"The System does not require heroes. It seeks only compliant variables to maintain the stability of the hell they have engineered."
Salim Nur Hidayah stood like a frozen statue on the third-floor balcony of Dormitory Building B. The storm on Island 0 was not merely rain; it was a physical assault. The gale-force winds whipped across the desolate landscape, turning his SMA Rajawali high school uniform—already stained with the grime of five days of survival—into a heavy, frigid second skin.
Below him, nestled within the jagged ruins of concrete and rusted rebar that defined the Dead City, death was no longer an abstract concept. It was a series of crawling red dots on Rehan's tablet screen, moving with predatory intent.
"Lim... they're inside. They've breached the ground floor."
The voice crackled through the walkie-talkie clipped to Salim's pocket. It was Rizki. His voice was unnervingly calm, a forced composure that couldn't quite mask the underlying tremor of primal terror. Beside him, Dani was likely gripping his weapon, breath hitching in his throat. They were stationed at the primary pillars of Building C, acting as the ultimate bait—the tether meant to draw Nadia's entire 'Puppet Alliance' into a single, fatal kill zone.
Salim didn't respond. His thumb, blue-tinted from the cold and trembling slightly, swiped across the tablet's cracked glass. In his mind, the architecture of Building C had ceased to be a physical structure. It had transformed into a complex web of force vectors, load-bearing points, and structural vulnerabilities. He wasn't looking at a building; he was looking at a math problem.
"Pillar 3 and Pillar 4... they are the fulcrums," Salim whispered into the roaring wind. His voice was a dry rasp, cracked by dehydration and the sheer exhaustion of five sleepless nights in this cursed purgatory.
Suddenly, a familiar, agonizing sensation surged through his veins.
It started at the base of his neck—a piercing, icy needle-prick that rapidly expanded. It felt as if thousands of microscopic shards of liquid nitrogen were swimming through his bloodstream. These were the Nano-Machines, the 'stabilizers' injected into every student upon arrival, now reacting to the spike in Salim's adrenaline.
The machines began their work, systematically numbing his neural pathways. They targeted the amygdala, suppressing the limbic system, and effectively muting his emotional response. His fear didn't vanish; it was simply overwritten by raw, cold logic.
Humanity is a disruptive variable, a mechanical, genderless voice seemed to echo within the recesses of his mind.
"Lim! Do it now! They're swarming the basement entrance!" Dani's voice screamed through the radio, stripped of all pretense of calm. "Hurry, Lim! I don't want to get torn apart by these psychos!"
Salim stared at the copper wires protruding from the makeshift detonator in his hand. The wires led to thermite charges strapped to the pillars of the opposite building. If he touched those wires together now, the temperature would soar to 2,500 degrees Celsius in less than three seconds. Steel would liquefy. Reinforced concrete would surrender to the relentless pull of gravity. The entire structure would undergo a controlled collapse, burying the alliance under thousands of tons of pulverized stone.
And it would bury his two best friends along with them.
"Based on the reclaimed land data..." Salim began to murmur, his eyes becoming hollow and glazed. He was no longer looking at the world, but at the scrolling algorithms in his mental theater. "The friction coefficient of the soil beneath Pillar 1 is unstable. If the collapse tilts toward Pillar 3 at an angle exceeding fifteen degrees, there is a 92% probability of a secondary sinkhole at Pillar 1. And Rizki... Dani... you are currently standing in the projected safety zone of Pillar 1."
"Lim? What are you talking about?! Speak clearly!" Rizki's voice was frantic now.
"The probability of your survival..." Salim paused. A single, hot tear escaped his eye and landed on the tablet, only to be instantly swept away by the wind. "It is 0.08%. Almost absolute zero."
"Salim! Don't joke around! We agreed Pillar 1 was the safe zone!" Dani shrieked, the sound of breaking glass and distant gunfire echoing behind his voice.
Salim closed his eyes. The icy sensation in his blood had reached his heart. The Nano-Machines were releasing a high-potency sedative, specifically designed to eliminate hesitation. His grief evaporated. His sorrow became nothing more than insignificant data points.
Their shared history—the late-night study sessions, the laughter over fried snacks at the school canteen, the solemn promise that all of them would graduate together—all of it was flagged by the system as 'Corrupted Data.' It had to be deleted so the system could reach the most efficient solution.
"I'm sorry," Salim whispered, his voice as cold as the rain. "Mathematics never lies. Only humans do."
Without a shred of further hesitation, he pressed the copper wires together.
ZAP!
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath. Then, the night was torn asunder.
From across the void, the central pillars of Building C ignited with a blinding, ethereal orange glow—the terrifying beauty of a thermite reaction. A high-pitched hiss, like a thousand enraged vipers, sliced through the storm, followed immediately by the soul-jarring groan of shifting tectonic plates.
The building didn't just fall; it surrendered.
Floor after floor pancaked onto one another, creating a deafening rhythm of destruction that vibrated in Salim's very marrow. A colossal plume of cement dust and pulverized drywall billowed into the dark sky, swallowing the screams of Dani and Rizki before they could even finish their final pleas.
A translucent blue window flickered into existence before Salim's eyes.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: MASS ELIMINATION DETECTED]
[TARGETS ELIMINATED:]
GROUP 17 (Rizki Pratama, Dani Hermawan, Toto Suharto) – STATUS: WIPED OUT.
GROUP 28 (Khairuddin, Bagaskara, Siti Rara)
GROUP 40 (Annisa, Radya Aditya, Raden Putra)
GROUP 09 (Runa Sasmaya, Aji Saputra, Farhan Gunawan, Fitriani)
GROUP 39 (Siroj Udin, Khair Anam, Salimah Husna, Rhea Susanti)
GROUP 08 (Sayyid Saabiq, Fahraz Alfarisi, Farhan Abdurrahim, Syamsu)
GROUP 38 (Widhi Dimas, Mahfud Hadi, Nining Surini)
[TOTAL REWARD POINTS:]
Alliance Takedown: 10,500 pts
Mass Elimination Bonus: 5,000 pts
Residual Points (Group 17): 3,000 pts
[GROUP 27 CURRENT BALANCE: 35,400 POINTS]
Salim stood motionless on the edge of the balcony. He didn't scream. He didn't weep. He simply watched the smoking ruin that had become a mass grave with the detached gaze of an executioner who had merely finished his shift.
"Total points: 35,400," Salim muttered, his mind instantly allocating the resources. "Sufficient to purchase Udin's antibiotics, three weeks of rations for Alya, and a path forward for Salma. The death of two... for the survival of four others. Efficiency: 66.7%."
He turned away from the ledge, his steps heavy, as if he were dragging the invisible corpses of his friends behind him. His sleeve caught on something—a frayed prusik bracelet, a gift from Maya back when the world was still sane. He stared at the cheap string.
Salim realized then that this system would never stop until they were all reduced to nothing but dead integers. If he wanted to break the cycle, he could no longer afford to be a victim, or even a survivor. He had to become a predator more calculating, more ruthless, and colder than the machine itself.
How to kill an unjust system?
He looked at his hands, stained with soot and the ghost of his friends' blood.
You become the error the system cannot calculate.