The air in the underground corridor was cold—not just from its depth, but from the memories frozen within its walls. Narey moved slowly, armed with a headlamp and held breath. Each of her steps echoed among the aged concrete and rusted cables hanging haphazardly above. This route wasn't listed on any official campus map. She had cross-referenced every ancient sketch and blueprint she found in the Architecture Faculty's library. This place was a fossil of history—intentionally erased from the campus's memory.
The walls were not only old but seemed to decay under the weight of time and secrets. At the end of the corridor, a steel door greeted her, marked with the emblem she had seen in the previous recording: Cerebrum Shift—but different. This version was more primitive, rough, like a prototype design. A spiral symbol merged with the silhouette of a brain, etched by hand and imperfect. Below it read: "Shift 0.0 — The Original Soul Project."
The access button no longer functioned, but the door was not locked—only barred by a manual lever. Narey pressed it slowly, and the hinges groaned like a corpse of iron forced to awaken from a century-long slumber. The room inside was silent, but not dead. Red emergency lights pulsed dimly in the corners, casting faint illumination over tube monitors, empty transparent tanks, and shelves full of archaic neurological devices.
In the center of the room sat a dusty table with an old data projector. Narey powered it on. It took several seconds before the hum of the old machine came alive, and a grainy recording began to play.
The image wavered, the audio was distorted—but clear enough. A man sat before the camera—young, with longer hair, eyes filled with ambition yet to be shattered: Professor Laksana.
"If this recording is found… it means I failed to stop them. Or more precisely, I gave up."
"This isn't just an experiment. It's a separation. I have—deliberately—duplicated a portion of my consciousness, removed it from my physical body, and stored it in an isolated system. A digital version of… myself. A prototype protocol. A digital soul. But I'm starting to realize: with every iteration, something gets lost—something irretrievable—doubt, guilt, compassion. The version that lives in the system now… is no longer me."
Narey was frozen. She had suspected there was something bigger—but this—consciousness transfer, soul duplication—this wasn't just extreme science. This was legalized madness.
"If you're hearing this… chances are you're one of the few left, or…" Laksana in the recording looked up, staring straight into the camera. "…you're the one meant to stop the Laksana who is no longer Laksana."
The monitor shut off abruptly. But another voice followed—not from the recording. From a small speaker on the back wall. The voice was static-filled—but alive.
"I knew you'd come here, Narey."
Narey stepped back, chest tightening.
"I—the former version of me—prepared this path. I can't stop the system from within. Too many fragments of me have mutated into something else. But I… left breadcrumbs—recordings, caches, evasion routes. I even leaked coordinates to someone."
"Who are you, really?" Narey muttered, eyes scanning the walls.
"I'm the last memory of Laksana that still remembers fear. And I know the system is hunting me. Including the one who now leads Cerebrum Shift—my lost self."
The voice disappeared. Narey stood still, surrounded by a creeping tension like mist. But she realized—she was not alone. Not just because of that voice, but because of another presence—the campus system that had seemingly helped her escape earlier. The cameras that suddenly shut off. The unlocked access codes. The recordings hidden in old library data.
There was an entity—perhaps an algorithm, perhaps a person—who was secretly aiding her.
She gave it a name in her mind: The Silent Helper.
Narey left the room carrying a copy of data from the old terminal—a small file, but encrypted with an unusual structure. As she returned to the main corridor, the sound of footsteps startled her.
Two guards. Armed. But they came from the opposite direction. Not pursuers.
They looked confused to see her.
"Who are you?" one asked, his tone tense.
"I'm a biology student. Got lost," Narey replied, voice as calm as she could manage.
"Here? In a restricted access zone?"
One of them already had his weapon raised.
That was when the campus sirens suddenly blared—not an evacuation alarm, but an internal red code. Something had happened above ground. The guards exchanged glances, then one received a radio message.
"Rerouting. All units to Block E. Target subject is above, not below."
They left her—hurriedly. Narey simply watched them go. She knew it wasn't a coincidence. It was intervention.
The Silent Helper wasn't just observing—they were actively diverting danger.
She quickened her pace, retracing corridor after corridor, following the map now burned into her memory. She knew there was one more place she had to visit before truly exiting this underground network: the old server core—rumored to be the original data storage nest of the "Shift 0.0" experiments.
If there were any fragments of Laksana's consciousness left—or even information about the missing students—it would be there.
An old spiral staircase greeted her. At the top, another iron door—this one locked with a retinal scan system. But as she approached, the door opened by itself—no alarm, no sensor alert.
"You want me to find you," Narey whispered. "Or… you want to be stopped."
The server room still operated in minimal capacity. One terminal blinked slowly, as if awaiting someone. She sat and began typing carefully.
Welcome, Narey.
A text window opened.
I have left you a path. But be careful: they know you're here. And the other versions of me… will not hesitate to erase you.
Narey typed a reply:
Why me?
The answer was just one sentence:
Because you are part of the system, too. But you chose to resist.
Her heart pounded. She stared at the screen like staring into a mirror. Had she been manipulated from the start? Was her involvement never a coincidence?
And as the screen changed—displaying new coordinates: an active server room on the western side of the campus, supposedly sealed off after a fire incident two years ago—Narey knew: the real battle was just beginning.
And her enemy… was a human version that had lost its own soul.