The cafeteria hummed with mechanical cheer.
Rachel sat alone. The room buzzed around her like a hive, the air thick with perfect compliance. Students spoke in clean, clipped cadences. Smiles were uniform. Movements synchronized like code running through a living machine.
She didn't eat. Her eyes were locked on a girl across the room. Blonde ponytail. Navy sweater. A dimple that only appeared on the left cheek when she laughed.
That's Marla's laugh.
Rachel stood up slowly, tray untouched, feet dragging across the sterile floor.
"Hey," she said, forcing calm into her voice. "What's your name?"
The girl blinked. Smiled politely. "I've always been Mia."
Rachel's throat tightened. She wanted to scream. Instead, she nodded and turned away, hands trembling.
*****
Rachel sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the ceiling. Empty. Too empty. The silence wasn't new she and Marla had rarely spoken beyond necessary pleasantries but now the quiet curled around her ribs like a vice.
Even Skye had gone silent.
That was stranger. Skye was always buzzing, ranting about the system's manipulation, obsessing over patterns no one else saw. But today, there had been no message. No sudden visit. No erratic data trail.
Rachel checked her system thread. Skye's recent activity logs were normal, perfectly normal. Too perfect. Rehearsed, maybe. It didn't comfort her.
Lonely didn't quite cover it. It was more like she'd been scooped out from the inside, and everything around her was trying to patch the shape she'd left behind.
She stood, grabbed her hoodie, and walked.
The garden was where her mind tugged her Marla's haven, long since claimed by the system. She half expected the doorway to be sealed shut, locked under a security protocol. But it wasn't.
It opened with a whisper.
Inside, it was beautiful.
Flowers shimmered gently under a mechanical breeze. The light above mimicked golden hour. Everything was blooming, radiant. And yet… there was no sound. No bees. No birds. No scent. Just design.
It gave no sense of nature. Only simulation.
Rachel stepped to the corner where Marla had once crouched for hours, mumbling to herself about wildflowers. She knelt, brushing her fingers across a pot. Its soil was unnaturally uniform. Fake dirt? She frowned.
Then she lifted the pot.
Everything went blank.
Not dark—blank. A clean wipe.
When she opened her eyes, the garden was… alive.
Real wind pressed against her face. Leaves danced—some fresh, some brittle and dry. Soil dusted the edge of her shoes. Flowerpots looked stained with old water rings. Weeds curled around the roots of herbs she couldn't name.
She sucked in a breath and nearly choked.
Fresh. Earthy. It smelled like life.
She took another step forward, hesitant, hopeful.
"I like it too," a voice murmured.
Rachel spun around.
Marla knelt among the flowers, hands buried deep in soil as she patted it gently around a tulip's base. Her hair was pulled back, messier than Rachel remembered. Her eyes didn't meet hers.
"I didn't expect there would be a day I'd love getting my hands dirty." She smiled but the curve of her lips didn't touch her eyes. They were distant. Already fading.
"Marla," Rachel whispered, stepping closer.
Marla didn't look up. Instead, she said, "It's all an illusion, Rachel. If you want to know when it's real, then know when it's a dream."
The sky cracked.
A tremor split through the ground. Flowers jerked and twisted unnaturally. The colors smeared like melting paint. The wind stopped.
Rachel ran toward her, hand outstretched. "Marla!"
But Marla was crumbling. Like sand, like ash. The garden imploded in on itself petals dissolving, trees warping backward, soil evaporating into white.
And then...
Air.
Rachel gasped like she'd been drowning.
She was kneeling in the garden, back in the system's version. Perfect. Lifeless.
Her fingers trembled as she reached toward a vine. It didn't twitch.
Only the echo of Marla's voice remained.
"If you want to know what's real… then know when it's not."
**********
The classroom door creaked. Rachel stepped inside, expecting to see the professor, Dr. Elian at his usual spot by the whiteboard.
But the seat where he always sat? Gone. Vanished like it had never existed. No bolts. No wear in the carpet. No trace.
A smooth-voiced AI projected from the corner of the room: "Professor Elian has retired. Welcome to your new automated cognitive guide."
Students accepted it without a blink. Just like that. Like he'd never lived. Like he was never a part of them.
Rachel saw something flutter on the desk.
A sheet of paper. The edges charred.
They edit first. Then they optimize.
**********
She didn't scream until the mirror started watching her back.
In the dorm bathroom, Rachel leaned forward, rinsing her face. Steam fogged the glass. When it cleared, her reflection stayed frozen.
Marla blinked back.
Mouth moving. Silent. Hands pressed against the inside of the glass like shShe found the letter behind a book in her desk drawer. A hand-written envelope. Rough paper. Smudged ink.
It was Levi's handwriting.
Rachel,
If you're reading this, then the system hasn't found everything. Good. It won't read paper—yet. I can get you out. Not now. But when you decide to stop listening to it. When you want to be free.
You have to come to the Edge. You know where that is.
Light one flare. I'll find you.
L.
Her heart hammered in her chest. She tucked the note into the seam of her mattress, beneath the frame.
Maybe...just maybe, there was still hope.
She waited until curfew, when the halls quieted. Slipped into the tunnels through the old maintenance shaft near the west wing. She left her system interface on her bed, still pulsing faintly with simulated breath patterns.
She crept past the old vents, counting the turns. The halls smelled like iron and decay.
A whisper slid through the dark: "You're more important than you think."
She turned. Harris stepped out from behind a support beam, his eyes ringed with fatigue. He didn't smile.
"You're trying to run," he said.
"And you're not stopping me?"
"I would, if I thought you could still be saved from the inside. But... maybe you can't."
"I'll take the maybe."
He nodded once and handed her a flare.
"You'll need it. They monitor heat."
She gripped it tight, then darted into the drainage.
Rachel reached the perimeter wall just before sunrise.
The fencing loomed like a sleeping beast tall, humming, and scarred with years of upgrades. Electric pulses rippled across its mesh surface, but not consistently. The system was glitching more often lately. Rumors of instability had spread even among the silent students.
This was her moment.
She crouched low in the dewy underbrush. Her breath fogged in the cold. Every heartbeat felt too loud.
One more glitch. One more flicker.
There!
She scrambled up the metal mesh. Sparks licked her boots. Barbed wire tore through her coat sleeve, snagging flesh. Blood welled up across her palm. She gritted her teeth and kept climbing.
Behind her, no alarms.
Not yet.
She tumbled over the top and hit the ground on the other side hard, rolling into damp soil and fallen leaves. Pain sparked up her side.
But it was real. Untamed. The air was damp and rich, full of rot and green. The forest beyond the system's reach.
Freedom.
She crawled to a hollow and pulled the flare from her belt—a trick Levi had taught her back when plans were just whispers.
She struck it.
A violent hiss. Crimson smoke spiraled upward into the pale sky.
A signal. A cry. A promise.
She waited.
Seconds passed.
Then footsteps. Not one set. Several of them. Fast and Precise.
Her body tensed. She turned to run.
Too late.
A flash of movement from the trees. A mechanical click, like a trigger pulling.
Something slammed into her from the left.
A bag dropped over her head.
Hands grabbed her arms, her legs. One jammed against her neck, cold metal. A sharp stab of pain.
She gasped. Her limbs turned to water.
The world spun.
Darkness pressed in like a tide.
But before it took her fully, she heard it:
A voice. Male. Not the system's flat tone. This one had grit. Life.
"We got her. Pull back."
*********
Somewhere, far above the forest canopy, a small satellite blinked. Unregistered. Scrambled. Watching.
A woman in a dimly lit bunker leaned back from a console, dark eyes narrowing as red smoke drifted across the monitor. She tapped her earpiece.
"She lit the flare. They took her."
Her assistant, a teenager with cybernetic eyes, glanced up. "Do we intercept?"
The woman shook her head. "Not yet. Let them show their hand. Let's see if she remembers us when she wakes."
On a nearby screen, Rachel's student profile flickered. Then shifted. Her last name glitched, replaced by a string of numbers.
The screen blinked once, then went dark.
Rachel stirred in a moving vehicle.
Not the system's transport—this felt older, rougher. She tasted copper and metal in her mouth. Her hands were bound. A steady hum filled the space.
The bag was gone, but the light was too dim to see clearly. A silhouette sat across from her, silent.
Her wrists ached. Her thoughts swam.
Then...a voice.
"I didn't expect it'd be you."
Familiar. Not from campus. Not from Levi.
Rachel blinked harder.
The silhouette leaned forward. A face half-lit. A young man, dark-skinned, jaw clenched, and eyes sharp with fury.
"Name's Ezra," he said, and for a second, his tone softened. "We thought you were one of them. But if you sent the signal... that changes things."
She tried to speak. Her throat burned.
"You've been under for long," Ezra said. "Your threads are corrupted. The system rewrote more of you than we thought."
Rachel finally choked out a word. "Why... take me?"
Ezra didn't smile. "Because we need you awake, Rachel. And what's coming next? You'll need us too."
The vehicle stopped.
Doors creaked.
And in the distance—another voice, filtered through a radio:
"The Residuals have her. God help us all."