted orange code that burned across his retinas with the force of a localized system crash.
[LOCAL BUFFER INFRASTRUCTURE: COMPROMISED]
[INCOMING DATA STREAM: PROJECT_ELA_PHASE_01_REJECTION_LOGS]
[STREAMING KEY: SURYADHARMA_LOGISTICS_MAIN]
October 29, 2024. Subject's neurological lattice is rejecting the synthetic myelin coating. Synaptic latency has increased by 400%. When the system attempts a direct calibration sweep, the subject's localized emotional response triggers a network-wide harmonic feedback loop. It is crying again. The tears are causing micro-shorts in the internal transceiver node. If the crying persists, the entire phase one array will drop below functional parameters. Isolation required.
A sharp, needles-and-pins pressure exploded behind Arkan's left temple, forcing a dry gasp from his throat. He clenched his right fist inside his coat pocket, his fingers pressing so hard against the scalding plastic shell of the tracking node that he could feel the underlying circuit board flexing under the strain.
"Kan, slow down," Bhas ordered, his voice dropping into that low, tactical gravel as he moved up to match Arkan's frantic pace. He didn't drop his salvaged iron pipe; instead, his sharp eyes scanned the dark ceiling where thick clusters of dead coaxial cables hung down like severed vines. "You're dragging your left foot. The orange script is blinding you again, isn't it?"
"I'm fine," Arkan snapped, his voice a tight, defensive snarl that barely masked the shudder climbing up his throat. He didn't look at Bhas. He kept his cold, sharp gaze fixed on the crude white mark ahead, his tsundere armor locking into place like iron plates. "Keep your mouth shut and watch the corridor behind us. The mechanical lift didn't drop its anchor just to let us read engineering marks in peace."
"I'm watching, I'm watching!" Chan squeaked from behind Bhas's broad shoulders, his hands still tightly knotted into the fabric of the larger boy's utility belt. His sneakers made a frantic, wet slithering sound against the dry concrete as he looked back toward the dark loading bay. "But Arkan, that clicking sound from the roller door... it's not staying in the alley. It's getting louder. It sounds like a giant, industrial beetle trying to type an email at ninety miles an hour!"
"It's the relay switches," Ela's dual-layered voice vibrated from the center of the corridor.
The ghost boy was drifting sideways now, his silver form so thin and washed out that the crimson light from the ceiling showed completely through his chest, painting his translucent heart in a dull, artificial violet. His large silver eyes were fixed on the steel security door ahead, his small hands trembling as he reached out to touch the white paint of the cross without actually making physical contact. "The logs... they aren't just text, Arkan. They're my father's voice memos. Every time the system tried to run a diagnostic on my name, he... he wrote down how many milliliters of synthetic alloy my blood needed to stop the rejection."
"He was an engineer, Kir. Engineers write down parameters," Arkan muttered through his gritted teeth, his tone dropping back into that cold, biting frequency to block out the sudden, heavy ache twisting in his stomach. He reached the steel door, his functional right hand slamming flat against the cold metal right over the intersection of the white cross.
The steel was freezing, but beneath the surface, he could feel a distinct, high-frequency hum that felt exactly like the vibration of a high-voltage transformer block.
[INTERFACE DETECTED: TERMINAL_SECURE_04]
[DATA STREAM COMPLETION: 87%]
[WARNING: REJECTION CORRELATION DETECTED IN LOG_04]
November 03, 2024. Stabilization impossible. The subject's biological memory core is fighting the network integration. It keeps asking for the other three boys. It keeps calling out names that aren't registered in the phase one database: Arkan, Bhaskara, Chandra. If these anomalies continue to distort the central processing line, the academy board will order a complete sector reset. We cannot let them delete the lattice. I am rerouting the tracking frequency to a manual localized node. If I can't save his body, I will lock his signature into the school grounds.
Arkan's breath caught in his throat, the orange text flaring so bright it left a phantom violet smear across his vision.
The other three boys.
That was two years ago. Before the new science block was even built. Before the academy board signed the expansion contract. They had been friends since middle school, but Kir had... Kir had disappeared from the local hospital records after a standard summer fever.
"Arkan," Bhas said, his voice dropping all the room's warmth as his heavy hand came down on Arkan's right shoulder, anchoring the MC before his knees could buckle. Bhas's sharp eyes were locked on the orange light reflecting in Arkan's pupils, his jaw tightening into a hard, rigid line. "What did the log say?"
"Nothing," Arkan ground out, his tsundere defense mechanism instantly flaring into a wall of pure, defensive hostility. He violently wrenched his shoulder away from Bhas's grip, his right hand grabbing the heavy iron latch of the security door. "It's just old system noise. Corrupted accounting data from before the board took over the print shop. Move back."
"Don't lie to me, Kan," Bhas muttered, his voice flat and dangerously calm. He didn't step back; instead, he raised his salvaged iron pipe, bracing the dented tip against the frame of the door to keep it from swinging open too fast. "Your left watch is smoking. The plastic around the bezel is literally bubbling. Whatever that data stream is doing to your arm, it's not routine system noise."
"I said I'm fine, zero-percent-muscle!" Arkan growled, his face setting into a stubborn, furious mask as he put his entire body weight into the manual iron latch. "If you have time to audit my wrist, help me throw the bolt before that thing from the lift platform clears the drainage line!"
"I'll help! I'll help!" Chan wailed, finally letting go of Bhas's belt and throwing his small frame against the lower half of the iron handle. He was sobbing openly now, his orange beanie soaked with a mixture of cold sweat and plaster dust from the greenhouse. "Just open it! The beetle sound is right at the end of the hall! I can see the white lenses reflecting in the puddles!"
With a deafening, metallic clunk-shriek, the internal locking pins of the security door sheared free. The heavy steel door flew inward, releasing a sudden, violent blast of freezing air that smelled heavily of liquid nitrogen, stale sugar, and old, forgotten textbooks.
They tumbled into the room, Bhas instantly slamming his shoulder against the interior metal to force the door shut behind them, while Chan scrambled across the floorboards to jam his brass torque wrench into the manual secondary track.
The room wasn't a laboratory.
It was a perfectly preserved, small-scale replica of their old middle school homeroom from 2023.
The four rows of green wooden desks were arranged in perfect geometric lines, each one covered in a thick, uniform layer of grey dust. A broken piece of white chalk lay in the groove of the old slate blackboard, right below a half-erased algebraic equation that Arkan recognized instantly—it was the exact theorem he had solved for Kir during their remedial study session two weeks before Kir went to the hospital.
But there were no windows. The walls were solid, windowless blocks of smooth, dark concrete, and from the center of the ceiling, a massive cluster of thick, silver-coated fiber-optic cables hung down like a technological chandelier, their severed ends pulsing with a faint, rhythmic blue light that cast a twilight glow over the dust.
Chan stopped crying. He stayed flat on his stomach on the floorboards, his eyes wide as he stared at a small, rusted iron pencil box sitting on the corner of the front desk. "This... this is wrong," he whispered, his voice trembling so hard it sounded like dry leaves. "Arkan, that's my pencil box. The one with the broken plastic clip that I lost during the mid-term exams in seventh grade. Why is it down here under the science building?"
Arkan didn't answer. He stood near the blackboard, his functional right hand slowly sliding along the edge of the wooden chalk rail. The orange text behind his retinas was finally beginning to recede, leaving his vision blurry, bruised, and cold.
[LOCAL BUFFER OVERFLOW: RESOLVED]
[CURRENT DOMAIN: RECONSTRUCTED_CORE_ALPHA]
[SIGNAL RECEPTION: 89%]
[STATUS: ISOLATION ZONE SECURE]
"They built it for me," Ela's dual-layered voice echoed through the silent classroom.
The ghost boy had floated to the center of the room, his translucent feet settling gently onto the surface of the green desk where the old algebra equation was written. He looked down at his own hands, his fingers slowly moving through the grey dust without disturbing a single particle. A single, clear silver tear slipped down his cheek, pixelating into a tiny trail of blue sparks before it could touch the wood.
"My dad... he told the board that if they gave him a closed circuit that looked like our old room, my neurological lattice would stop fighting the myelin tech. He... he thought if I believed I was still at school with you guys, the rejection logs would hit zero." Ela looked up, his large silver eyes wide with a terrible, shattering realization as he stared at Arkan. "But I didn't stay in the room, Arkan. I... I got scared because the bell never rang. So I climbed out through the ground wire."
Bhas didn't drop his iron pipe. He stood by the sealed door, his sharp eyes moving from the silver boy to the massive cluster of pulsing fiber-optic cables above them. "If this is an isolation zone, Ela, it means the network didn't lose your signature. It's been waiting for you to come back to the desk."
Before Arkan could open his mouth to unleash another defensive, sarcastic remark to drown out the freezing dread in his chest, a heavy, rhythmic thud shook the steel security door behind Bhas.
The iron latch didn't break, but from the gap beneath the frame, the thick, copper-scented black sludge began to pour into the classroom, its silver-speckled surface reflecting the faint blue pulse of the fiber-optic cables above.
And from the other side of the steel, the frantic, mechanical click-click-click of the relay switches rose into a deafening, rhythmic scream that matched the countdown burning behind Arkan's retinas.
[ALERT: CORE REINTEGRATION INITIATED]
[OBJECT_01: IN THE ROOM]
[SYSTEM STATUS: CLOSING THE CIRCUIT]
Arkan's right hand clenched into a death grip inside his pocket, his tsundere armor fracturing down the center as he looked at the green desks. "Chan," he growled, his voice a low, desperate rasp. "Get the wrench. We aren't sitting in these chairs again."