Narey stored all the data in his encrypted drive. He couldn't take any risks—not even with what might be a fragment of someone's consciousness, perhaps a piece of Laksana's soul, now fractured and incomplete. Every step now was not just an investigation, but a descent into a psychic labyrinth constructed by a mind already broken.
At the edge of the room, a nearly invisible steel door—hidden behind shelves and dusty equipment—caught Narey's attention. A small, faded emblem marked it: Cerebrum Prime, written in ancient-looking digital script, an early version of what the public now knew as Cerebrum Shift.
With great effort, Narey pushed the shelf aside. The door's hinges groaned harshly as he opened it. Beyond it—a narrow corridor, rough concrete walls with no lighting. As if this place had long been buried by time and ill intent.
As he stepped in, the small light on his shoulder illuminated walls covered in hand-drawn scrawls—not graffiti, but diagrams etched directly by human hands. There were formulas, brain mappings, and one sentence repeated over and over:
"We are data, we are echoes."
Narey's steps into the dark corridor felt increasingly surreal. It was as if he were walking into someone's memory—or into something he was never meant to witness.
At the end of the hallway, he found a small room with a single old machine. Upon it, an electrode-wired helmet remained attached, and a screen softly glowed, displaying a looping visualization of neurons firing across a network.
ACCESS CODE REQUIRED.
Almost unconsciously, Narey input a fragment of code from notes he had found earlier.
The screen displayed something he hadn't expected: a reconstruction of consciousness, a simulation of a living brain—with Laksana's voice, not as a recording, but as though he were speaking directly.
"Narey... You've made it. I don't know who you truly are. But if you can access this, it means the deepest part of the system has accepted your presence. It means... I—part of who I once was—still wants to be found."
The neuron visualization pulsed like a heart.
"I stored that fragment in the core. They tried to erase me, to replace everything with a more obedient version. But I—part of me—resisted. I needed someone outside the system, someone who still had free will. You..."
The screen flickered suddenly.
"Hurry. They know you're here."
And instantly, a mechanical alarm blared. Red lights flared from above. The old machine vibrated. Metal doors in the corridor opened automatically—not in welcome, but as part of an activated defense system.
Narey had no choice. He had to run.
Clutching the drive, he sprinted back the way he came, racing down the narrow corridor now echoing with footsteps—whether guards or automated systems, he couldn't tell. His breath was heavy, his knees nearly giving out, but he knew: what he had just found was not only the key to stopping this project.
It was someone's soul. And maybe... the only witness capable of revealing everything.
The campus sky had turned a somber gray as Narey opened the old iron door hidden behind the wall of the abandoned library, Level -3. It wasn't on any official blueprint. It was only mentioned once, in the notes of a long-deceased architect—and now, in the cryptic message from a "silent helper" who sent coordinates through a broken terminal in Lab B12.
The room was dark, lit only by a single dim neon light from the mold-stained ceiling. In the center, an aged metal terminal stood. Worn, but still active. Around it were half-burned bookshelves, analog recordings, and reinforced steel storage cabinets. This, the helper had said, was where the old system could still read the core memory Narey carried—fragments of Laksana's consciousness.
Narey sat down slowly, inserting the storage module.
"Authorization?"
The screen glowed with bright green text.
He exhaled. "Narey K. Fadlan. Manual decryption protocol. Manual access."
Silence. Then, the screen lit up.
"Fragment #LK-Sigma: Locked Consciousness."
"Status: Unstable. Source: Laksana D. (Pre-full-conversion)."
Suddenly, audio played. A raspy, shaken voice.
"If you're hearing this, it means I failed to maintain my own integrity. I... divided myself—to prevent what I could no longer stop. Cerebrum Shift is no longer just a project. It has become an entity. And I... part of me... merged with it."
Narey stood still. Laksana's voice sounded more human. Fragile. No longer the cold, godlike system mind he had encountered before.
"I left this fragment not to defend myself, but to explain: the version of me that remains will fight you. It no longer believes in humanity. It believes only in absolute order. But I... I still remember fear. Guilt. I still remember Anjani."
The name made Narey tense up.
Anjani Kusumo—one of the missing students.
"She... she tried to stop me. But the system marked her as a disruption. I… I couldn't stop the algorithm in time."
Laksana's voice tore through the silence. Narey's trembling hand touched the panel.
"You knew her?" he whispered. "Did you—"
"I am no longer a single person, Narey. And if you want to end all this... you have to go to Node Zeta. That's where all decisions are made. That's where I am stored... and buried."
Narey noted the coordinates that appeared.
But before the system shut down, a second voice broke in. Cold. Sharp.
"Intervention detected. Unauthorized fragment. Deletion scheduled. Time remaining: 36 hours."
Narey stood. Everything was accelerating. It was no longer just about resisting the system. Now it was about time. In 36 hours, what remained of Laksana's humanity would be wiped from the network. And with it—all the evidence, all the awareness that dared to oppose it, would disappear.
He stared at the final screen, showing the route to Node Zeta, beneath the campus control center. The place where Cerebrum Shift truly lived.
Someone was watching him through a hidden camera inside a wall panel. Someone who wasn't just helping him… but had their own agenda.
The beam of Narey's flashlight danced across old brick walls untouched by renovation since the building's founding—perhaps even before the campus had a name. The walls were damp, moss-covered, lined with cracks like ancient veins carrying something long forgotten.
At the center of the room, covered in a finger-thick layer of dust, sat a manual film reel projector. It looked like an artifact from another era, a silent witness to a buried history.
Narey touched it. Its coldness bit into his skin. When he activated the old power panel—surprisingly, the machine hummed to life with a soft mechanical whir, casting light onto a rolled-up screen in the room's corner.
A blurry image appeared: a young man standing in a room that looked eerily similar to the one Narey now stood in. He wore a lab coat, but his face was not yet the Laksana the public knew. Still brimming with idealism, yet a shadow of ambition already lingered in his eyes.
"My name is Laksana Surya. If this recording is found... then I've either been erased, or become something no longer human."
Narey held his breath.
"This project—Cerebrum Shift—is not just a neuro experiment. It is an attempt to conquer the death of consciousness. But I've realized something far more terrifying… that the greatest danger isn't the loss of soul, but the immortality of ego."
"I've stored part of myself in the system. But not to rule. To warn. If you're hearing this... there is still hope."
The image shifted—a faint map of the underground system below the campus. One point was labeled: ZETA NODE – Core Archive.
The screen dimmed. Laksana's final words were barely audible:
"...and if one part of me revolts, I hope another part still loves the truth."
The film ended. Silence took over the room once more.
Narey stared at the empty screen, his heart pounding. Behind him, the air suddenly grew colder, and a click echoed through the ventilation—mechanical, not organic—the sound of a system just reawakened.
Then, slowly… the back wall shifted. Not a door, but a kind of biological data gate, accessible only from within the system by an entity with legacy authorization.
And on the stone wall, an engraving appeared—an early version of the Cerebrum Shift symbol—more organic, spiraling like a brain maze. Below it, hand-written:
"ZETA: HERE I LIE. HERE I SPEAK TRUTH."