POV: Meher
I don't scream while falling.Mostly because I'm too busy trying to figure out which direction screaming would even go in.
This isn't normal gravity.This is… faulty gravity.Like someone programmed physics on a Monday morning before coffee and forgot to debug.
We tumble through a corridor of—I don't know—glitching dark?Broken light?A slideshow of memories that aren't ours flickering like expired ads?
Avni's fingers clamp around my wrist.Kiyan grabs her jacket.Nivaan clutches Kiyan's shoulder.We're a four-person human chain falling through an existential trash chute.
Somewhere above, Zareen's voice echoes like God is annoyed at us.
"PULL THEM BACK!"
Hard pass.
We hit something that feels like a floor but looks like… nothing.Just a blank matte-black surface stretching in every direction.A void with good interior design.
I push myself up, hands shaking.Kiyan wheezes.Avni is on her knees, scanning the emptiness like she expects an enemy to materialize from the IKEA catalog of horror.
Nivaan just sits there, breathing like someone shoved ice in his lungs.
I crawl to him."Nivaan? Talk to me."
His eyes flicker—literally flicker, like a corrupted frame.
"I think…" he swallows, "…we're inside something."
Inside what?
Before I ask, the space around us pulses.
A ripple moves across the black floor, like someone threw a pebble into a pond made of shadow.
Then a hum rises—low, vibrating, mechanical but alive.
Avni stands."This is a containment layer."
"A what?" I snap.
"An in-between," she says. "Not a physical location. More like… the buffer zone systems use to store corrupted data."
Kiyan looks around, horrified."So… are we the corrupted data?"
No one answers.
Because we all know the answer.
The air thickens.A wall of static sweeps across the void, pixels reorganizing themselves into a figure.
Not Zareen.
Not the faceless silhouettes.
Someone new.
A woman—mid 40s, severe posture, eyes sharp enough to dissect atoms.Black hair in a braid.Plain gray clothes.Clinical presence.
She looks more real than the space around her.
But her shadow glitches.Like she's only 70% downloaded.
Her voice is calm, smooth, terrifyingly rational.
"So. You escaped protocol."
I step in front of Nivaan without thinking."Who the hell are you?"
She tilts her head like she's assessing a faulty machine.
"I'm the architect."
Avni's breath catches."You're dead."
"Obviously not."
Kiyan whispers, "Guys, what's an architect—"
"The person who designed the neural infrastructure," Avni mutters."The memories. The conditioning. The implants. The entire… system."
The woman smiles thinly.
"Not designed. Corrected."
She looks directly at Nivaan.And something in the void tightens.
"Nivaan," she says like she's greeting a favorite experiment.
"You're not supposed to exist."
He freezes.
I grab his arm."You don't get to decide that."
The architect ignores me.Her tone stays soft, almost maternal.
"You woke up before your identity installation. That makes you… wrong."
My blood turns to fire.
"No," I spit."That makes him free."
Her smile fades.
"There is no freedom here. Only function."
She raises a hand.
The entire void trembles.
Avni shouts, "MOVE—"
But the floor splits beneath us—cracking into floating shards of nothingness.
Kiyan grabs my waist.Avni grabs Nivaan.The architect just watches, serene, as the space collapses into fractals of white and black.
Nivaan's voice cracks through the chaos:
"MEHER—DON'T—LET—GO—"
I cling to him with everything I have.
And then—
The void shatters.
And we fall again.
But this time,we're not falling alone.