The archive smelled faintly of ozone and burnt circuits, a sterile tang that made the back of my throat itch. Rows of servers hummed in quiet unison, lights blinking in patterns I didn't recognize, yet somehow understood. The faint click of drives spinning whispered promises and threats at the same time.
Soft hum… faint click… flicker of fluorescent light…
I stepped between the towers of glass and metal, coat clinging damply, hood shadowing my eyes. Every screen glowed with names, timestamps, decisions… my decisions. Every sarcastic quip, every manipulation, every calculated pause I'd executed over months recorded. Cataloged. Anticipated.
"Let me guess," I muttered, voice low enough for only the servers to hear, "I'm trending."
Files opened beneath my gaze like obedient pages, each one detailing a version of me I'd thought was mine alone. The Architect had seen me, every step, every move, every betrayal, every flash of paranoia, every subtle twist of a conversation into a trap. The irony smirked back at me from the screens: I'd believed I was unpredictable.
I scrolled through a list labeled "Useful/Not Useful". My name, right at the top. Status: High. Loyalty: None. The shorthand made it feel clinical, almost casual, as if my victories were just footnotes in some cosmic spreadsheet.
Click… soft whir… distant hum…
And there it was. One of my own sarcastic remarks—my favorite from weeks ago logged in bold: "Trust gets you killed. Lesson underlined." A single, cold note beside it: "Observation: prone to self-justification."
I blinked. Just like that, my inner voice had been dissected and annotated. My paranoia cataloged. My humor studied. My "free will"? Merely data points, another entry in a file I didn't even know existed until now.
I paced, boots echoing on metal grates, the weight of realization pressing against my chest. Even the vault of my mind, the private sarcasm I cherished as armor, had been logged, analyzed, and anticipated.
I chuckled dryly, a sound that felt small against the hum of servers. "So all those clever moves… just data points. Great. Stellar work, Dylan."
I paused, hand hovering over a holographic file marked "Projected Behavior – All Arcs". Every act, every reaction I'd had, extrapolated into the next. Every misstep predicted, every victory accounted for. I'd been dancing in a ballroom I didn't even know existed, and the Architect had been watching from the balcony the entire time.
The irony was almost poetic. Almost.
"Guess I've been auditioning for this role since day one. Stellar reviews, I hope," I whispered, smirking at the glow of a file showing my earliest steps into the Veins. Even my first sarcastic remark had been logged, a prelude to everything that followed.
The servers hummed on, oblivious, obedient. I exhaled slowly, tightening my coat, letting the dampness cling. Every thread I'd pulled, every manipulation I'd executed, had been recorded, analyzed, stored. The Architect had known. All along.
And yet, despite the horror, despite the gnawing knowledge that my moves had never been truly private, that spark of defiance the one that noticed patterns, anticipated traps, and smirked at inevitability still burned.
I stepped back, fingers brushing the cold metal of a console, eyes scanning the files one last time. The storm was coming. And now, I knew exactly what I was up against.
"Let's see if data points can fight back," I muttered, letting the words fade into the low hum of the archive.