[Minako – Evening, Alone]
She'd packed light.
Phone. Portable charger. Notebook. Knife.(Just in case.)
She stood at the edge of the alley she'd seen him disappear into once before.
The sun was setting, but she didn't plan to wait long.
Tomorrow, she'd follow him again.
But this time—fully prepared.
No half-measures.No uncertain stares from the window.
She'd mapped the cameras.
She'd run signal analysis in the area.
And there was a dead zone—right where he vanished.
No signal. No sound. No thermal residue.
It wasn't tech.
It wasn't human.
Whatever Ren Everhart was hiding, she was going to walk into it.
Eyes open.
Heart steady.
And if it killed her?
At least she'd know.
[Ren – The Empire, Surveillance Core]
It began with the softest vibration.
Not from the earth.Not from the air.
But from the thread of my bag.
Foreign signal detected. Passive GPS ping. Activated 17:42.Origin: Airi's location history. Confirmed.
I stared at the blinking red dot in the air in front of me—holographic, projected by my internal dimensional interface. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
She placed a tracker on me.
Clever.
Sloppy.
Predictable.
The system was already scrubbing the path it recorded. The fake trail would lead her into a long-abandoned corridor beneath an old hospital. Full of nothing but silence and echoes.
Let her follow it. Let her feel bold.
Let her feel like she was winning.
Secondary alert: External movement pattern tracking. ID: Minako.Proximity algorithms indicate intent to follow. Projected time: 08:12 tomorrow.
So.
One watches from within.One moves from without.
And me?
I simply watch back.
I stood.
The lights around me dimmed as I walked through the corridor of the Nexus Chamber, voices of the AI system whispering silently along the walls.
"Create a blind spot," I ordered. "One corridor. Near sub-sector 07."
Confirmed.
"Inject false visuals. One locked door. Dim lighting. Fragments of truth. Enough to make her curious."
Illusion arrays activated.
"And if she enters?"
I smiled faintly.
"Let her see just enough."
They wanted truth?
I would give them pieces.
No lies.
Just shaped honesty.
The kind that traps.
The kind that binds.
[POV: Airi]
The signal hadn't moved in hours.
That alone was suspicious. Ren never stayed in one place too long—he was too precise, too elusive. But the tracker showed a consistent dot hovering beneath an abandoned hospital on the edge of the city. Not in it. Beneath it.
She stood there now, facing the cracked facade of the crumbling building as the last threads of sunlight bled into the dusk. The street was empty, the wind sharp, and the air had a taste she didn't like—metallic, humming with something just beneath hearing.
Was it fear?
Or something older?
Airi tightened her coat and stepped inside.
The hospital groaned with every footstep. Her shoes crunched glass. Moonlight streamed through broken windows and jagged holes in the ceiling.
But what struck her most was the silence.
Not the silence of an abandoned place.
The silence of a waiting place.
She descended the stairs to the basement, one slow step at a time. Her flashlight shook faintly in her grip.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound wasn't hers. She froze.
No echo. No wind.
Just a distant pulse, like something alive.
The tracker led her to a corner of the lowest floor, where a rusted gurney lay collapsed in dust. Behind it was a wall—and behind the wall, according to the signal, Ren.
She approached slowly.
There was a shimmer. A flicker of heat in the air.
Not visible.
Felt.
Then the wall... shifted. Not opened. Just uncoiled, like something had been pretending to be solid. A narrow hallway stretched beyond it. Dim lights buzzed in unnatural hues.
This wasn't human-made.
Airi stepped inside.
The corridor wasn't right.
It was too long. The depth of it shifted subtly when she blinked, like it breathed. Walls flickered with images that weren't hers—shadows of figures walking, then disappearing. The lights didn't brighten or fade. They watched.
The air was warm here. Alive.
She continued walking.
Something like wind brushed her cheek, but her hair didn't move.
She touched the wall.
It pulsed faintly.
Alive.
Every instinct screamed at her to run.
But something else beneath her fear—beneath the racing heart and clenching throat—
Was awe.
Whatever this was, it wasn't a drug lab.
It wasn't a bunker.
It wasn't even technology in the normal sense.
It was...
Built with something deeper.
Language.
Will.
Ren.
She could feel him here, in the shape of the place. This wasn't something he found.
This was something he made.
And suddenly, the lie he lived above—the soft smiles, the gentle voice, the shy glances—felt like the real illusion.
Because whoever made this...
Was not human.
Airi reached the final door.
It was shaped like a blade point-down, embedded in the floor.
Her hands trembled as she reached for it.
But the moment her fingers touched the surface—
It vanished.
In its place, only a small screen remained.
Her name appeared on it.
AIRI YAMASAKI: UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.
QUERY: WHY HAVE YOU COME?
She stood there.
Breathing.
Heart hammering.
Then whispered:
"Because... I want to know who he really is."
The screen paused.
Then blinked once.
And the hallway collapsed.
Airi screamed.