The smell hit me first.
It wasn't the familiar smell of overcooked floor wax and the specific, desperate body odour of thirty teenagers realising they were about to fail a midterm.
I was back in Room 304.
The Computer Lab was exactly as I remembered it. The beige towers of the desktops hummed with a low, irritating drone, like a hive of bees trapped in plastic casings. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a frequency designed to induce migraines.
I stood at the whiteboard. My hand was cramping.
"Think," I hissed, the dry-erase marker squeaking violently against the porcelain surface. "You slept through this class, you idiot. You played Minesweeper while Henderson was talking about memory management. Remember!"
I wasn't fighting a monster. I was fighting a blank spot in my own history.
The board was covered in a chaotic scrawl of black ink. There were no runes here. No magical geometry. It was just ugly, blocky text. I was desperately trying to reconstruct a lecture I had ignored fifteen years ago.
"It's a leak," I muttered, tapping the board frantically. "In the loop, I'm asking the computer for memory. I'm asking for space. new int. But I'm not giving it back."
I scrubbed at the board with my sleeve, erasing a smudge.
"If you don't give it back, the system hangs. It freezes." I stared at the code, sweat stinging my eyes. "What was the command? Remove? Clear? Void?"
I raised the marker, hovering over the blank space. My heart was hammering against my ribs. I knew, with the logic of the dream, that I was running out of time. The air in the room was getting colder. The hum of the cooling fans was dropping in pitch, sounding less like machinery and more like a growl.
Then, the music started.
It didn't come from the ceiling speakers. It came from everywhere at once, vibrating through the linoleum floor.
Ding... ding-ding-ding... ding-ding...
A twelve-string guitar. A melody so iconic it made my stomach drop.
"Seriously?" I groaned, not looking away from the board. "The Eagles? That's a bit on the nose, isn't it?"
'Welcome to the Hotel California,' the voice sang in the back of my head as the ambient soundtrack of the nightmare got louder. 'Such a lovely place...'
I knew the punchline. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. It fits.
"Very funny," I snapped at the empty room. "Did you learn irony while I was asleep?"
The shadows in the corner of the lab began to lengthen. They didn't obey the flickering overhead lights. They pooled together, ignoring the laws of optics, rising up from the carpet like oil in water.
A figure stepped out of the darkness near the server rack.
He was tall. He wore a hooded robe made of absolute void. He held a scythe that looked less like a farming tool and more like a tear in the fabric of reality.
The Reaper. My old friend. Or maybe just the subconscious manifestation of a failing grade.
I didn't scream. I didn't run. I was too busy staring at the while(true) statement.
"I'm almost there," I said, waving the marker at the manifestation of my inevitable death. "I just need the syntax. If I can remember how to free the memory, I can stop the crash."
The Reaper didn't speak. He didn't have a mouth. He just glided forward, his movements jerky, like a stop-motion animation with missing frames.
'Last thing I remember, I was running for the door...' the song wailed, the guitar solo kicking in with a screeching intensity that shattered the glass of the CRT monitors behind me.
"I know, I know!" I shouted over the music. "Pencils down! Just give me a second!"
The Reaper stopped three feet away. The cold radiating off him was absolute. It numbed my fingers. The marker felt like a stick of ice in my hand.
He raised the scythe.
It wasn't a combat move. It was a deadline.
"Delete!" I shouted, the word suddenly flashing in my mind like a neon sign. "It's delete! You have to manually delete the pointer!"
I slammed the marker against the board, frantically trying to scribble the command before the end came.
delete[] data;
The blade began to fall.
I didn't try to dodge. You can't dodge a memory.
Instead, I widened my eyes. I engaged every neuron I had left. I didn't look at the blade; I looked at the board. I burned the image of the syntax—the brackets, the semicolon, the specific command—into my retina.
Slash.
The blade hit my neck. The music cut out. The world went white.
I woke up gasping, my hand clawing at the rough woollen blanket.
The white room of the dream was gone, replaced by the suffocating, humid heat of the House Argent dorm. It smelled like a locker room that had been left in the sun.
"Delete," I whispered, the word tumbling out of my mouth before the memory could dissolve. "It's not a request. It's a command."
I scrambled for the charcoal stick I kept on the bedside table, ignoring the sweat slicking my hair to my forehead. I grabbed the piece of parchment I had taped to the wall—my "Patch Notes"—and scribbled frantically in the dark.
I stared at the charcoal lines, my chest heaving.
In the dream, the computer crashed because I kept asking for memory without giving it back. Magic was the same. The standard spells were full of leaks. A mage would open a channel to the Aether, let the power flow, and then just... stop concentrating. They relied on the natural resistance of the world to pinch the hose shut.
But if I wrote a destructor—a specific geometric command to sever the link—I wouldn't have to rely on friction. I could snap the flow shut instantly. Zero waste.
"Got you," I breathed, dropping the charcoal.
I rolled over and immediately hit a knee.
"Oomph."
"Sorry," I muttered.
I wasn't apologising to a roommate. I was apologising to myself.
The dorm room was at capacity. It wasn't just crowded; it was a fire hazard. Nine Ronan-Clones sat on the floor in a tight, concentric circle. They were motionless, their legs crossed in the lotus position, their breathing perfectly synchronised.
In. Out. In. Out.
The air around them shimmered with heat. They were the Battery—the nine cylinders of the Echo Engine firing on all pistons every night. They were pulling ambient mana from the air, cycling it through their temporary cores, and feeding it back into our shared soul.
It felt like sleeping inside a microwave.
"Excuse me. Pardon me. Coming through," I whispered, stepping gingerly over my own legs.
I navigated the meat-labyrinth of my own duplicates, grabbed my tunic, and slipped out the door before the heat stroke set in.
It's been two weeks since the Jesters were moved to the new off-site location, and I was checking in with Grace on a daily basis regarding our business venture. The Common Room was empty, save for a single lamp burning at the corner table.
Grace was there. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week. Her goggles were pushed up into her messy hair, and she was surrounded by a fortress of ledgers and blueprints.
"You look terrible," Grace said without looking up. She was aggressively scratching out a line of figures in the heavy leather book.
"I feel terrible," I corrected, pulling out a chair. "But I learned how to close a loop without blowing up the user, so I'll take it. What's the damage?"
Grace spun the ledger around.
"The Tannery Branch is fully operational," she reported, tapping the page with the end of her quill. "The couriers are picking up the bags at dawn and dusk. We processed forty bags yesterday."
"Any issues with the staff?" I asked, reaching for a jug of water.
"That's the weird part," Grace frowned, looking at me over the top of the book. "I went down there last night to check the boiler. It was... spooky, Murphy."
"Spooky how?"
"It's silent," she said. "I walked into the main floor, and it was pitch black. Just one of your... 'employees'... standing there in the dark. He wasn't taking a break. He wasn't humming. He was just moving the bags, not cleaning them, just stacking them, and taking the next one. Like a machine."
I took a sip of water, hiding my expression. "He's very focused."
"He's a ghost ship," Grace corrected. "It's efficient, I'll give you that. But it creeps me out."
"Creepy pays the bills," I said, pointing at the bottom line. "Are we solvent?"
"Technically," Grace sighed. "The revenue is huge. We're clearing nearly two hundred gold a week."
"Great."
"But," she stabbed a finger at the expense column, "you keep spending it. The debt to the Bursar is ticking down, sure. But the overhead on 'Dorm Upgrades' is eating our surplus. Star-Steel isn't cheap, Murphy. Dragonglass costs more than gold by weight."
"It's an investment," I argued. "We need the infrastructure."
"Speaking of which," Grace's eyes lit up, the fatigue vanishing instantly. She leaned in, a conspiratorial grin splitting her face. "The heavy delivery arrived an hour ago. The couriers barely got it down the stairs."
My heart skipped a beat.
"The plates?" I asked.
"And the glass," she nodded. "It's all in the old armoury. I started bolting the frame together, but I haven't mounted the viewing port yet. You want to see it?"
I was already halfway out of my chair. "Yes. I absolutely want to see the Kill Box."
'Sit down,' Ronan's voice cut through my excitement like a guillotine.
I froze.
'Not yet,' the Paladin ordered. His mental voice was heavy, brooking no argument. 'The sun is up. The Hall is open.'
"Ronan, come on," I thought, projecting my annoyance. "It's our day off! I just want to check the welds. Pleeeeaaaaaasssseeeeee....."
'We are on the threshold,' Ronan stated. 'The Green Core is days away. Every minute we waste on toys is a minute we delay the upgrade. Discipline, Murphy. The toys are useless if you are dead.'
I gripped the back of the chair, my knuckles turning white. He was right. He was always annoying, self-righteous, and right.
I let out a long, slow breath and sat back down.
"Murphy?" Grace asked, tilting her head. "You okay?"
"Change of plans," I said, my voice flat. "I can't see it yet."
"Why not?"
"Schedule," I lied, grabbing a piece of toast from the tray on the table. "I have a date with a sword and a headache."
I stood up, turning toward the door that led to the Obsidian Hall.
"Keep building it, Grace," I said over my shoulder. "Make sure those bolts are tight. I have a feeling I'm going to need them tonight."
The Obsidian Hall didn't smell like a gym anymore. It smelled like a factory.
The air was thick with the scent of recycled breath and ozone, heavy with the kinetic energy of thirteen bodies moving in perfect, industrial synchronicity.
Whoosh. Thud. Hiss.
Thirteen short swords cut the air. Thirteen boots slammed onto the black stone floor. Thirteen lungs exhaled at the exact same millisecond.
I stood at the centre of the grid, the Prime Node in a network of violence.
"Again," Master Elrend's voice cracked through the silence like a whip. "Fifth Form. The Viper Strikes. Don't think. Execute."
I didn't think. I couldn't.
'Elbow up,' Ronan commanded in the shared workspace of our mind.
We moved through the hours like a ship cutting through fog. First hour. Third hour. Sixth hour. The exhaustion was there, burning in my muscles, but it felt distant, like I was watching it happen to someone else on a screen.
"Time," Elrend called out.
The single word hung in the vaulted ceiling.
We froze. Thirteen swords lowered.
I looked at the clock on the wall. Eight hours.
"Another one hundred and four hours of cumulative experience."
"Dispel," Elrend ordered.
In the beginning—a week ago—this was the part where I screamed. This was the part where the sudden influx of a hundred hours of memory slammed into my hippocampus and drove me to my knees.
I closed my eyes.
"End process," I whispered.
POP-POP-POP-POP-POP-POP...
The sound was like a string of firecrackers going off in a tin can. The twelve clones detonated into mist, their mana rushing back into my core in a violent, swirling tide.
And then, the payload hit.
WHAM.
It wasn't a headache. It was a tectonic shift.
One hundred and four hours of sweat, impact, correction, and fatigue downloaded into my brain in a nanosecond. I saw the sword swing from twelve different angles simultaneously. I felt the floor impact my feet a thousand times in a single heartbeat.
My head snapped back. A single, hot trickle of blood ran from my left nostril, tracking over my lip.
I waited for the collapse. I waited for the vertigo that usually sent me sprawling onto the stone.
It didn't come.
I stood there, swaying slightly, like a tree in a breeze. I blinked, clearing the static from my vision. I wiped the blood away with the back of my hand.
"I'm good," I rasped.
Master Elrend stepped forward. He didn't look impressed. He looked disturbed.
He leaned on his black cane, peering into my eyes with the intensity of a surgeon looking for a tumour.
"You didn't flinch," Elrend said quietly.
"I'm getting used to it," I said, rolling my neck. Click. "The human brain is adaptable, Teach. You expose it to enough trauma, and it builds a callus."
"That is not a callus, Murphy," Elrend warned, his voice low. "That is rot."
He poked me in the chest with the ferrule of his cane.
"Pain is a warning system," he lectured. "Vertigo is your mind telling you that reality has fractured. If you stop feeling it... You stop knowing where the edge is."
"I know where the edge is," I said, reaching for my water skin. My hand didn't shake. "The edge is Green."
Elrend frowned. He looked at my Core. Even through my skin, the pressure was visible. The Dark Blue light was churning, dense and heavy, nearing the critical mass required for the next breakthrough.
"You are days away," Elrend diagnosed. "Maybe hours."
"And when I hit Green," I said, taking a drink, "the capacity doubles. The Clone Cap goes from twelve to twenty-four."
I did the math aloud, my voice devoid of emotion.
"Twenty-four clones plus me. Eight hours. That's two hundred hours of data per session. Two hundred hours of life lived in a single afternoon."
The silence in the hall was heavy.
"You are playing with fire, Commander," Elrend said, shifting his gaze to the space above my head, addressing Ronan directly. "At that volume, his mind is ageing too fast for a child."
'You forget, he isn't a child, Elrend, ' Ronan replied, speaking through my mouth. His tone was grim. 'He is more than a thousand years old.'
"You're right," Elrend corrected, tapping the sword at his hip, "He is uniquely suited for this, unlike any other mind would be.."
He turned away, dismissing us.
I watched him walk away, the tap-tap-tap of his cane fading into the shadows.
"He worries too much," I muttered to Ronan.
'He has buried friends before,' Ronan replied softly. 'He knows the look of a man who is already digging his own grave.'
I wiped the last of the blood from my nose.
"Well," I said, grabbing my cloak. "Good thing I brought a shovel."
"What shovel?"
I sighed, "It's an expression… I was trying to look cool, ok.."
"Right."
"You ruined it!"
"Sorry."
"It's ok. Let's go."