The corridor leading to B12 felt like the belly of a giant beast—cold, narrow, with the smell of old metal and burnt cables. Narey pressed her back against the wall, moving silently, counting her steps with steady breaths. The small map in her hand was already soaked in sweat.
"Two turns to the right, then the door with the inactive sensor. But only five minutes before the system reboots," she repeated in her mind.
Each turn swallowed her heartbeat. The cameras in the corridor seemed to be on, but motionless. Like... they weren't looking.
Someone had intentionally created this gap, she thought. Not a system crack. But deliberate sabotage.
She arrived at the final junction. At the end, the B12 door. Unlike other doors that shone red with alarms and flashing panels, this one... was plain gray. No electrical hum. Silent. Maybe dead. Or intentionally made to look dead. She pressed her ear against it. No sound. But her heart knew: Something was waiting behind that door.
With a hairpin she had straightened and coated with a small magnet from a damaged cable, she touched the side panel. One second. Two seconds.
Click.
The door slid open slightly. The air inside was hot.
Not a surveillance room. More like... a biological laboratory.
Narey stepped inside. Her steps were light on the dark rubber floor. Dim blue light from the walls illuminated a row of large transparent tubes. Six. Eight. Twelve. In each tube: human brains. Alive. Connected to optic cables. Some were even still pulsing slowly.
On the side of the room, a screen lit up automatically. Displaying a graph of extreme brainwave activity—and names underneath. She froze.
"Lucas Vanrah."
"Anjani Kusumo."
"Rafi Ardana."
They... weren't dead?
But before she could delve into what this meant, footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. Heavy. Not one. Two. Maybe more.
She had only seconds to hide beneath one of the consoles—and just as the B12 door opened again, a familiar voice thundered in. But it wasn't Laksana.
"Who accessed this without protocol gamma authorization?"
"The monitoring screen was empty for 11 minutes. This is impossible."
His voice was cold. Trained. Not a scientist. But an operations controller.
Narey held her breath. Her ears caught another fragment of conversation.
"Laksana said everything was locked down. We need to ensure there's no infiltration. If necessary, a full reset. Including experiment memories." Reset? Including... memories?
At that moment, Narey realized: Time was running out. But the information she had just uncovered—was the key to overturning the entire structure of lies.
As the footsteps neared, Narey pressed her body flat to the floor behind the console. She knew the main exit was blocked—her only way out was through the technical vent she had seen in the corner of the room. A narrow gap, just enough for one person to crawl. But better than being caught.
She crawled quickly, her body sticking to the dust and burned cables. Her hands fumbled for the vent panel—locked with a magnetic pin system. No time. She pulled a thin wire fragment from her shoelace—and inserted it into the gap while controlling her breath.
Click.
The panel opened. Just as the sound of military boots entered the room.
Narey pushed herself through. Dark. The smell of rust and burnt insulation pierced her nose. She crawled slowly, then descended a narrow shaft like a factory chimney—while hearing voices from above:
"The scanner didn't detect anyone. But system activity was briefly disrupted. There's an anomaly."
"Or there's an insider helping," said the second voice, sharper.
"Laksana?"
Narey froze. But couldn't stop. She kept crawling until she found a fork in the path: left to the backup server room, right to the experimental waste processing area.
Right. Dirtier. Harder to guard. But less likely to encounter anyone.
She crawled along the metal corridor, emergency lights flickering red. The floor began to tremble slightly—either from heavy machinery below or the system being reset. Suddenly, a small notification appeared on her digital wristwatch, even though she had turned it off when she entered the corridor.
"12-PB Override granted. —A"
Her eyes widened. Who was A? This wasn't a regular system message. This was an override code. She pressed a small button, and the wall in front of her—which had appeared solid—slowly shifted, opening a narrow corridor lined with soundproof insulation.
She entered. No lights. But the temperature was warmer. At the end of the hallway: an old manual lift door. Written: Lower Experimental Block — Architect Personnel Access.
"Architect?" she whispered. Laksana's title.
But before she could think further, the sound of footsteps echoed from the back corridor—mechanical sounds, their voices.
"The technical path was opened. Check all corridors. The subject may have escaped into the waste or Block A."
"Activate heat trackers."
No time. Narey leaped into the lift. Pressed the down button. The old machine groaned like a dying creature.
Down. Down. Dark. Silent.
Narey stood in front of a door that seemed to have never been detected before—a very old door located behind a narrow hallway rarely used by anyone. It felt like she had uncovered a secret long forgotten. This door wasn't listed on any campus map she had ever seen. There were no signs or clues that this room even existed, yet the uneasy feeling in her chest told her that this was where she had to go.
Carefully, Narey pulled the rusty door handle. The sound of the door creaking loudly echoed down the hallway, but she couldn't turn back now. The door opened, and immediately, cold air hit her face. The room inside was dim, filled with dust that had settled for what seemed like ages. Flickering lights hung erratically, giving the impression that this place had never been used for a long time—a relic from the past buried in the campus' history.
This was the first experimental laboratory ever on campus.
Narey's steps felt heavy as she entered. Along the walls, she saw faded instruction boards, and empty shelves that once might have been filled with advanced scientific equipment. But there was something far more intriguing in front of her—a large table in the center of the room, covered with stacks of papers and some old recording devices.
But the most striking thing was the symbol clearly displayed on the wall. The Cerebrum Shift symbol—but different from the one she had known all this time. It was simpler, rougher, and appeared as though it had been created by hand, not by a computer. The lines surrounding the symbol formed an unusual pattern—an abstract representation of the human brain that seemed open, showing interconnected layers, but also fragmented, symbolizing the shattered fragments of consciousness.
Narey approached, allowing her eyes to absorb every detail. Unconsciously, she sighed. This was the original symbol of the Cerebrum Shift project—something she had never seen before.