The next morning came too fast.

Ren lay in his bunk, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The chip Kairo had given him sat beneath his pillow, untouched. He hadn't slept. Not really. The image of Kairo vanishing—no trace, no signature—looped in his head like a glitched recording. He’d tried replaying it in his mind, scanning for detail. A glitch in the world. A tremor in the air. A warning. But there had been none. One moment Kairo was there, bleeding and smiling—and the next, reality skipped.

[SYSTEM BOOT STABLE. CURRENT STATUS: USER CLASS PENDING REVIEW.] [NOTE: ANOMALOUS NODE CONTACT - FLAGGED FOR OBSERVATION.]

He’d felt powerful before. Now he felt watched.

A familiar chime echoed through the dorm block. Morning drills.

Ren shoved the chip into a cloth pouch and strapped it to his ankle inside his boot. No grid exposure. No risk. The message from Kairo had been clear. And if what he’d said about "Them" was true, then Ren had already waited too long.

Down in the sim chamber, Ayane was already stretching. She caught sight of him and waved.

“You look like you got chewed up by a dream and spit back out.”

“Not far off,” he muttered.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but before she could press, the floor hummed. A new drill activated.

The room darkened, and the terrain shifted—walls folding down, sand pouring from the ceiling, turning the chamber into a simulated desert ruin. Artificial wind howled through vents. Ambient heat spiked, the kind that soaked into your skin and made you sweat before you moved.

“Didn’t think we had clearance for Level 3 scenarios,” Ayane whispered.

“We don’t,” Ren said.

[SYSTEM NOTE: SIMULATION OVERRIDE DETECTED. SOURCE: UNKNOWN.]

He scanned the perimeter. Something was wrong. The bots in the chamber were too old, some from discontinued AIs—Ren recognized a Void-Class Tracking Unit, phased out years ago after the Calix Red Incident in Sector Twelve. That had been a massacre. One survivor. Files locked behind Level-7 clearance.

He clenched his fists. This wasn’t just unusual. It was orchestrated.

“Stick close,” he told her.

The bots emerged. Too fast. Too accurate.

Ayane dodged a plasma bolt and hit the ground, hard. Ren moved on instinct, pulling her behind cover. The sand burned against his knees.

[SYNC LIMIT WARNING: NODE CLOSENESS TRIGGERING FEEDBACK LOOP. REDUCE INTERFERENCE.]

“I got you,” he said, eyes scanning for openings.

She blinked up at him. “You keep saying that like I’m breakable.”

“You are,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

[VARIANCE SPIKE: +4.1%. ECHO FIELD DISTORTION REGISTERED. STABILITY AT RISK.]

The system was straining. He could feel it in the flicker of his vision. In the lag between thought and HUD response. The world itself trembled—not physically, but in its rules.

He took down two bots with successive throws of his energy blades. The killshots weren’t logged. No points awarded. System lag? Or deliberate filtering?

After the drill ended—with damage far exceeding expectations—the instructors pulled everyone aside. There was tension in the air. Words like malfunction, overload, and unauthorized variables floated between staff like poison in the wind.

Except Ren.

He was pulled into a separate room.

An observation chamber. Cold, clean, and quiet. Reinforced glass. No reflections. One table. Two chairs. And on the far wall, a blinking red light. Recording.

Waiting for him inside was someone he hadn’t expected to see for weeks.

Juno.

She stood against the wall, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

“You’re progressing fast,” she said.

“You watching me?”

“I don’t have to. You’re starting to leave shadows behind.”

Ren didn’t respond. He sat in the chair without invitation. “What do you want, Juno?”

She took a step closer. “To understand. I saw something last night. I thought it was a dream. But it wasn’t. You were there.”

His stomach twisted. So it was starting.

[FRAGMENT DETECTED: SUBJECT JUNO – DREAM BLEED ACTIVE.] [DREAM SEGMENT: VIOLET FIELD. AUDIO – ‘AYANE, RUN.’]

She rubbed her arms, like she was cold. “There was a battlefield. Fires. And you were dying. I heard myself say things I’ve never said. Not yet.”

Ren said nothing. His eyes tracked the camera.

Juno’s eyes narrowed. “Something’s wrong with me, Ren. And I think you know what it is.”

He stayed silent.

She hesitated. Her voice cracked. “Tell me the truth. Were you ever... dead?”

The silence between them was thick. Not absence of sound—resistance.

Then—

[ALERT: OBSERVER CLASS PROXIMITY BREACH – CLEARANCE UNAUTHORIZED.] [RECOMMENDED ACTION: — — — — — — —] [ERROR: CONFLICTING PROTOCOLS DETECTED. RESOLVING… FAILED. DISENGAGE IMMEDIATELY.]

The lights flickered. Just once. Ren stood slowly.

“I can’t answer that. Not yet.”

Juno didn’t try to stop him. She stepped aside, letting him pass. But her gaze followed him all the way to the door.

Whatever part of her still remembered—

—it wasn’t done waking up.

And for the first time in this loop, Ren wondered not what she would become...

…but who he would be when she did.