The medical wing was having what could generously be called an existential crisis.
Where Aiden had vanished, reality still bore the scars—a roughly human-shaped impression in space that flickered between existing and not. Medical equipment continued reconfiguring itself according to parameters that made the staff question their sanity. A heart monitor was now tracking the pulse of mathematics itself. An IV stand had achieved sentience and was writing poetry in binary on the walls.
"Everyone out! NOW!" Chief Medical Officer Brennan shouted, herding panicked staff toward the exits as a surgical laser began performing interpretive dance. "Containment Protocol Seven!"
But containment was a joke. The digital corruption—because what else could you call it—was spreading. Cracks of pure data spiraled across walls like luminous vines, each one pulsing with information that hurt to perceive directly. Where they touched electronic devices, those devices... evolved. Became something more than their original purpose.
A security terminal started displaying everyone's embarrassing medical histories in haiku form.
A coffee machine achieved enlightenment and refused to serve anything but philosophical questions.
The emergency lighting system began morse-coding what might have been jokes, if jokes could cause existential dread.
"What did he do?" a junior medic whispered, watching her datapad spontaneously rewrite its operating system into something that looked like DNA.
On the walls, a message wrote itself in letters that shifted between languages, some human, some definitely not:
**PHASE TWO: INTEGRATION EXPANDING**
**CURRENT HOSTS: 1**
**POTENTIAL HOSTS: ∞**
**THE GAME HAS NO BORDERS**
---
Three floors up, Lucas Drake stood in what remained of the security center, every muscle tense as he focused on something nobody else could feel. His energy gauntlets flickered in patterns that matched no technique, responding to stimuli that existed beyond normal perception.
"He's still here," Lucas said, eyes closed, reaching out with senses that his family had spent generations refining. "Not physically, but... his Resonance. It's everywhere. In the walls, in the air, in the damn data streams."
"That's impossible," Security Chief Martinez said, though his voice suggested he'd given up on impossible having any meaning. "Resonance can't exist without a physical host."
Lucas opened his eyes, and they blazed with something between excitement and obsession. "He's not following the rules anymore. He IS the rules now. Or he's rewriting them. Either way..." His smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "I'm going to find him. I'm going to drag him back. And we're going to finish what we started."
"You want to fight something that might not even be human anymore?" Martinez asked.
"Especially because he might not be human anymore," Lucas corrected. "Do you understand how boring it is being the strongest? How mind-numbing it is knowing you'll win before the fight even starts?" His gauntlets flared brighter. "Cross took that away. He made me WORK for it. I'm not letting that go."
---
In her private lab, Mira Hale stood surrounded by holographic displays showing data that would have made lesser minds weep. Energy patterns, probability matrices, quantum signatures that suggested reality had developed opinions about what was and wasn't allowed.
"Fascinating," she murmured, silver eyes tracking patterns that others would have dismissed as chaos. "He's not confined to physical space anymore. The System integration didn't just enhance him—it translated him. He exists as both matter and information simultaneously."
Her assistant, a graduate student who'd thought he was smart until he met Mira, looked lost. "That's not possible. The human consciousness can't—"
"The HUMAN consciousness can't," Mira interrupted. "But Cross isn't entirely human anymore, is he? He's become something new. A hybrid of flesh and data, existing in the spaces between what we call reality and what we call virtual."
She pulled up a three-dimensional model that hurt to look at directly—a representation of Aiden's new existence that required mathematics that hadn't been invented yet.
"He's learning to manipulate the System itself. Not just his System—THE System. The underlying code that governs how Resonance works, how the academy's technology functions, possibly how reality processes information at a quantum level."
The assistant looked terrified. "That sounds like—"
"A god in the machine?" Mira smiled, and it was the kind of smile that suggested she found the prospect intellectually delicious rather than terrifying. "Or perhaps a virus in reality's operating system. Either way, absolutely worth studying."
---
Meanwhile, Jay had set up an impromptu streaming studio in a supply closet, because if the world was ending, he was going to monetize it.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE CROSS DISAPPEARANCE SPECIAL!" He shouted at his camera, which was somehow still functioning despite the digital chaos spreading through the academy. "Did our boy Aiden just go interstellar? Has he achieved digital transcendence? Is he currently existing as a probability wave function? PLACE YOUR BETS NOW!"
His streaming overlay showed rapidly climbing viewer counts and donation notifications that suggested people found existential crisis entertaining as long as it had good production values.
"Current theories from the chat," Jay continued, reading his screen. "ThunderKnight69 thinks Aiden merged with an alien consciousness. BionicBunny suggests he's traveled back in time to prevent his own birth. And xXShadowMasterXx claims—and I quote—'he's obviously become the friends we made along the way.' Deeply philosophical, Shadow."
A notification popped up: **NEW DONATION - 10,000 CREDITS - "Is he watching us right now?"**
Jay laughed. "If you're watching, Aiden, please know that I'm selling 'I Survived the Cross Catastrophe' merchandise, and you're getting zero percent of the profits because you VANISHED INTO THE QUANTUM FOAM!"
His camera flickered. For just a moment, the stream showed something else—a view of Jay from impossible angles, as if reality had developed more dimensions than the usual three. Then it snapped back to normal.
"...Okay, that was creepy," Jay admitted. "But creepy means views, so keep it coming!"
---
The first reports started coming in an hour after Aiden's disappearance.
A freshman in Dorm Block C suddenly manifested abilities she'd never had before—her Integration percentage jumping from 45% to 78% in seconds. She claimed she'd seen Aiden in her terminal screen, made of light and data, smiling before disappearing.
A senior found his personal workstation rewriting his combat algorithms, optimizing them in ways that shouldn't have been possible. The new code was signed with a smiley face made of ones and zeros.
Three students in the library reported simultaneous visions of the System World—that space between digital and dimensional that Aiden had seen in his coma. They came back changed, speaking in probabilities instead of certainties, their Resonance signatures fluctuating in patterns that matched no known configuration.
"He's spreading," Director Hale said, watching the reports pile up in the emergency command center. "Like a virus. Or..." She paused, considering. "Like an upgrade. He's forcibly evolving others through proximity to his data signature."
"We need to contain this," someone suggested.
Director Hale laughed, a sound with no humor in it. "Contain something that exists partially as information? We might as well try to contain mathematics itself."
---
It was Lucas who noticed it first—every holoscreen in the academy flickering simultaneously. The lights dimmed, not failing but focusing, as if reality itself was paying attention.
Mira looked up from her analysis, silver eyes widening as she recognized the pattern. "He's using the entire academy network as a transmission medium."
Jay's stream cut to static, then resolved into something else entirely. Every display, every screen, every holographic projector in the academy showed the same thing:
A simple message, written in letters that seemed to exist in more dimensions than they should:
**"Want to play?"**
Below it, three options appeared like the world's most ominous menu screen:
**[YES]**
**[NO]**
**[YOU DON'T HAVE A CHOICE]**
Lucas's laugh echoed through the security center—not desperate or afraid, but genuinely delighted. "He's taunting us. He's literally turned reality into his game interface."
Mira's fingers flew across her displays, trying to trace the signal's origin. "It's not coming from anywhere. It's coming from everywhere. He's distributed across the entire network, existing in parallel across thousands of systems."
Jay, never one to miss an opportunity, pointed his camera at the message. "FOLKS, THIS IS HISTORIC! Our boy Aiden has apparently become the universe's most extra system administrator! The chat wants to know—should we click YES?"
The message pulsed, waiting.
Around the academy, students and staff stood frozen, staring at displays that had become windows into something beyond their understanding. Some were terrified. Some were fascinated. Some, like Lucas, were thrilled.
But everyone understood one thing:
Aiden Cross wasn't gone.
He'd just learned how to be everywhere at once.
The message shifted, adding one more line:
**"Time's ticking. The real tutorial starts in 60 seconds."**
A countdown appeared.
59... 58... 57...
"He's not asking," Mira realized, her voice carrying a mix of fear and academic excitement. "He's announcing. Whatever Phase Two really is—"
"It's about to include everyone," Lucas finished, his energy gauntlets blazing with anticipation.
The countdown continued.
The academy held its breath.
And somewhere between the digital and the real, between existence and information, Aiden Cross smiled.
The game was just beginning.