They didn't wait for the countdown to reach zero. Misaki grabbed Kaito's wrist, yanked him down the dark stairwell, and slammed the emergency override on the rusted control panel beside the wall. It sparked and let out a sharp hiss, then the door sealed behind them with a grinding metallic screech. No digital lock. No sensor. Just dead bolts and steel. Old world protection. Analog, like him. For a few seconds, the darkness pressed in on all sides. No interface. No way out. No backup.
"I thought you said this place was sealed," Kaito whispered.
"It was," Misaki said. "But sealed doesn't mean gone. The system can't delete everything—it just pretends old code doesn't exist."
Their footsteps echoed as they walked downward. No lights, only a faint glow from the red emergency stripe running along the edge of the walls, pulsing every few seconds like a dying heartbeat. The air was heavy with dust and the faint scent of burned plastic. Somewhere far below, a mechanical hum stirred—deep, low, and barely audible, like a forgotten machine waking up.
"How far down does this go?" Kaito asked.
"Far enough to not show up on any floor plans," Misaki replied. "This isn't a staircase. It's a partitioned access route. Built before the school got fully integrated."
Kaito reached out to the wall. It was cold, solid metal. No projections. No flickering. No lies.
For once, it felt honest.
They walked in silence until they reached a locked gate. Misaki pulled a card from her sleeve—cracked, dusty, and barely functional. "Got this from the archive room. Before they restructured everything."
She tapped the lock. Nothing.
She hit it again. Still nothing.
Kaito stepped forward. "Try giving it something it doesn't expect."
He grabbed the metal and twisted the gate just slightly off its hinges. It groaned, resisted, and then—
Click.
The lock disengaged.
Misaki blinked. "That's not how that's supposed to work."
Kaito shrugged. "Guess I'm still a glitch."
They stepped through.
The hallway beyond looked impossible.
It stretched far too long for the building's foundation. The walls bent slightly inward like they were curving into a tunnel, and everything—floor, ceiling, even the air—had a strange shimmer to it. Not like digital projection. Not visual noise. But more like reality trying to correct itself and failing.
"What is this place?" Kaito whispered.
"A memory," Misaki said.
Before he could ask what she meant, the walls pulsed. Lights flickered. Then the hallway spoke.
Not through speakers. Through the air itself.
"Anomaly recognized. Corridor access is unauthorized."
Kaito froze. "It knows we're here."
Misaki nodded. "This isn't a physical space. Not entirely. We crossed into something between hard infrastructure and system architecture."
"You mean this place is… both real and not?"
"It's a glitch zone. A faultline. The system tried to erase it but couldn't. So it buried it in overlapping permissions and blocked navigation calls."
A loud thunk echoed behind them.
The gate had vanished.
Not closed. Not locked.
Gone.
In its place was solid wall.
Kaito's voice was a whisper now. "It's trapping us."
"Or trying to learn us," Misaki said.
He turned to her. "What does it want?"
She looked at him, her eyes darker than ever. "It doesn't know. That's the problem."
Another hum grew louder. This time from the end of the hallway.
A light flickered.
And then, from the far end of the corridor, something stepped forward.
Not a person.
Not a Hunter.
Something between code and flesh.
It shimmered, flickering in and out of resolution, like it had been pulled from corrupted memory—cloaked in half-rendered data, with a face made of thousands of unfinished identities. It spoke in overlapping voices.
"Kaito Arasaka. Do you remember what you were before the update?"
Kaito stepped back.
"No," he said.
The thing moved closer.
"Then let us help you remember."