The Archive room felt like a graveyard made of glass. Thousands of jars,
thousands of stolen lives, and we were standing in the middle of it while
Archer's puppets closed in.
"Jax! Wake up!" Sloane was shaking him, her voice raw.
The two "Assigned" guards who had slammed him down were standing still
now, their blue eyes glowing like tiny, cold stars. They didn't move. They were
waiting for Archer's next command.
"Sloane, we have to move him,
" I said, grabbing Jax's other arm. "If we stay in
the center of the room, they'll surround us."
Julian wasn't looking at the guards. He was looking at the jars. He walked over
to one, his fingers hovering over the glass. Inside, the blue mist was swirling
violently. "This one... it's music,
" he whispered. "I can hear it. It's a piano
concerto. Someone spent twenty years learning this, and now it's just...
sitting on a shelf."
51.
"Julian, focus!" I pulled him away from the shelf. "We don't have time for the
jars. We have to get Jax to the maintenance room."
Sia was already there, kicking open a small metal door near the ventilation
shaft. "In here! It's a dead zone! The cameras can't see into the lead-lined
storage!"
We dragged Jax inside. He was a dead weight, his athletic body heavy and
limp. As soon as the door slammed shut, the silence hit us like a physical
blow. No red lights. No humming servers. Just the four of us, breathing hard
in the dark.
"Is he... is he gone?" Sloane asked, her voice a tiny thread in the blackness.
"He's not gone,
" Julian said, his voice sounding hollow. "He's just... paused.
Archer used a neural dampener. It's like putting a computer to sleep while
you're trying to format the hard drive."
52.
Sia found a flashlight and clicked it on. The beam cut through the dust,
hitting Jax's face. He looked peaceful, which was the scariest part. The Jax
I knew was never peaceful. He was always moving, always loud, always full
of life.
Sloane sat on the floor and pulled Jax's head into her lap. She didn't care
about the mission anymore. She didn't care about the Archive. "I told him
we'd go to the beach this summer,
" she whispered, stroking his hair. "He
promised to teach me how to bowl properly. How can he do that if he
doesn't know who I am?"
I looked at Julian. He was leaning against the wall, staring at the ink on his
palm. I LOVE YOU.
"I'm losing it, Callie,
" he said quietly.
I froze. "Losing what?"
"The feelings,
" he said, looking up at me. His eyes were flat. "I know I
should feel sad for Jax. I know I should be angry at Archer. But it's like...
someone is turning down the volume on my heart. I can see the emotions,
but I can't feel them."
53.
This was the "Genius" curse. Archer was draining Julian's humanity first,
leaving only the cold, hard logic behind.
"Look at me,
" I said, stepping into his space. I grabbed his hands, squeezing
them tight. "Julian, look at my eyes. Remember what you said in the chapel?
You said you archived the way they change color when I'm worried."
"I remember the fact,
" Julian said, his voice devoid of warmth. "But the
'feeling' of it... it's slipping away. It's like trying to hold water in a sieve."
I felt a sob rise in my throat. I couldn't lose him. Not like this. Not while he
was standing right in front of me.
"Then let me be your anchor,
" I whispered. "If you can't feel it, trust my
feelings. I'm feeling enough for both of us."
54.
I reached into my bag and pulled out my journal. I flipped through the pages
until I found a sketch I'd made months ago. It was Julian, sitting in the
library, a tiny, rare smile on his face as he looked at a particularly difficult
math problem.
"Look,
" I said, shoving the book into his hands. "This is how you looked when
you thought no one was watching. You weren't a machine then. You were just
a boy who loved the stars and hated bad coffee."
Julian stared at the drawing. His thumb traced the lines of the sketch.
"I remember this day,
" he whispered. "The sun was hitting the glass at a 45-
degree angle. I had just realized that the universe is expanding faster than we
thought."
"And?" I pushed. "What else?"
Julian's breath hitched. "And... I realized that you were wearing a blue
sweater. And that I wanted to ask you why you always used a pen instead of a
tablet."
55.
A spark. That was all I needed.
"Stay there,
" I told him. "Stay in that memory. Don't let Archer take the blue
sweater. Don't let him take the pen."
Suddenly, Jax gasped.
His eyes flew open, but they weren't blue. They were his normal, dark brown
eyes, but they were filled with a terrible, agonizing confusion. He sat up so
fast he almost knocked Sloane over.
"Where... where is the ball?" he choked out. "The red ball. I need it. It's the
only thing that's real."
"Jax! You're awake!" Sloane threw her arms around him, but he pushed her
away. Not because he was mean, but because he was terrified.
"Who are you?" he demanded, backed into the corner of the small room. "Why
are you touching me?"
56.
Sloane's face shattered. It was the most painful thing I'd ever seen. The girl
who was the "Queen of St. Jude's" was now just a girl whose best friend had
forgotten her existence.
"It's Sloane,
" she said, her voice cracking. "We grew up together, Jax. We
lived next door. You used to climb over my balcony when you forgot your keys.
Please... please remember."
Jax shook his head, his hands over his ears. "There's a voice in my head. A
man's voice. He's telling me to 'Reboot.' He's telling me that my name is Unit
402."
"No!" Julian shouted, his voice suddenly full of the rage he thought he'd lost.
He stepped toward Jax and grabbed him by the collar. It wasn't the "Genius"
move; it was a "Su-hyeok" move. Raw and impulsive.
"Listen to me, Unit 402!" Julian hissed. "Your name is Jax. You're a captain.
You're a protector. And if you let that voice win, then Archer wins. Is that
what you want? To be a puppet?"
57.
Jax stopped shaking. He looked at Julian, then at Sloane. He looked at the
tears on her face.
"Puppet,
" Jax whispered. The word seemed to trigger something deep in his
muscle memory. He looked at his hands—the hands of an athlete. "I don't... I
don't remember the balcony. But I remember that I don't like people telling me
what to do."
He stood up, his legs shaky but holding. He looked at Sloane. He didn't know
her name yet, not really, but he reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek
with a clumsy thumb.
"Don't cry,
" he said. "I'm still here. I think."
The "Chemistry" was back. It was broken, and it was bruised, but it was back.
58.
"We have to go now,
" Sia said, checking her watch. "The Master Delete is at
70 percent. The Archive is starting to vent the 'Empty' data. If we don't reach
the core in twenty minutes, there won't be enough left of the students to
save."
"How do we get past the guards?" I asked.
"We don't go around them,
" Jax said, a familiar, cocky grin tugging at the
corner of his mouth—even if he didn't know why he was grinning. "We go
through them. Julian, you tell me where to hit. Sloane, you watch my back.
Callie, you keep that book safe."
"And Julian?" I asked, looking at him.
Julian looked at his hand, then at me. The "Anchor" was holding. He wasn't the
cold genius anymore, and he wasn't the lost boy. He was something new.
"I'm going to find Archer,
" Julian said, his eyes turning dark. "And I'm going to
delete him from this school's history."
59.
We opened the door to the storage room.
The Archive was waiting for us. But something had changed. The blue mist was no longer swirling
in the jars—it was leaking out, filling the floor like a shallow, glowing ocean.
Every step we took felt like walking through someone's memories. I stepped into a cloud of 'First
Birthdays.' Jax walked through a mist of 'Summer Vacations.'
But we didn't stop. We held onto each other—a chain of four people who refused to be forgotten.
"The core is behind that glass wall,
" Sia pointed.
But standing in front of the glass wall wasn't just Archer. It was the "Assigned" army. A hundred
students, all with blue eyes, all standing in perfect formation.
And in the very front, holding a heavy metal staff, was the boy we had seen in the library. The one
who had walked into the wall.
"Welcome back,
" Archer's voice boomed through the room. "I see the Anchor is still holding. Let's
see how much weight it can take before it snaps."
60.