The days after the lockdown were strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
Classes resumed. The engineering block reopened like nothing had happened. The system logs were wiped, the lab sealed for "maintenance," and no one outside the three of them even mentioned the blackout that had swallowed the east wing. It was as if the building itself had agreed to pretend that night didn't exist.
But Adam felt it.
Every time he walked through the corridors, he felt it.
A pressure. A presence.
Like invisible eyes were following him through the crowd.
Alice stopped coming to college the very next day.
At first, no one questioned it. Alice had always been the type to disappear into her work—skipping lectures, ignoring attendance mails, staying buried in the robotics club lab until dawn. But this time was different.
She didn't respond to Sophie's texts.
Or to Adam's.
She didn't show up for weekly lab meetings.
The professors shrugged, assuming she was working on another competition build.
But Adam knew better.
The night of the lockdown had flipped some internal switch in her. He saw it happen. The moment the file vanished, something hardened behind her eyes. Something determined. Something dangerous.
And now, she was gone.
Not gone—as in missing. He saw her status flick online occasionally. He saw her forwarded assignments. Once, Sophie even visited her house and came back pale, saying Alice's room looked like a command center built out of panic and obsession.
"She has three laptops open," Sophie whispered that day. "Two monitors. Papers everywhere. And she looks like she hasn't slept in four days."
But when Adam asked if she'd said anything—anything at all—Sophie just shook her head.
"She didn't even look at me. She just said she was 'busy.'"
After that, Sophie stopped checking.
So the days passed.
Then the weeks.
And Adam was left alone with the silence.
---
He sat in the cafeteria one afternoon, staring at the empty seat across from him—the one Alice had always taken without asking. She used to sit there with her laptop open, hair tied up messily, talking through her ideas so fast he rarely had the time to understand the first half. She'd shove half-eaten sandwiches his way, forget to drink water for six hours straight, and argue with him about file pathway logic until people stared.
Now that seat stayed empty.
Untouched.
Cold.
"Missing her?"
Sophie dropped into the chair beside him, folding her arms on the table. She looked tired. Everyone did, these days.
Adam didn't answer at first.
Sophie exhaled. "You're not good at pretending. You know that, right?"
"I'm not pretending," he said.
"Yes, you are. You're pretending you're not worried. Pretending you're not thinking about her every second. Pretending you're not scared."
Adam looked away. "She asked for space."
"No," Sophie said quietly. "She asked for distance. Not space. There's a difference."
He didn't have a reply to that.
Sophie nudged her tray forward. "I got her notes from lab. I can send them to her—"
"No," Adam interrupted.
Sophie raised an eyebrow. "No?"
"She'll think we're checking on her. She'll shut us out harder."
Sophie studied him for a few seconds. "You're really falling into this, aren't you?"
He looked up sharply. "Into what?"
"Her world," Sophie said softly. "The paranoia. The secrecy. The obsession."
Adam almost laughed. "You think I want this?"
"I think," Sophie said, "that you're more connected to that file than you're willing to admit."
He didn't want to talk about that. Not today.
So he said nothing. And Sophie didn't push further.
She rarely did.
---
A week turned into two.
Two into three.
By the fourth week, Adam had memorized the schedule of all the classes Alice used to take. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because some part of him hoped she'd show up again in one of them, hair messier than usual, eyes sharp and stubborn, acting like nothing had happened.
She didn't.
He checked the robotics club every day.
Her workstation gathered dust.
The half-finished firmware project she'd been building sat exactly where she left it—paused mid-compile, like it was waiting for her to return.
On the fifteenth day, he stopped expecting to see her.
On the twentieth, he stopped trying.
But he never stopped thinking.
---
The memory flashes got worse.
It started as flickers—soft, quick, like static across his mind. A flash of metal. A dim room. A cold white ceiling. The sound of something dripping. He'd close his eyes and feel weight in his limbs, like restraints. He'd wake from dreams feeling like someone had said his name from far away.
A13.
The fragment from the deleted file replayed in his head like an echo he couldn't silence.
SUBJECT: Δ–A13
The more he tried to ignore it, the louder it became.
Sometimes, in class, he'd lose track of the lecture for entire minutes. His vision would flicker. He'd blink, and the world would skip a frame. No one else noticed—but he did.
He stopped mentioning it to Sophie.
She already watched him with worry she tried to hide.
He didn't want to make it worse.
---
On a Thursday afternoon—day twenty-six since Alice vanished into the rabbit hole—Adam sat alone on the steps behind the engineering block. The sun was setting, painting the windows orange. Students walked past, laughing, talking, living.
He watched them without really seeing them.
His phone buzzed.
He didn't expect it to be her.
He'd stopped expecting days ago.
He glanced down—
ALICE (calling)
His heart punched once—swift, painful.
He stared at the screen, almost afraid touching it would make it disappear.
The phone kept vibrating.
He answered.
"Adam?"
Her voice was small.
So small.
He froze.
"Alice?"
A shaky exhale crackled through the speaker. Not a sigh—an exhale like she'd been holding her breath for too long.
"I found something," she whispered.
His fingers tightened around the phone. "Alice—where have you been? Are you okay?"
"No," she said. "I'm not."
And something inside him went cold.
"What happened?"
Silence.
He could hear her breathing. Unsteady. Not like her at all.
"Alice," he said gently. "Talk to me."
"It's not—" Her voice cracked. She paused. When she spoke again, she was forcing the words out. "Adam, I didn't just find fragments. I found… connections."
"To the file?" he asked.
"No," she said. "To you."
His heart stopped.
"Alice—"
"We were right," she whispered. "It wasn't a system glitch. It wasn't coincidence. That file reacted to you because you're part of it."
Adam swallowed hard. "Alice… slow down."
"It took me three weeks," she said. "Three weeks of decrypting, tracing patterns, rebuilding corrupted data from the logs. I didn't sleep. I barely ate. I—I couldn't stop. Every time I tried, I kept thinking about the lockdown. About the way that system responded like it knew you."
He didn't speak.
"I found layered metadata hidden behind the purge protocols," she said, voice trembling. "Deep-level. It's not supposed to exist. It shouldn't exist."
"What did it say?"
Another silence.
Then—
"A13 isn't a file identifier."
Adam's stomach tightened.
"It's a designation," Alice whispered. "A subject number."
The world seemed to tilt.
"And 'Δ' isn't a symbol," she continued. "It's a classification group. Adam… you're not just connected to the project." She inhaled a sharp breath, like she was trying not to fall apart. "You were part of it."
He couldn't breathe for a moment.
"That can't be right," he said quietly. "I would know. I would remember."
"No," she said. "You wouldn't."
"What does that mean?"
Her breath hitched. He heard it. Felt it.
"I think your memories were altered."
The words slammed into him like a hit.
Impossible. Absurd.
And yet—
His dreams.
His flickers.
The flashes of metal.
The ceiling.
The restraints.
The cold.
The voice calling his name from far away.
His chest tightened. His hands began to shake.
"Alice," he whispered, "tell me you're not guessing."
"I'm not," she said. "Adam, I'm so sorry."
He closed his eyes.
"What else did you find?"
"I can't explain it over the phone," she said. "It's too much. Too big. And…" She hesitated. "I think someone's been monitoring me."
His eyes snapped open.
"What?"
"There were attempts to access my network. External pings. Someone trying to track the data fragments I was reconstructing. I had to move everything offline. Secure drives only."
Fear pricked down his spine. "Alice—why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want to put you in danger," she said. "Not until I was sure."
"And now?"
"And now," she whispered, "I'm sure."
Wind rustled through the courtyard.
A bird screeched in the distance.
The world kept moving even as his froze.
"Where are you?" Adam asked.
"Not at home," she said. "Not anywhere they'd expect."
"They?"
"Whoever ran Project RKHN," she said. "Or whoever inherited it."
He stood up slowly. "Alice, listen to me. You need to come somewhere safe."
"No." Her voice hardened. "You need to come to me."
He blinked. "What? Why?"
"Because the answers aren't in the system anymore," she said. "They're inside you."
He didn't know what to say.
She inhaled shakily. "I know you don't understand yet. But I found something, Adam. Something I wasn't supposed to find. Something nobody was supposed to find."
"Alice—"
"Please," she whispered. "Come. Tonight."
His breath caught. "Where?"
Another moment of silence.
Then she spoke, barely audible:
"The old physics annex. Basement level. Room B-12."
Adam frowned. "That place is sealed."
"I know," she said. "I unsealed it."
He stared at nothing.
"You broke in?"
"I had to," she said. "That room… Adam, it's connected to the project. And to you."
A cold weight settled in his gut.
"Come now," she whispered. "Before they know I found it."
"Alice—are you being followed?"
"I don't know," she said. "But I know one thing."
"What?"
"They're going to come looking for you next."
His entire body stilled.
"Adam," she said softly, voice trembling in a way he'd never heard before, "please. Hurry."
And then she ended the call.
The screen went dark.
Adam stood on the steps, breath shaking, heart hammering.
The campus buzzed around him—normal, ignorant, unaware. But he felt it now, stronger than ever:
Something was moving behind the scenes.
Something watching.
Something waiting.
He pocketed his phone.
And then he started moving—fast.
Toward the annex.
Toward the truth.
Toward Alice.
Toward whatever waited for him in Room B-12.