The red dot had vanished from his sensor's limited range, but its ghost seemed to linger in the air of Berth 42. The synthetic-organic hybrid—the Omega-clearance visitor—was somewhere close. The grinder alarms still blared from deep below, but up here in the residential sector, the only sound was the heightened hum of the stress-test and the frantic beating of Kaelen's own heart.
He sat perfectly still, his homemade sensor held in one trembling hand, his tablet in the other. The crude device showed nothing but the regular green blips of security drones, now clustering around Sub-Basement 9. No red dot. That was worse. Unknown location was more terrifying than a known approach.
Minutes crawled by. The stress-test's third diagnostic wave ended. The fourth began, a deeper, more invasive scan that made the lumina-orb flicker. His tablet's spoofing program registered the increased pressure, its cooling fan emitting a barely audible whine as it fabricated more convincing "fatigued worker" data.
Then, a new alert appeared on his tablet—not from his sensor, but from the Quarter's public announcement system, forced through his connection.
[INCIDENT RESOLUTION: SUB-BASEMENT 9 GRINDER JAM.]
[CAUSE: STRESS-INDUCED SAFETY PROTOCOL CASCADE FAILURE (CONFIRMED).]
[RESPONSE: OVERSER BROG DISPATCHED. MANUAL CLEARANCE INITIATED.]
[ESTIMATED DOWNTIME: 4 HOURS. IMPACT: MINIMAL.]
Zyx's distraction had worked. It had been officially categorized as a stress-test anomaly. Brog was now occupied with physical labor in the bowels of the Quarter. Vik'nar would be monitoring the system's response.
And the red dot? Where was the auditor?
Kaelen's door remained closed. No sound from the hallway. He forced himself to breathe slowly, to think. The auditor hadn't come for him directly. They had mapped locations. They were investigating sites, not necessarily him personally. Yet.
Why? What were they looking for? Evidence of his tampering? Or something else?
His eyes fell on the amplification crystal, still glowing on his desk, connected to the hidden node. The open line to Node Omicron. If the auditor was scanning for unauthorized data streams…
He had to shut it down. Now.
He reached for the interface filament to disconnect the crystal. His fingers were inches away when the wall to his left—the one shared with Zyx's berth—didn't just fuzz.
It dissolved.
Not in the brief, permeable waver of the weak point. This was a silent, seamless melting away of matter. A perfect, person-sized oval of wall simply ceased to be, revealing Zyx's chaotic workshop on the other side. And standing in the newly created doorway was not Zyx.
The being was approximately humanoid, tall and slender, clad in a suit of matte grey material that seemed to drink the light. Its face was a smooth, featureless oval save for two vertical slits where eyes might be—slits that glowed with a soft, pearlescent white light. It had no visible mouth, nose, or ears. Its hands, resting at its sides, were long-fingered and jointed in too many places. It moved into the room without a sound, the dissolved wall-matter flowing back into place behind it as if it had never been disturbed.
Kaelen's sensor, pointed at the being, emitted a sharp, painful ping and the screen filled with static before going dark. Fried by proximity.
The Omega-clearance auditor had arrived. Not through the door. Through the wall.
Kaelen's mind screamed at him to run, to fight, to do something, but his body was locked in place by a primal terror. This wasn't Brog's brute intimidation or Vik'nar's cold analysis. This was something else entirely—a presence that felt like the void between stars given form.
The being's head tilted slightly. The eye-slits scanned the room, passing over Kaelen as if he were furniture, then settling on the amplification crystal and the scattered components on his desk. It raised one hand. A tendril of the same grey material extended from its fingertip, becoming a probe that hovered over the crystal.
A voice spoke. It didn't come from the being. It manifested directly inside Kaelen's skull, genderless, toneless, and devoid of inflection.
Query: Identify component origin.
The demand was not in a language. It was pure information, uncompressed and absolute. Kaelen's mouth was dry. He couldn't lie to this. He felt, instinctively, that any deception would be instantly known.
"It's… from an old monitoring station," he managed, his own voice a rasp. "In a crawl space. Near the waste hub."
Acknowledged. Designation: Versity-Grade Signal Amplification Crystal, Mark VII. Production discontinued Cycle 22,501. The probe retracted. The being's head turned, those blank eye-slits fixing on Kaelen. Query: Define purpose of construct.
"A… a signal booster," Kaelen said. "To listen."
Clarify: Listen to what?
Kaelen's mind raced. The truth was dangerous. A lie was impossible. A half-truth, then. "To the… the stress-test. To understand the system's patterns. To avoid causing more errors."
The being was silent for three heartbeats. Analysis: Statement contains factual core with omitted parameters. Your designation: Kaelen. Classification: Administrative Error - Null-Type. Anomaly Rating: Elevated. It took a step closer. Kaelen could see now that its "suit" wasn't worn; it was its skin, shifting like liquid metal at a microscopic level. Your biometric spoofing protocol is primitive but effective against standard surveillance. Your activities in Sector Garden-West resulted in a 3% resonance improvement via unregistered methodology. Your intervention in Holding Cell AV-CN-4412 prevented a containment breach. Statistical probability of these events occurring in sequence without causal agency: 0.00012%.
It knew everything. It had reviewed all the logs, seen through all the coincidences.
Conclusion: You are not a Null-Type. You are an Unregistered Variable. Your source file is not corrupted. It is incomplete. The "Administrative Override" on your enrollment beacon did not come from Versity systems. Its source is external.
External. Not from the Versity. The words landed like physical blows. If not the Versity, then who? Or what?
The being extended its hand again, not threateningly, but palm-up. In its center, a tiny hologram flickered to life. It showed Kaelen's enrollment data, the [FILE CORRUPTED/MISSING] line highlighted. Standard protocol dictates isolation and analysis of Unregistered Variables. Potential risk: high.
This was it. They were going to take him. Dissect him. Figure out what he was.
But then the being continued. However. The Silence consumes realities at a rate of 1.37 per standard span. Versity predictive models indicate a 99.8% probability of total multiversal collapse within 8,000 cycles. Standard protocols are… inefficient. New variables may be required.
It lowered its hand. The hologram vanished. I am Auditor-7. My function is to assess threats to Versity integrity. You are a threat. But you are also a potential tool. Your methodology—seeing systems, exploiting flaws—is a form of perception the Versity lacks. We cultivate power. We do not debug it.
Kaelen found his voice. "What do you want?"
Observation. Continuation. You will proceed with your activities. Your surveillance level will be elevated to Priority-2, but you will not be impeded unless you threaten core systems. In return, you will provide data. Your unique perspective on system failures, anomalies, and… the Silence itself.
It wasn't arresting him. It was recruiting him. Or rather, cultivating him like a strange, potentially useful specimen.
"Why?" Kaelen asked. "If I'm a threat?"
The greatest threat is the Silence. All other variables are subordinate. Your enrollment override suggests you may be connected to forces outside the Versity's models. You may be a piece of an unknown equation. To delete you would be to discard potential data. The being—Auditor-7—turned its gaze back to the crystal. Your signal booster is attempting to access Node Omicron in the Foundation Vaults. Your purpose?
"Information," Kaelen said, deciding on blunt honesty. "About how things work. About the Spire's systems. To better understand what I'm… debugging."
Adequate. Node Omicron's data is non-critical. Access is permitted. Be aware: the Spire's internal security is autonomous and aggressive. If you trigger its defenses, Versity intervention will not be forthcoming. You will be categorized as an infiltrator and neutralized.
It was giving him a leash. A long, dangerous one.
Auditor-7's form seemed to blur for a moment. This interaction is concluded. You will be monitored. The Glitch-Sprite entity in adjacent berth is aware of my presence. Inform it that its manipulation of the grinder safety protocols has been logged as a stress-test anomaly. Further direct interference with critical systems will result in its termination.
Before Kaelen could respond, Auditor-7 took a step backward. The wall behind it didn't melt this time. It simply… parted around the being, flowing like water as Auditor-7 passed through it and was gone. The wall solidified, seamless and whole.
The room was silent. The stress-test hum continued. The grinder alarms had stopped.
Kaelen slumped into his chair, his legs weak. His homemade sensor was a dead piece of junk on the floor. The amplification crystal still glowed innocently on the desk.
From the other side of the now-solid wall, Zyx's voice came through, tiny and shaken, not using the weak point but some other means. "It… it was here. In my berth first. It looked at me. I have never felt so… seen. Like every error in my code was being catalogued."
"It's gone," Kaelen said, his own voice unsteady. "For now. It knows what you did with the grinder. Don't do it again."
"Noted. Vehemently noted." A pause. "What did it want with you?"
"To watch me. To see what I do. I'm an… 'Unregistered Variable.'" The term felt alien in his mouth.
"Fascinating! And terrifying! You have the attention of the Silent Auditors. They report directly to the Headmaster's office. Or to something even deeper." Zyx's voice gained a sliver of its usual energy. "This changes the risk calculus dramatically."
"It said I could continue. That I should."
"Of course! You're a live experiment! They've put you in a larger cage with more interesting toys to see what you'll break… or build. The question is, what will you do with this… permission?"
Kaelen looked at the crystal. At the open connection to Node Omicron. Auditor-7 had said the Spire's internal security was autonomous and aggressive. But it hadn't told him to stop. It had warned him, then stepped back.
It was a test. A dangerous, potentially lethal test.
He reached out and reconnected the interface filament. The connection to Node Omicron re-established instantly. He navigated back to the tutorial file on the broken resonator core. The schematic filled his screen.
Auditor-7 wanted data? He'd give them data. But on his terms. He wouldn't just be a bug they observed in a jar. He would use their observation, their reluctant protection, to build something they couldn't anticipate.
He wouldn't just build a sensor to detect watchers. He would build a map. A map of the watchmen themselves. A network of his own.
"Zyx," he said, his voice firmer now. "The auditor said you're not to interfere with critical systems again. But what about… non-critical systems? Information systems? Data streams?"
The glitch-sprite's response was immediate, intrigued. "Information is my native medium. What are you thinking?"
"I need to build more sensors. Not just one. A network. Small, passive listeners tuned to specific signatures—auditor energy patterns, high-level security pings, maybe even the unique resonance of the Silence itself. I need to place them around the Quarter. In the walls, the conduits, the forgotten spaces."
"A web of ears," Zyx whispered. "I can help with that. I know the data-streams. I can show you where they flow, where they're blind. I can even… suggest modifications to your sensor design. To make them harder to detect. To make them look like background noise."
Kaelen looked at the resonator core schematic. The principle was about detecting specific dimensional harmonics. He could modify it. Instead of detecting a failed anchor, he could tune it to detect the "harmonic" of administrative surveillance, the "frequency" of an auditor's passage.
He had permission now. Of a sort. A deadly, double-edged permission.
He would build his web. He would listen. He would map the invisible architecture of power and observation in the Apex Versity.
And maybe, while he was at it, he'd find out who or what had placed that "Administrative Override" on his enrollment. The external source.
He was no longer just an error trying to hide.
He was an experiment who had just been given the run of the lab. And the first thing he'd do was learn every exit, every camera, and every secret the lab was trying to keep.