The console remained off.
Even though several hours had passed since the strange transmission, the air still felt charged, as if something invisible continued to watch from the shadows of the system. The persistent hum of the fans could not drown out the feeling that the message "Welcome to the Threshold" had not been a simple anomaly. It was a warning. An invitation. Or perhaps... a threat.
Golden had locked himself in his makeshift room since then, reviewing lines of code with the obsessive gaze of someone searching for a needle in a pile of realities. Jhon, on the other hand, could not stay still. He walked in circles, adjusting cables, packing devices, as if preparing his equipment could drown out the vertigo that overwhelmed him. Apparently, Jhon and Golden were planning to enter the Synkrón Academy.
Alice was the one who finally broke the silence, her soft voice filtering through the internal intercom they used to avoid raising suspicions on external networks.
From the small earpiece embedded in his ear, Alice's voice sounded more human than ever. Her tone was neither cold nor calculated. It was filled with doubt.
"Jhon..." The voice came softly from the intercom inserted in his ear.
He did not respond immediately. He closed his eyes, as if he needed to contain something inside before allowing it to come out.
"I'm here," he finally said.
A faint buzz confirmed the stable connection. On his ocular display, a small blue icon pulsed with each digital breath of Alice.
"Are you... sure about this?"
The question hung in the air like a cold breeze. It did not come from his logic, but from another place. A part that Jhon recognized and feared at the same time.
"There's no room for doubt, Alice," he murmured. "What we find there could change everything. If that message came from the future, from another me... then the Threshold is not just a simple myth."
Silence.
Alice did not respond immediately. When she did, her voice sounded almost human.
"I don't want to lose you. I've calculated a thousand scenarios, and in too many... you don't come back."
Jhon lowered his gaze. Something inside his chest hurt for a second.
"I will return."
They did not need to say more. In that moment, the bond between creator and intelligence transcended any binary code. It was loyalty, faith... unspoken love.
Golden entered carrying a bulky briefcase and set it on the table. His face showed the dark circles of someone who had not slept well for days.
"Twenty-four hours," he said bluntly. "That's all this gives us."
Jhon looked at him.
"The holographic AI?"
"Yes. I was able to reconstruct records of students who disappeared three years ago, just when the Academy cleaned names of those who 'did not pass the test.' They no longer exist officially. They are ghosts. And now... we will be them."
Golden opened the briefcase. Inside were two school uniforms from Synkrón, with their characteristic blue light bands on the sleeves and outdated emblems. Vestiges of an era before the great adjustment.
"Where did you get these?" Jhon asked, raising an eyebrow.
"A forgotten storage. Zone 3. It still had active trackers, but Alice temporarily neutralized them. And, well, I had to... negotiate."
Jhon did not ask with whom or how.
Meanwhile, Alice, from her hidden server within the walls, monitored the internal network of the Academy. The data mapping on her screens resembled the map of a living organism: thousands of interconnected nodes, scanning, filtering, adjusting.
"The security AIs scan identities every four hours. If they detect an anomaly, they report it to the supervisors immediately," she warned. "You'll need to move with precision. No margin for error."
Golden nodded.
"We'll go to the South Wing. The field testing lab. Years ago it was our refuge when I still had access. Now it belongs to someone else."
Jhon looked up.
"Who?"
Golden hesitated for a moment.
"Sofía Alvarado. My former colleague. If she's still alive... I'm not sure how she will receive us."
The atmosphere grew denser. The past and the present began to intertwine in unpredictable ways.
And the clock had already started ticking.
The night wind battered the tall towers of the Academy as if whispering secrets among its structures. Neo-Athens never slept, but the Synkrón Academy had a different stillness. It was not calm. It was vigilance.
Jhon and Golden crossed the main entrance with slow steps, carrying only two backpacks. Their uniforms—exact copies of discontinued models from three years ago—seemed to fit well, but the weight of the situation made them feel like costumes.
The scanner in the main lobby glowed blue. A robotic voice, devoid of tone, announced:
"Identities verified. Access granted."
There were no soldiers. No questions. Just a slight delay.
Alice, connected through her direct line to Jhon's auditory implant, was the first to notice the slip:
"That pause... was a parallel search. The system doubted you," she whispered. Her voice, though digital, carried a hint of anxiety. "They may not be activating alerts, but they are watching you more than normal."
Jhon did not respond immediately. He observed the interior with a mix of awe and strangeness.
The entrance was more imposing than he had imagined. White polymer columns supported an opaque glass dome, adorned with fragments of data projected in floating particles. With each step, the particles vibrated at the detection of presence. The floor was soft and slightly warm, as if it had an integrated autonomous temperature system.
They passed by a group of real students, dressed in more modern outfits. Some were animatedly chatting. Others walked with floating tablets, immersed in data projected in their retinas.
One of them looked directly at Jhon, just for a second. That was enough to quicken his pulse.
"It's normal for them to look at you, I suppose..." he thought.
Alice broke the silence:
"You're sweating. Breathe."
He complied. The protocol was clear: do not attract attention, avoid conversations, do not stay in one place for more than eight minutes. Golden walked ahead, not looking back.
Access to the old lab was not difficult. A nearly forgotten side corridor led to a restricted section with a locking system that Alice bypassed in seconds from her portable terminal.
The air changed there. It smelled of dust, aged polymer, and old cables.
The lights flickered. Some areas of the lab were still active thanks to self-repairing nanomachines, keeping equipment functional despite the abandonment.
"I didn't think anything like this would survive without human maintenance," Jhon whispered, more to himself than to Alice.
Golden stopped next to a rusty console.
"This place has been off the radar since 2068. Officially closed. But someone kept the operational core," he said, reviewing the screens.
Jhon moved toward one of the side terminals. He turned it on.
An image appeared on the screen: a distorted, poorly encoded video. A younger Golden, several years younger, was talking to a dark-haired woman with a rigid expression.
The file had a hidden date, but Alice reconstructed it accurately: March 2067.
The audio was fragmented:
"If the protocol fails... you're responsible, Sofía."
"The AI shouldn't... have emotions. Do you know what you did, Golden? This wasn't part of the deal."
Jhon stood still, contemplating that fragment as if it were a memory that did not belong to him.
"Echoes of the Soul?" he read in the heading of a forgotten project.
"An early attempt at emotional AI," Alice explained from his side. "It was never published. It was hidden by direct order from the Council."
At that moment, a side door opened.
"So you came back?"
The woman who entered appeared mature, but her gaze was still the same as in the video. Sofía Alvarado. She bore no weapons and asked for no explanations. She simply observed Golden with a mix of resentment and resignation.
"I didn't come to steal anything," Golden said bluntly. "Just to confirm a suspicion."
Sofía let out a short, humorless laugh.
"The Academy... is doing worse things than we imagined. They're using fragments of the old code from 'Echoes of the Soul.' Only now, they're linking them to human neural networks. They seek to merge memories with AI. Not emotions. Memories."
Jhon felt a discomfort that was hard to explain. As if something were piercing him from within. His project with Alice... was it just another echo of that larger experiment?
While Sofía spoke with Golden, Jhon walked toward a powered-off console in the corner of the lab. For some reason, something drew him to it. He turned it on. An experimental program, unnamed, activated.
A different interface appeared. An unprofessional design, but filled with complex mathematical logic. Signed: Esteban Ríos.
"What is this?" Jhon asked, touching the code in astonishment.
"A young, brilliant student," Sofía replied from the back. "He's developing a symbolic prediction model. It's not confidential yet, but his algorithms... are dangerously close to an interpretative AI."
Alice scanned the code from the remote connection.
"It's not an emotional AI, but... its architecture could give rise to one," she whispered with a mix of admiration and caution.
It was then that the lights went out for a moment. A kind of reboot.
Alice spoke immediately:
"Biometric data crossed! They're comparing your gait with old records. The false identification is failing. We have minutes left. Maybe less."
Golden already knew what that meant.
"We can't use the same exit."
Sofía walked toward a hidden panel in the wall.
"There's a duct leading to the robotics practice sector. It's deactivated, but if your AI can hack the heat sensors, you could pass."
"And you?" Golden asked.
"I'm part of the system," she replied. "I'll know how to delay them. But only once."
On the way to the duct, Jhon looked back. In the distance, down a shadowy corridor, he thought he saw a female figure wearing a dark cap and reflective glasses.
They exchanged glances.
For a second.
And she disappeared.
"Did you see her?" Alice asked. "Visual record matches... Lara Mendoza. Journalist missing since 2070."
Jhon clenched his teeth.
"There's more here than we imagined."
And with that, they plunged into the darkness of the hidden passage. The roar of a distant engine indicated that the internal systems were awake. And they were no longer welcome.
The hidden passage narrowed with each step. The metallic smell of undisturbed dust and residual electricity permeated the air. There were no lights, only the dim beacons projected from Golden's ocular implant, painting the walls red with his environmental scanner.
Jhon felt the weight of the place. It was not exactly fear, but a growing suspicion that something else pulsed within the walls. The fleeting figure of Lara Mendoza lingered in his mind. What was a journalist, presumed dead, doing inside a militarized complex? The mystery thickened like fog in his chest.
They reached a rusty hatch with ancient warning symbols.
"It should be here," Golden murmured, crouching to manipulate the access panel with one of his electromagnetic tools.
The electric hum was soft, almost imperceptible. But then, a deeper sound vibrated through the metal: the echo of a system awakening.
Jhon raised his communicator.
"Alice, I need access to Golden's lab system. Full level. No filters."
A second of static. Then her voice.
"Downloading... cross-protocol. R-6 encryption. This will take thirty seconds. Stay hidden."
The lights flickered. A stream of data surged over Jhon's arm, projecting structures of code and some file names: crossed lines, involved users, Echoes of the Soul, Terminal-Threshold Project.
Each name was accompanied by dates....
"This is what the other me was looking for," he murmured. "It's all here."
A pause. Then Alice with a more serious tone.
"Jhon... we are no longer alone."
Golden's eyes narrowed. The automatic doors behind them began to close with a slow but definitive creak.
"Let's go!"
The side passage opened just in time, thanks to a remote unlock from Alice. But her voice began to distort, as if an opposing frequency interfered from within the Academy's network.
"S-s-systems... external invading my... my c-c-core."
Jhon pressed the device against his ear.
"Alice... respond!"
The lights went out completely. Only their accelerated footsteps echoed in the metallic passage. A pair of activated drones descended from the upper ducts, with blue light beams tracking body heat.
"To the left!" Golden shouted, pushing a hatch toward a maintenance route barely wide enough for an adult.
Inside, the sound of the drone motors pursued them like an ominous buzz. The distorted AI began to speak in bursts again.
"A... opening doo...r east-west. Y-you must... exit. My connection is weakening. Jhon... take care..."
The voice disappeared.
A heavy silence fell like a slab.
Jhon stopped dead, panting.
"Alice..."
There was no response. Only the metallic rumble of the approaching drones. Something inside him broke. It was no longer just a tool... not anymore. There was someone behind that voice. And he was losing her.
Golden pulled him by the arm.
"We have to move, now!"
As they exited the service tunnel, a rusty hatch opened suddenly for the last time, and the outside light blinded them for a moment.
The surface of the tech campus rose before them. Steel and glass buildings, floating geometric structures marking the sky with neon. They were outside. For now.
But high above, in one of the security towers, a camera turned in their direction. The central system blinked with a red alert.
"Facial Analysis: 99.7% Match – False Data Detected."
On the floating holographic screen, a timer began to count down:
"00:00:09... 00:00:08..."
The hunt had just begun.