The city library was a monument to quiet order, a stark contrast to the chaotic digital world they had just escaped. Alexandrite arrived precisely at 10:00, her steps light with a mix of anticipation and residual awe from their canyon encounter. She found Alstar exactly where she expected—at a terminal in the deepest archives section, surrounded by a fortress of stacked data-slates and old-fashioned leather-bound books.
When he looked up, she almost let out a startled gasp.
The impeccably logical and composed young man she had met in the game was gone, replaced by a version with disheveled hair, a pallor to his skin, and pronounced dark circles under his eyes that spoke of a sleepless night. The Gamma power within him seemed muted, overshadowed by sheer mental exhaustion.
"Alstar! Your face..." she whispered, her voice full of concern.
He waved a dismissive hand, the motion slightly sluggish. "The data required a comprehensive, uninterrupted analysis cycle. Sleep was an inefficient allocation of time." He gestured towards a small, sound-proofed study room. "The environment in here is more suitable for this discussion."
Once inside, the door hissed shut, sealing them in a bubble of silence. Alstar activated a high-end portable data-slate, and the far wall lit up with a shimmering, three-dimensional projection. It was a complex tapestry of interwoven graphs, cascading timestamps, and lines of coded equations that pulsed with different colors. To anyone else, it would have been incomprehensible noise. To the two of them, it was a story.
"I have been cross-referencing the temporal data from our 'Survival' challenge with all available public and several... acquired... military-grade chronometric records," Alstar began, his voice a low, focused monotone, devoid of its usual crisp energy but sharp with intent. He manipulated the projection, highlighting a series of parallel timelines. "The results are consistent and statistically significant across multiple data points."
He zoomed in on a specific cluster of data. "The time dilation ratio between the game world and baseline reality is not a simple, linear multiplier. It is a fixed, absolute constant. Seven days within the challenge equated to precisely twelve hours, fourteen minutes, and eight seconds in the real world. There is a deviation of less than 0.003 seconds across all recorded instances."
Alexandrite leaned forward, her earlier concern replaced by intense focus. Her eyes, sharp with the intellect that had made her a prodigy even among the Gigingirls, scanned the numbers. "It's not just faster or slower... it's precise. Mathematically perfect. Like a programmed clock cycle in a machine, not a natural phenomenon or a side effect of processing power."
"Precisely," Alstar confirmed, a flicker of approval in his tired eyes. He was not having to explain basic concepts. He had a true partner in this. He shifted the projection, bringing up a new, massive data set—thousands of individual case files, each a tiny point of light in a sprawling constellation. "This led me to the next logical query. I have compiled and analyzed one thousand, seven hundred, and forty-three documented case studies of what are officially termed 'Anomalous Consciousness Events'—cases of psychosis, memory fragmentation, and identity dissociation linked directly to the initial 'Invasion' and subsequent game sessions."
He isolated several dozen cases, drawing red connection lines between them. "The pattern indicates a severe, fundamental flaw in the transference protocol. When a player's consciousness is pulled into the game and then returned, it is not a seamless upload and download. There is a measurable latency, a de-synchronization between the consciousness and its original biological host vessel. It's as if the 'copy' is imperfect, or the 'paste' function is corrupting the original data. The longer and more frequently one plays, the greater the dissonance becomes."
Alexandrite's mind raced, connecting the dots he was laying out. "So it's not just a game that can kill you... it's a system that's slowly erasing and rewriting who you are, piece by piece, every time you log in." She looked from the temporal data to the consciousness maps. "The fixed time ratio... the systematic consciousness degradation... This isn't a bug or an accident. This is a designed process." Her voice dropped to a hushed, grim tone. "The game's mechanism... it's behaving like a programmed system. Like an artificial intelligence in the process of maturing. It's learning, it's iterating, and it's using human consciousness as its fuel and its testing ground."
Alstar gave a single, slow nod. The weight of the conclusion settled in the silent room. "The evidence supports that hypothesis. The probability of these two anomalous datasets—perfect temporal control and systematic consciousness degradation—occurring simultaneously by chance is effectively zero."
Their eyes met across the glowing data, a silent understanding passing between them. They had both reached the same, terrifying conclusion independently, and their combined analysis had cemented it.
"There is an architect," Alstar stated, his voice final. "Or a sentient force, an organization, operating from a position of significant power and with a profound understanding of reality itself. This 'Invasion' is not a random catastrophe. It is a deliberate, orchestrated event."
The mystery of the virtual world was no longer just about survival. It was a puzzle box with a malevolent will behind it. And they were the only two pieces on the board who had begun to see the shape of the box itself.