He didn't speak.
Not when the first game ended.
Not when players screamed in the second.
Not when bodies disappeared into thin code.
He just watched — with those strange, silver eyes that never blinked too long, never flinched, never gave anything away.
Player 304.
His ID tag flickered briefly across the upper corner of his chamber in Game 2. And when the game ended — he was still standing.
No panic. No hesitation.
He had pressed black.
And lived.
Now, he walked through a white hallway that felt like the inside of a machine. Seamless. Sterile. Cold.
On either side of him, players stumbled forward — coughing, trembling, blinking at the sudden exposure to light and space after being confined in glass death-traps.
But not him.
He moved with the strange, quiet grace of someone who had been here before.
Almost like this was home.
A girl to his left broke down, whispering,
"I thought… I thought this was a simulation."
Another muttered, "Are we on a spaceship or something? What is this place?"
He didn't answer. Didn't even glance.
His mind was elsewhere.
"All survivors of GAME 2, report to the Central Grid. Your biometric scans have been logged."
The voice wasn't comforting. It wasn't even neutral anymore.
It sounded hungry.
He reached the center of the room — a massive, cube-shaped arena made of mirrored panels and glowing gridlines.
Players stood clustered in groups of twos and threes, forming alliances, clinging to anything familiar.
He stood alone.
A boy — younger, maybe sixteen — stumbled beside him and tried to strike up a conversation.
"Hey, man… you okay? That last game was brutal, huh?"
Player 304 turned his head slowly. Just one look.
Not threatening.
Not friendly.
Just empty.
The younger boy backed off. "Alright. Cool. No worries…"
Then, for the first time, he spoke.
"Three games left before the first purge."
The boy blinked. "Wha—what purge?"
But Player 304 had already walked away.
He watched the players.
Not with cruelty.
Not with sympathy.
With calculation.
He'd already memorized faces.
Predicted alliances.
Marked the weak.
Marked the dangerous.
Especially her.
Lyra. Player 109.
He watched her from a distance now. Noticing how she moved closer to Rhea. How her breathing stayed light. How her eyes no longer trembled.
"She's adapting," he murmured.
Then he turned toward the hallway where the admin chambers supposedly existed.
Buried deep behind firewalls and illusions.
He could almost hear it.
The real system. Beating beneath this one like a second heart.
Still corrupted… still broken… still calling.
Suddenly, the lights flickered overhead.
A short pulse.
Barely a second.
But he felt it.
The same error signal from Game 1.
"System instability detected."
He looked up — directly at the security camera.
And smiled.