Rain clattered against the rooftop of the city's central forensic division, where Ryoko stood beside Haratu, both cloaked in silence and thought.
"It's all pointing back to Kyoji," Ryoko said at last, her tone grim. "But there's still no motive… no clear endgame."
Haratu's eyes didn't leave the horizon. "He doesn't need a motive. He has a vision. That's worse."
They had retrieved the old surveillance tape showing Kyoji entering the Kairos site. Combined with the twisted trail of the murder cycle, it created a terrifying picture. Yet Haratu couldn't shake the feeling—something was still missing. Like a face half-glimpsed in a shattered mirror.
"I pulled this from Kyoji's lab logs," Ryoko said, handing over a folder. "Encrypted files. He called the project 'Echo Protocol.'"
Haratu flipped through it. Every line of code, every schematic, pointed to one thing:
The resurrection of Kairos.
Not just a continuation—but an evolution.
Echo Protocol aimed to manipulate not just memory—but causality itself. It was a quantum blueprint for selective rewriting of moments in time.
If it succeeded, Kyoji could undo the past at will.
"Why now?" Ryoko muttered. "He's had this tech for months. What's he waiting for?"
Haratu narrowed his eyes. "He needs one last piece."
Ryoko looked up. "What?"
Haratu's voice was like stone. "The final subject. The one who can survive a complete memory collapse."
Her blood chilled. "You think it's you?"
"No," Haratu whispered. "It's Mika."
---
Elsewhere…
In a dim, high-security server room bathed in green light, Kyoji Ren stood alone, watching a frozen image of Mika Hayashi projected in mid-air.
Her eyes were closed.
But her mind was alive—trapped in a simulation loop.
"She survived the fire," Kyoji muttered, his voice reverent. "She's the only one who retained stable echoes. She's the origin point."
A voice came from the shadows.
"You're accelerating the process."
Kyoji didn't turn. "We don't have time. Haratu's getting too close."
A man stepped forward—someone new.
Tall, elegant, with a white mask carved with a spiral sigil over his face. His name was unknown. His purpose, whispered only in code: Nexus.
"He'll come here," Nexus said calmly. "Let him. The experiment needs a catalyst."
"And the others?" Kyoji asked.
"They'll die, as they were always meant to."
The air in Haratu's apartment was thick with tension as the rain outside hammered the windows like a ticking clock counting down to something unseen. The large digital board in front of them was filled with dates, photos, and crime scene scans—all connected by red threads and neon markers. Ryoko paced behind him, while Haratu sat, one hand cupping his chin, the other tapping the armrest.
"Everything goes back to Echo Protocol," Ryoko said, voice strained from exhaustion. "Kyoji was working on it long before Kairos was even shut down."
Haratu finally looked up, eyes sharper than steel. "And Mika's not just an experiment. She's the anchor."
"Anchor?"
He stood and walked to the board. "Kyoji needed someone with a strong enough psychological imprint to remain consistent across alternate temporal loops. Mika's trauma made her mind...sticky. She remembers things others forget. That makes her the linchpin of his entire system."
Ryoko's mouth went dry. "You mean... she's trapped in there—living different versions of the same timeline—just to test whether the protocol works?"
Haratu nodded. "And he's pushing her closer to collapse with every simulation."
Ryoko slammed her hand on the desk. "We have to get her out."
"We will. But to do that…" Haratu pulled up a digital map of the city, zooming into an abandoned Kairos-affiliated testing site in the industrial district. "…we need to go through the source."
---
The industrial zone had long been buried under the city's progress—empty warehouses, broken tech hubs, and buildings condemned more than a decade ago. The last remnant of Kairos's original infrastructure lay beneath it like a forgotten tomb. Haratu and Ryoko arrived under cover of night, parking their vehicle far enough to avoid thermal detection.
Ryoko clipped her flashlight onto her jacket and armed her sidearm. "This place gives me chills."
Haratu gave a tight nod. "Good. That means you're awake."
They descended a narrow metal stairwell under a hollowed-out warehouse, passing rusted servers and walls scorched by a fire long forgotten. The elevator shaft was sealed, so they rigged a rope and repelled two floors down.
There, they found it.
A wide metallic door, humming faintly, the Kairos emblem flickering above like a heartbeat.
Haratu pressed his palm to the interface. "Still hot. That means someone's here."
The door creaked open, revealing a corridor bathed in artificial blue light, lined with surveillance monitors showing fragments of other rooms—some empty, others filled with strange data streams.
As they moved deeper, a sudden whine of static echoed through the hall. Every monitor flickered. For a split second, Mika's face appeared—crying out silently—before the screens went black.
Ryoko gasped. "She's conscious."
"No," Haratu corrected softly. "She's remembering."
They reached the main chamber—a circular room filled with interface pods and a central server tower shaped like an inverted obelisk. Wires pulsed like veins around it, connected to a giant tube filled with glowing fluid.
Inside the tube—floated Mika Hayashi.
She was in stasis, but her mind—projected onto the surrounding glass—flickered with phantom images. Different realities. Different deaths. Over and over again.
Ryoko stepped closer, horrified. "This is sick…"
A voice behind them whispered, "It's salvation."
They spun around, weapons drawn.
Standing at the far end of the chamber was a man with long silver hair and a white mask etched with the spiral sigil. Nexus.
Haratu's eyes narrowed. "So you're the one behind all of this."
Nexus's voice was calm, almost kind. "Behind? No. I'm merely one of many who understand the truth. Time isn't linear. It loops. Echoes. Kyoji merely cracked the door. I opened it."
Ryoko raised her gun. "Step away from her!"
Nexus tilted his head. "You don't understand. Mika is choosing this. Her will is stronger than any of us. She's surviving thousands of iterations—because she wants to change something."
Haratu frowned. "Change what?"
Nexus paused. "The death that started it all."
Ryoko blinked. "Which one?"
Nexus stepped into the light. "Haratu's."
A chill ran down Ryoko's spine.
Haratu said nothing, but his expression froze.
"She saw you die in the first timeline," Nexus continued, "and the grief broke something inside her. Her first wish—conscious or not—was to go back. And so, she became the anomaly. The Observer. Kyoji... just weaponized it."
Ryoko's hand shook. "You're lying."
Nexus turned toward Mika's pod. "Look for yourself. Her memories are encoded in the server. Everything you want to know—every death, every reset—is here."
Then he turned and began to walk away, vanishing into a side hallway that seemed to blink out of reality itself.
Haratu stood frozen.
Ryoko put a hand on his shoulder. "We have to end this."
He nodded. "But not until I know what she saw."
He stepped to the terminal, plugged in a portable decryption drive, and downloaded the encoded memory data.
A red progress bar filled the screen.
Just as it hit 100%—a siren began to wail.
"Containment breach," a synthetic voice echoed through the halls. "Protocol Echo destabilized. Subject memories collapsing."
Ryoko grabbed Haratu. "We triggered something!"
The fluid in Mika's pod began to swirl violently.
Her eyes opened.
But they were no longer the same.
Mika's eyes were wide open now, but they glowed unnaturally—fragments of code flickering behind her irises like storm clouds of broken memories. The containment tube around her began to shudder, metal groaning as if resisting the surge of energy within.
"Mika!" Ryoko shouted. "Can you hear me?!"
Haratu rushed to the control panel, trying to stabilize the readings. The temperature inside the chamber was dropping fast, and warning messages flooded the screen:
> NEURAL LINK DESTABILIZING
RECALL SEQUENCE ABORTED
SUBJECT CONSCIOUSNESS DIVIDING
"She's splitting between timelines," Haratu muttered. "If we don't ground her in one reality—she'll tear herself apart."
Ryoko stared at Mika, who was now thrashing inside the fluid. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as ghostly versions of herself began to appear and vanish around her—childhood Mika, teenage Mika, versions of her that had died in previous loops.
"Help… me…" the real Mika whispered. Not from her mouth—but directly into Haratu's mind.
His vision flickered. For a heartbeat, he stood not in the lab, but on a rooftop—under a red sky, rain pouring around him, and Mika lying lifeless in his arms.
Then he snapped back.
"No more!" Haratu gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus. "We end this now!"
He jammed the decrypted memory module into the central interface and slammed the override switch.
A massive pulse of light burst from the terminal. The pod shattered, releasing a flood of neon-blue fluid as Mika collapsed to the floor, coughing and gasping.
Ryoko ran to her, kneeling beside her. "It's okay… You're safe now…"
But Mika's eyes locked onto Haratu, wide with disbelief.
"Y-you're alive…? Haratu…?"
Haratu knelt down, shaking slightly. "I'm here. You remember… everything, don't you?"
Tears spilled from her eyes as she nodded. "All of it. Every loop. Every version of your death. I kept trying to go back… again and again… to save you."
Ryoko felt her throat tighten. "How many loops…?"
Mika blinked. "Twenty-seven."
Haratu looked away, jaw clenched. "Twenty-seven times… you watched me die."
"And each time, the world changed," Mika whispered. "Sometimes you died in an explosion. Sometimes assassinated. Sometimes... you just disappeared."
"But why me?" Haratu asked. "Why was I the center of your timeline?"
Mika hesitated. "Because I loved you."
The words hit like thunder.
Ryoko's eyes widened. Haratu remained still, but something behind his stoic expression cracked.
"I tried to bury it," Mika said softly. "I knew you'd never see me that way. But when I saw your body in that first loop—I shattered. Something inside me made a wish. And that wish… became the key."
Haratu finally spoke. "Kyoji used you. He exploited your trauma and turned you into a loop anchor."
Mika nodded. "And Nexus… He wasn't lying. I was the Observer. But I'm not anymore."
Suddenly, alarms flared again.
> ERROR: FOREIGN PROTOCOL INJECTION DETECTED
INITIATING FINAL PHASE – PROJECT REBIRTH
Haratu turned to the monitor. "Someone just hijacked the system."
Before he could react, the entire facility began to quake. Lights exploded. The walls cracked. And a shadow emerged from the hallway.
But it wasn't Nexus.
It was someone new.
A woman with silver-platinum hair, wearing a crimson coat laced with mechanical threads, and her left eye replaced by a glowing device that spun like a clock dial.
Haratu raised his gun. "Identify yourself."
She smiled. "My name is Sera Vellum. Former lead architect of Kairos Project One."
Mika froze. "You're… supposed to be dead."
"Oh, sweet child," Sera said with a smirk. "I was never alive in your timeline."
Ryoko narrowed her eyes. "What the hell do you want?"
"I'm here to finish Kyoji's work. But with an upgrade."
She held up a device—a prism-like shard that pulsed with chaotic energy.
"This is the Singularity Core. With it, I can collapse all versions of reality into one—perfect, stable world. No more loops. No more anomalies. Just one timeline… where everything is exactly as it should be."
Haratu stepped forward. "And who decides what's perfect?"
Sera's smile widened. "Me, of course."
With that, she activated the shard.
The ground split open. A vortex of timelines spun above them like a bleeding aurora. Memories from dozens of realities poured out—ghosts of people never born, cities never built, lives unlived.
Haratu grabbed Mika and Ryoko. "We need to shut this down—now!"
"But how?!" Ryoko shouted over the deafening hum.
Mika reached out, placing her hand on the prism's energy. "With this…"
The shard reacted instantly to her touch—glowing brighter, resisting her control.
"You're the Observer," Sera snarled. "You're the key! But you're flawed! You don't deserve the power!"
"I don't want it," Mika replied, eyes fierce. "I just want to end this."
Haratu rushed to the central server, opened the emergency fail-safe menu, and input an override code.
> FAIL-SAFE DETONATION CODE INITIATED
15 SECONDS TO MEMORY WIPE
"Mika!" Haratu shouted. "We only have one shot!"
She took a breath and funneled all her energy—every memory, every pain, every version of herself—into the shard.
It exploded in a burst of white light.
---
When the dust settled, the chamber was gone. So was the server, the loop data, and the shard. Sera Vellum's body lay shattered on the ground—burned out from the power surge.
Mika collapsed, but Haratu caught her.
"You did it," he whispered.
"I don't feel them anymore," she said, weakly. "The other lives… they're gone."
Ryoko looked around. "Everything's… stable?"
Haratu nodded. "The loop is broken."
Outside, the rain had stopped. For the first time in what felt like years, the sun broke through the clouds.