The echoes from the Hollow Host's destruction had barely faded when the chamber around them began to fracture.
The mirrored floor beneath Alex's feet shimmered—not with light, but with errors. Streaks of flickering static crawled across the surface like veins of broken code. The walls pulsed unnaturally, sometimes turning to flesh, sometimes to smoke, sometimes just… vanishing entirely.
Alex blinked.
The room blinked back.
"Do you see that?" he whispered.
Mina, already standing in a defensive stance, didn't lower her sword. Her eyes darted to a corner of the chamber where the architecture bent inwards, like someone had grabbed space itself and folded it wrong.
"I see something," she said, her voice tight. "And I don't like it."
A low hum started—deep and electronic. The kind that vibrated behind your teeth and settled into your skull like a parasite.
Then:
SKRRRK-CHK.
The world jerked.
Reality snapped.
For a single moment, the Abyss—this entire system—glitched.
It was more than a stutter in perception. It was a rewind of existence.
Alex felt his body reverse motion, like a VHS tape in rewind. Mina vanished. Then reappeared. Then flickered out again.
A screaming silence overtook the space. The light source—if it could be called that—blinked off.
Darkness. Total and absolute.
Until a new presence appeared.
It wasn't a creature or a monster.
It was a cursor.
A glowing white arrow—just like one on a computer screen—suspended in midair above him.
Alex stared.
Then it moved.
It drifted in lazy circles around his head, then clicked on him.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
[CLICK]
Alex convulsed. Every nerve in his body lit up in pain. Lines of corrupted code scrolled across his vision.
[USER.ENTITY.ERROR: UNKNOWN OBJECT DETECTED]
[MEMORY THREADS UNRAVELING…]
[DEBUG MODE: PARTIAL OVERRIDE]
He collapsed.
A bright flash seared the void.
And suddenly, he was somewhere else.
Not in the Abyss. Not in the trial chambers.
He was in a white room, featureless and cold.
A glass wall stood in front of him. Behind it: three figures in suits, faces blurred by static, like corrupted data files. Their mouths didn't move, but Alex heard them.
"Subject shows increasing resistance to emotional destabilization."
"He wasn't supposed to defeat the Hollow Host this early."
"The Mina construct is adapting beyond protocol. Should we delete her?"
"No. Let's see how deeply he bonds first."
Alex slammed his hand against the glass. "Who are you?! What is this?!"
They didn't look at him.
They studied him.
Then the room melted away again.
He dropped back into the Abyss like a marionette cut loose, falling through layers of data, broken memories, and raw terror. He landed hard, gasping.
Mina knelt beside him. "Alex! You're back. What happened?"
He could barely speak.
"There's… someone watching. Controlling this. This isn't just survival. We're—"
SKRRK-KZZT.
Reality jittered again.
The glass surfaces cracked, showing jagged windows into other versions of Alex—one bleeding out in a hallway, one locked in a cage, one walking calmly into a fire.
All of them watched him back.
A line of text slithered across the wall like a dying neon sign:
YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE.
Alex stared at it, heart thudding in his ears. "What the hell does that mean?"
Mina backed away. "You're scaring me."
He turned toward her—only to see her face flicker.
Not glitch. Not ghost.
Just a single frame of static distortion across her cheek.
He whispered, "You're not real."
She flinched. "What?"
"Back in the glitch… I heard them talk about you. Mina construct. They're monitoring you too."
Mina raised her sword again. "Don't say that. Don't reduce me to some asset in your madness."
"I'm not—!"
She vanished for half a second, then returned.
Both of them stood still.
Something fundamental had shifted.
[SYSTEM REPAIR: INITIATING.]
[Stabilizing Room Parameters… Estimated Duration: 2 minutes.]
A countdown appeared overhead. 1:59… 1:58…
The environment slowly repaired itself—but inconsistently. Some corners restored as rotting wood, others as sleek metal, others as hospital tiles.
Mina gritted her teeth. "Whatever this is… whatever they are… we can't give them what they want."
Alex's hands trembled. "I don't think they know what they want either. They're testing me—but for what?"
As the timer ticked down, a final message scrolled across his vision:
[EXPERIMENT 42-A: OBSERVATION FLAGGED FOR ESCALATION.]
[PRIMARY SUBJECT IS SHOWING SIGNS OF COGNITIVE BREACH.]
He whispered, "I'm breaking through."
Mina stepped closer, quietly. "Then maybe breaking is the only way out."