The days passed, but the tension didn't. Every tick of the city's heartbeat—a drone overhead, a flicker in the power grid, a static buzz from a public screen—felt heavier now, like it meant something. Ezra's world had shifted. No timer, no structure, no safety net. Only questions.
Ezra and Mia spent the next two days holed up in the library annex, camping between forgotten server towers and ancient textbooks. Most students avoided the wing entirely. To them, it was just a dead zone. But to Ezra, it was a sanctuary.
Mia had transformed the space into a war room. Cables hung from cracked tiles, multiple screens blinked across an arc of desks, and outdated processors hummed under duress. A digital corkboard floated in the air, held together by a projection emitter: maps, names, old forum posts, internal network leaks—all connected by glowing threads.
Ezra watched one line flicker. "That link keeps dying," he said.
Mia didn't look up. "That's because someone keeps killing it."
She tapped the screen. "This user—Codename: 'Glint'—posted yesterday about a failed sync. Timer refused to reboot after a routine diagnostics scan. Three hours later, the thread was wiped. His account: gone."
Ezra leaned in. "What kind of scan?"
Mia pulled up a log. "It's called a 'Pattern Calibration Diagnostic.' Used by government health facilities. But I dug deeper. Turns out, it's actually a behavioral map. It scans the neural profile of the user… compares it to conformity baselines."
Ezra blinked. "So the system's checking if you think the way it wants you to?"
Mia nodded. "And if you don't, it flags you."
Ezra felt the chill again, deep in his spine. He wasn't just a glitch. He was flagged. Possibly purged.
They turned their attention back to the Origin Node. The only lead they had was a defunct freight line that once ran to the city's outer development zones—zones now erased from public maps. The line had been buried under layers of rerouted transit data, but Mia had unearthed it through one of Veda's logs.
That night, they boarded an unmanned service tram from Station 9X. It groaned under its own weight, long forgotten by maintenance crews. The route diverged into darkness, leading them beneath the underbelly of the city.
The tunnel was carved from old-world steel and layered with vines and synthetic mold. Occasionally, graffiti flickered in the tram's lights—warnings in dead languages, symbols of resistance, countdowns.
"This place gives me the creeps," Ezra muttered.
Mia sat cross-legged on a bench, multitool on her lap. "That's because we're heading toward the edge of what the system allows."
An hour in, the tram halted with a shudder. They'd reached an unscheduled stop—nothing on the digital map.
"Why are we stopping?" Ezra asked.
Mia checked the console. "Signal interference. Something's jamming us."
They stepped off the tram, the silence pressing against their ears. The tunnel walls opened into a cavern-like space, the floor littered with collapsed crates and rusted machinery. In the distance, a single red light blinked.
Ezra motioned to it. "Let's check that out."
They approached the light and found a door. Old security sensors blinked alive as Mia approached, scanning her face before giving a dull beep.
"False ID," she whispered. "But the system thinks I'm someone else. Veda's credentials."
The door slid open with a mechanical sigh.
Inside, they found what looked like a research lab—abandoned, but not untouched. Tables were overturned, screens smashed. The floor was scratched with deep gouges, as if something had been dragged violently across it.
Ezra picked up a shard of a shattered lens. "This place went down hard."
Mia moved to a terminal that still blinked faintly. "Power reserve… minimal. But enough."
She inserted a storage chip and began extraction. Data pulsed across the screen—logs, blueprints, surveillance clips.
A video began to play. A man in a lab coat stood in front of a tank. The same figure from the earlier footage.
"Subject Omega still exhibits resistance. Timer failed to resync. Neural dissonance spreading. Behavioral independence detected. We recommend termination."
The footage shook violently, then cut off.
Mia's face had gone pale. "There were more like you."
Ezra looked down at his wrist. "And they erased them."
Suddenly, a voice crackled over the intercom. "Intrusion detected."
Ezra's heart leapt. "Run."
They darted from the lab, back through the tunnel, as lights flared red behind them. From the shadows, figures began to move—humanoid, silent, synthetic.
"Drones!" Mia gasped.
But these were different—sleeker, faster. Experimental.
They bolted through crates, ducking under piping and leaping over debris. Ezra turned and hurled a flash chip, blinding their pursuers momentarily.
They found a service ladder and climbed desperately. Above them, a maintenance hatch opened into the city's storm drainage system.
They burst out into the night air, soaked and gasping.
Ezra looked at Mia, panting. "They're evolving."
Mia pulled out the chip she'd stolen. "And so are we."
They didn't speak much as they navigated the city's backstreets, eventually returning to the annex. This time, neither of them felt safe.
Ezra stared at the stolen files. Schematics of the timer. Neural maps. A folder labeled "Eidolon Protocol."
"What's Eidolon?" he asked.
Mia hesitated. "It's a ghost copy. A backup of you. Just in case the original... fails."
Ezra felt his blood run cold.
"They made copies of us?"
"Of anomalies," Mia said. "To study us. To erase us. To replace us."
Ezra leaned back in his chair, eyes hollow. If the timer controlled time… what controlled the timer?
He stared at the screen. At the countdown clock ticking toward something unknown. But this one wasn't on his wrist. It was embedded in the stolen system. Set for exactly 72 hours.
"Something's coming," he whispered.
Mia nodded slowly. "And we're not ready."