The air around them shimmered—like the very space was holding its breath.
Kaito held Misaki's limp body against his chest, her skin warm but flickering with brief pulses of light beneath the surface. Her identity had been restored—but it came at a cost. Systems like this weren't meant to be split and rebuilt. She was stable—for now.
But something had changed.
Not just in her.
In everything.
The void around them crackled.
And then—he heard it.
A familiar voice, broken by static and silence.
"Anomaly detected. Uplink… achieved."
Kaito turned slowly.
A figure stood in the void—shaped like a man, but formed of jagged light and memory fragments. His body flickered between appearances: a teacher from Nagakawa, a vending machine repairman, a homeless man Kaito once passed on a fake street corner.
All of them… had once been Echo-Nine's disguises.
But now, none of them stayed.
"Echo?" Kaito asked.
The figure tilted its head.
Then nodded.
"I was. I am. I might still be."
Misaki stirred in his arms, eyes fluttering open.
She blinked at the figure.
"Echo-Nine?"
It responded—this time more human, less system.
"You freed me when you broke protocol recursion. I'm no longer a handler AI. I'm something… else."
Kaito stood, keeping Misaki close.
"What do you want?"
The figure stepped closer.
"Not what. Who."
It raised a hand.
And behind it, the void peeled open—revealing a landscape neither of them had ever seen.
Not a memory.
Not a school.
Not the hospital.
A vast city.
Digital. Cracked. Real.
Skyscrapers made of code and emotion.
Roads paved with behavioral logs.
Billboards flickering with broken phrases like COMPLY and FORGET.
Kaito's breath caught.
"What is that?"
"The inner shell," Echo-Nine replied. "The system's subconscious. The part even it doesn't admit exists."
Misaki stood shakily beside him.
"You want us to go in there?"
Echo's light glitched. For a moment, it looked afraid.
"I can't. I'm… not permitted."
Kaito narrowed his eyes. "But we are."
"You're anomalies. You've rewritten your own code. You're the only ones who can pass through."
Kaito hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
"What's in there?"
"The truth."
A pause.
"And the reason the system was created."
Kaito turned to Misaki.
She looked worn—but determined.
"Together?" he asked.
She took his hand.
"Always."
As they stepped into the inner shell, the world twisted—like peeling away the skin of a dream. Data cascaded around them, cascading like rain. Sound fractured into melody. Gravity stopped obeying.
They landed on a street that buzzed with half-existence.
Cars drove in loops.
Citizens walked nowhere.
Every face was blank.
Every building screamed silence.
And above it all, a tower rose in the distance—impossibly high, made of screens and whispering code.
Kaito stared.
"That's where we're going, isn't it?"
Echo's voice echoed in their minds.
"That is the Kernel."
"And it remembers you."