Room 404 was quiet.
Too quiet.
Kai had closed the door, re-checked the hall, and scanned his HUD three times. The message still blinked at the top corner:
Instability Detected – Room 404
And underneath it, a second line appeared:
Report to Admin Node: ACCESS DENIED
He sat on the edge of his bed, frowning at the display. HUD warnings were usually clinical. This one felt... personal.
His Save Point panel still glowed a safe blue in the corner. No alarms. No visual distortion.
But that line.
Instability detected.
He turned toward the desk, pulled open the system terminal, and tried to access the room logs.
ACCESS DENIED.
PERMISSION LEVEL: INSUFFICIENT
THIS LOG HAS BEEN FLAGGED.
Kai leaned back. "Flagged by who?"
The Academy didn't seem to have a chain of command. No teachers, no counselors, no staff. Just the Instructors — cold, faceless AI models with scripted responses. If something had flagged his room… that meant something else was running in the background.
And it had noticed him.
The next morning, the glitch hadn't gone away.
If anything, it was worse.
Every time Kai walked through the corridor toward the training wing, the lighting around him would flicker — just once. A soft buzz. A stutter of the shadows.
Subtle. But wrong.
He caught a few other students glancing at him, but no one said anything. One even stepped slightly aside when he passed.
When he got to Data Theory 101, Lira was already seated — far corner, arms crossed, eyes distant.
He hesitated before sitting beside her.
"Did you get any weird messages last night?" he asked.
She didn't look at him. "Define weird."
"Like… your room glitching. Access denied. Surveillance-level weird."
"Not me," she said. "But a few others have."
Kai looked around.
Three seats were empty. They'd been filled yesterday.
"Anyone say what it means?"
"No," Lira said. "But two of those empty seats were in the same hallway as ours."
Kai's mouth went dry.
Before he could ask more, the Instructor materialized — a floating cube of rotating lights this time, voice processed and layered.
"Today's lesson: Data Shadows and Phantom Threads."
"The system stores every interaction. Memory logs. Spatial imprints. Emotional echoes. These fragments become your Shadow Signature."
"If your data becomes too unstable, your Shadow may detach. When that happens…"Static"…you no longer belong to the current thread."
Kai shivered.
What kind of school taught this stuff like normal?
Later that afternoon, during a mandatory cooldown session in the mental resilience lab, Kai noticed something new.
While students were guided through breathing exercises by floating UI prompts, his HUD blinked red again.
Warning: Unauthorized Traceback Detected
Your Save Point has been accessed by an external process.
[View Details]
[Ignore]
He tapped View Details.
The response was immediate.
ERROR_001 – ACCESS LOG UNAVAILABLE
Trace Level: Masked
Kai's pulse spiked.
Someone—or something—had tried to open his Save Point file.
And covered their tracks.
He quickly tapped into the console's memory cache, checking to see if it had been mirrored or redirected. Nothing. Whoever it was had done it cleanly.
He looked around the room. Students sat silently, breathing to a metronome. Calm. Unaware.
Lira sat near the back.
She didn't blink.
That night, he waited until lights-out to talk to her.
Their dorm was dim. The only glow came from the Save Point panel and the faint flicker of their HUDs in sleep mode.
Kai stayed on his bunk, watching the ceiling.
"Someone accessed my Save Point," he said softly. "Externally."
Lira didn't respond.
"I don't think it was an Instructor. They masked the log."
Still silence.
Then: "What did you do yesterday?"
"I passed my sync trial."
"And?"
"I… I don't know."
He turned to look at her.
She was lying on her back, arms crossed behind her head.
"I'm not sure what they want from me," Kai said. "But I think I'm not supposed to survive."
"That's true of all of us."
"No," he said. "Not like that. I think someone's trying to delete me early."
Finally, she turned her head toward him.
"Then don't let them."
Kai stared at her.
That was it?
No fear. No surprise.
Just a simple answer. Like dying was just another stat to avoid.
The next day, new names appeared on the rotation list.
Specialized Simulation Trial – Team Conflict Assessment
Pairing: Kai + Ren
Objective: Survive a two-team scenario with PvP elements
PvP.
So they were escalating.
Kai found Ren near the Arena lift, humming to himself, spinning a coin between his fingers.
"You ever fought another team before?" Kai asked.
Ren shrugged. "Fought, sabotaged, sabotaged while pretending to fight—yeah."
"Cool. What's the plan?"
"Don't die," Ren said. "And don't look up."
"What?"
The lift descended.
When the doors opened, Kai understood.
The sim chamber was massive — and vertical. A fractured skyscraper core, with suspended platforms, shattered walkways, and data storms floating in the skybox above. It looked like the aftermath of a digital explosion.
Kai's HUD updated.
Enemy Team: Lira + Marin
Timer: 3 Minutes
Win Condition: Last Team Standing OR Data Core Capture
"Lira?" Kai said.
Ren grinned. "Well. This just got fun."
The sim launched.
The first 30 seconds were chaos — Ren immediately vanished behind cover, sending static decoys in multiple directions. Lira moved with deadly precision, using her emotion buffs to leap platforms effortlessly.
Kai focused on the objective: the Data Core, suspended at the top of the central structure.
He climbed fast, using scaffolding and system-placed ledges. His heart pounded. His HUD kept pinging.
Environmental Instability Detected
[View Details]
[Ignore]
He ignored it.
Marin appeared mid-run — a thin girl with a glowing orb in each hand. Her SoulCode let her rewind a few seconds of movement. She used it to dodge attacks, appear behind enemies, or escape death.
She wasn't aiming to kill.
She was aiming to stall.
Which meant—
Kai turned just in time to see Lira closing the gap.
Their eyes locked for half a second.
Her HUD flickered red.
Emotion: Focused Resolve – Strength +3
She struck.
He dodged — barely. Rolled backward. Reached for the ledge—
ERROR. COLLISION DETECTED.
His foot clipped through the edge.
The terrain glitched.
He fell.
Hard.
When the trial ended, Kai was on the floor of the simulation chamber, gasping for breath, HUD flashing red.
Lira stood above him, hand extended.
He didn't take it.
"You glitched the map," he said.
"I didn't."
"You did."
Her expression didn't change. "If I wanted to delete you, you wouldn't still be here."
Ren walked up, clapping slowly. "That was awesome."
Kai didn't answer.
His HUD displayed the results.
Simulation Outcome: Draw
Data Core Not Captured
Performance: 71%
Emotional Sync: +1
Instability Spike: [FLAGGED]
Save Point Status: [CORRUPTED – 17%]
Backup: Unavailable
His stomach dropped.
"Seventeen percent…?"
Ren leaned over his shoulder. "Yikes. Hope that doesn't get worse."
Lira turned and walked away.
Kai stood there alone, HUD still blinking, mind racing.
Something was wrong.
And the system knew it.