The wind cut across the courtyard, sharp and cold, like the night had decided to listen in.
Alice's words hung there.
It protected itself from you.
I felt something twist in my stomach—a cold, sinking pull. Not fear. Something heavier.
Sophie rubbed her palms against her thighs, trying to ground herself. "Okay," she said shakily, "so… what does that even mean? Files don't 'protect themselves.' Systems don't blackout entire wings for one trace attempt."
Alice didn't look at her.
She was still staring at me.
Not accusing this time.
Calculating.
Like she was trying to solve a problem whose variables kept changing every time she blinked.
"It means," Alice said slowly, "that whatever Project RKHN was… whatever 'Δ–A13' means… you're connected to it. And someone out there has gone to ridiculous lengths to make sure we don't see how."
"But I don't know anything about—"
"You keep saying that," she cut in. "And maybe you're not lying. Maybe you don't remember. But something in that system reacted to you specifically. It didn't crash when I accessed it. It didn't trigger when Sophie noticed it last week. It triggered tonight. With you in the room."
Sophie swallowed. "So what now?"
Alice stood.
And when she did, something in the air shifted—like resolve taking shape.
"We regroup," she said. "We don't go near the east wing until the lockdown resets. And we don't talk to anyone else about this. Nobody."
Sophie looked up at her. "Not even Kai?"
Alice's jaw tightened. "Especially not Kai."
A gust of wind blew through the courtyard, rattling the metal vents above us.
I looked back at the building—still dark, still silent. The east wing felt like a sealed vault now. Not locked from the inside.
Locked from us.
Alice turned back to me.
"Adam," she said, quieter now, but with an edge to it. "I need you to think. Hard. Anything strange recently. Memories that feel wrong. Missing time. Any symptoms—headaches, flashes, déjà vu—anything."
I shook my head automatically. "Alice, I told you—"
"Think."
Her voice cracked through me, sharper than the wind.
And then—
Something surfaced.
Unbidden.
A flicker of something behind my eyes. A memory, or not a memory—more like a glitch. A frame of something I couldn't place, couldn't anchor. A face? A room? A sound like metal scraping—
I staggered.
Alice caught my arm.
"Adam?"
Sophie stood fast. "What happened? What did you see?"
"I—" I pressed my palm to my forehead. The afterimage was already fading like it had never been there. "I don't know. Just… something."
Alice searched my face, her expression shifting from interrogation to concern she was trying hard not to show.
"When did that start?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"But it's new."
A beat.
I nodded.
Sophie looked between us, her voice barely audible.
"So he is part of it."
Alice didn't confirm it. She didn't deny it.
She just stared toward the east wing, the blackout stretching across its windows like a void.
Then she spoke.
"We're being watched."
Sophie flinched. "By who?"
Alice shook her head slowly. "Not who. What."
Her eyes returned to me.
"And whatever that thing is… it's tied to him."
My chest tightened.
I didn't have answers.
But the way Alice said "what"—not "who"—settled into my bones like ice.
Sophie wrapped her arms around herself again. "So what do we do tomorrow?"
"There isn't a tomorrow for this," Alice said.
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
She inhaled deeply, gaze sharpening with purpose.
"I mean we're not waiting for it to come to us again."
She zipped up her jacket and stepped back from the curb.
"We find out what Project RKHN really is."
Sophie stared at her. "And if the system tries to erase it again?"
"It won't," Alice said.
"How do you know?"
She looked at me.
Because this time…
we're not opening the file inside the system.
She pulled the flash drive she'd yanked from the terminal out of her pocket—its metal surface dented from how hard she'd grabbed it.
"I got more than I expected," she said. "Not the file. But something. Something it didn't purge in time."
I felt my throat tighten. "What kind of something?"
Alice gave the faintest, thinnest smile.
Not relief.
Challenge.
"Encrypted data fragments," she said. "Low-level. Hidden. The kind you can't erase with a command line. They're embedded in the trace logs."
Sophie blinked. "So?"
"So," Alice said, "we're going to rebuild what it tried to destroy."
Her eyes met mine again.
"And when we do… we find out exactly what you are."
The courtyard light flickered once above us—
Just once—
Like something far away noticed.
And then the night swallowed the world around us again.