The Round Table Studio headquarters had officially transitioned into its automated night mode.
The sprawling, sunlit development floors were now bathed in deep, quiet shadows. The only primary source of illumination came from the massive central atrium, where soft, bioluminescent flora and strategically placed ambient lights cast a majestic, ethereal glow over the ancient tree trunks. The quiet hum of the building's ventilation system was a soothing white noise, a sharp contrast to the chaotic daytime energy.
But deep inside the Programming department, one solitary desk remained brightly lit.
Logan Kim, the usually laid-back, effortlessly cheerful Head of Programming, was entirely alone. He sat hunched over his workstation, aggressively typing lines of complex physics code into his terminal while simultaneously tinkering with the exposed, glowing fiber-optic wiring of the Animus 1.0 chassis.
Behind him, a linked assembly line of industrial Compadres was running 24/7, their metallic frames continuously plugging and unplugging from the neural-link variable software to forcefully simulate the load of thousands of human players experiencing the device.
Knock. Knock.
Logan flinched, his hand jerking slightly over the circuit board. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and heavily bagged behind his glasses.
Arthur was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed and an undeniable look of annoyance on his young face.
Logan quickly forced his trademark, easygoing smile. "Ah! Good evening, Arty."
Arthur let out a long, heavy sigh. He walked into the dimly lit office, carrying two steaming cups of caf. He held one out. "It's past 11:00 PM, Logan. It should be 'good night'. Here. Drink this."
"Thanks," Logan murmured, taking the hot brewka.
Arthur pulled up a hover chair and sat down right beside him. He took a sip of his own drink, his mismatched eyes scanning the mess of wires and half-empty energy canisters covering the desk. "You know the deal, Logan. Gawain is actively taking notes on your terminal activity. You will get your double overtime pay for this shift."
Logan chuckled, taking a long, desperate sip of the brewka. "Hehe. Thanks, boss. I'll make good use of that money."
Arthur lowered his cup. The faint amusement in his eyes vanished entirely. "Sure. Then why has every single credit of it been left completely untouched?"
Logan stopped mid-sip. The easygoing smile froze on his face. "Huh?"
"I have been looking over our quarterly profit returns and the payroll ledgers," Arthur said softly, his voice calm but incredibly sharp. "Kasavin has been quietly covering for you, filtering the data so I wouldn't notice. But I see it. You haven't taken a single credit of your overtime pay ever since we started working on the Animus."
Logan slowly set the cup down. He stared at his monitor, suddenly finding the scrolling code incredibly fascinating. "I... I don't know w-what you're talking about, Art."
Arthur sighed, leaning forward. "What's wrong, Logan? Did something happen? Do you owe credits to a syndicate?"
"Nothing," Logan deflected quickly, waving a hand. "It's a bank error. I'll call them tomorrow–"
"Stop it," Arthur pushed back, his tone leaving no room for escape. He looked at his Head of Programming, truly studying the man. Logan had always been a massive mystery. He was a brilliant developer with a ridiculously blank background.
There were massive, unexplainable gaps in his resume, yet he possessed a level of raw, architectural coding skill that easily rivaled Bem Lendu, a man who had literally engineered the Stellar Accord's flagship Starships.
"You're hiding something," Arthur pressed.
Logan's smile completely wavered. The facade cracked. He abruptly pushed his chair back and stood up, avoiding Arthur's gaze as he began aggressively stuffing his tools into a bag. "Alright. Fine. I'm done for the night. I'll finish this up tomorrow. Don't count tonight as overtime, Gawain."
Arthur stood up, physically blocking Logan's path to the door.
"I'm not letting you leave like this," Arthur said firmly. "You have been acting incredibly weird for months. Ever since we unboxed these machines, you've isolated yourself. You've been working relentlessly, day and night, as if you're being chased by something. Next week, we begin the Animus 2.0 research phase. You need to talk to me, Logan."
"Move, Arthur," Logan warned, his voice tight.
"No," Arthur challenged. "Why are you working yourself to death?"
"Because this thing is dangerous and we cannot hand it to them!"
Logan violently snapped, slamming his hands down on the desk. The sudden, explosive shout echoed through the empty programming wing, rattling the half-empty tools on the table.
Arthur paused, completely taken aback. He processed the outburst, staring at his friend. The man standing in front of him was breathing heavily, visibly shaking with pure, unadulterated terror. He had just unveiled a deeply buried fear that Arthur knew absolutely nothing about.
Arthur let out a soft exhale. He stepped aside, slowly pulling his hover chair closer. He gently picked up the abandoned brewka and placed it back into Logan's trembling hand.
"Sit down," Arthur said gently.
Logan swallowed hard, his shoulders slumping as the adrenaline faded, leaving only raw exhaustion. He collapsed back into his chair, gripping the warm cup as if it were a lifeline.
Arthur pulled his own chair up, sitting knee-to-knee with him. He looked Logan directly in the eyes.
"Them?" Arthur asked quietly. "Who is 'them', Logan?"
Logan squeezed his eyes shut, the warmth of the brewka seeping into his cold hands. The silence stretched between them for a long moment before Logan finally let out a ragged exhale.
"The Ministry," Logan whispered, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "The Stellar Accord Ministry of Technology."
Arthur simply sat back and listened as Logan's mind unspooled, dragging them both many years into the past.
…
The sterile, blindingly white corridors of the Stellar Accord Ministry of Technology hummed with the quiet, suffocating pressure of endless bureaucracy.
At thirty-five years old, an age considered barely out of the academy by the Accord's metrics, Logan Kim was already recognized as an absolute prodigy. Despite his youth, he had secured a highly coveted position as one of the lead engineers and research scientists in the Ministry's most classified sector.
On paper, his department handled 'Advanced Communication Protocols'. In reality, they were assigned to a highly specialized task: Neurological Manipulation.
Their brilliant Department Head specialized in cognitive behavioral conditioning. For years, the department's primary directive had been to meticulously map out the unique neurological pathways of every single documented race across the Stellar Accord.
For Logan, it had been just another easy, monotonous day. He had just finished submitting another batch of neural-feedback devices to the safety regulation board. He stood up from his desk, stretching his aching back and letting out a loud yawn.
As he turned the corner toward the commissary, he paused.
A senior engineer was currently standing over a hunched, quiet junior researcher. The senior aggressively dumped a massive stack of physical plasti-flims and encrypted datapads directly onto her desk. "I want the ready-report for all of these cross-referenced by tomorrow morning," the senior barked dismissively before turning and marching away.
Logan sighed, rubbing his temples. He walked over to the junior's desk.
"You know, you shouldn't just take that asshat's papers," Logan advised kindly, leaning against the cubicle partition. "He's just dumping his quota on you so he can leave early."
The junior tilted her head slightly toward his voice. "Don't worry," she replied, her tone perfectly calm and melodically soft. "I'm entirely blind. So my writings and cross-referencing are already heavily assisted by my trusty Compadre unit."
Logan blinked, suddenly looking at her a lot closer.
She was a Qerrian. She had a dull, beautiful Veridian green complexion, with faint, elegant yellow markings running down from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes, however, were clouded over with a milky, unseeing haze.
"I've... never seen you in this sector before," Logan noted, his curiosity piqued.
"I was just placed here two weeks ago," the Qerrian girl smiled softly.
"Ah, where are my manners," Logan chuckled, reaching out a hand before realizing she couldn't see it, awkwardly pulling it back to scratch his neck instead. "I am Logan. Logan Kim."
The Qerrian offered a polite, seated bow. "I am Eevlas. Eevlas Zin."
And just like that, an inseparable bond was formed.
For the next two years, Logan and Eevlas became the golden duo of the department. They met every single day, working tirelessly on the neurological research together. Logan, utilizing his status as a lead engineer, effectively shielded her from the lazy seniors. Whenever someone tried to aggressively dump their paperwork on the blind Qerrian, Logan would simply stand behind her desk, his mere presence entirely deterring the bullies.
But the research itself was an agonizingly complex puzzle. Mapping the brains of thousands of different biological species was a mathematical nightmare.
Late one evening, the lab was completely empty save for the two of them.
"Arrgh! This is literally impossible!" Logan groaned loudly, throwing his stylus across the desk as another simulation crashed. "A Kalamoran's brain handles dopamine entirely differently than a Neman's! We can't find a universal trigger!"
Eevlas, sitting cross-legged in her chair, sheepishly tilted her head. "Logan... what if we are simply looking at this from the wrong angle?"
Logan sighed, burying his face in his hands. "What angle should we see this from, Eev?"
Eevlas offered a perfectly deadpan smile. "Sir, I can't see."
Logan paused, then burst into a loud, echoing fit of genuine laughter. "Okay, okay. Good one. But seriously, what are you thinking?"
Eevlas's smile faded into a look of sheer, brilliant academic focus. "There are thousands of different forms and biological functions across the Accord's races. We breathe different atmospheres, we see different spectrums of light, and our brains process chemicals differently. But... there is one thing almost every single sentient biological creature in this galaxy possesses."
Logan lowered his hands, his engineering mind catching the spark. "What is that?"
"Auditory function," Eevlas stated simply. "The interpretation of physical waves. Whether it is a human eardrum or a Qerrian sensory vane... we all process vibrations."
Logan's jaw dropped. It was a massive, foundational breakthrough.
And so, they entirely abandoned chemical neurology. They began a highly classified, completely rogue side-research project focused purely on vibration and frequency.
Years passed in a blur of intense, thrilling discovery.
Until their Department Head caught wind of their secret experiment.
Logan remembered the cold sweat that had dripped down his neck when the Head of the Ministry had walked into their private lab. But the man hadn't fired them. Instead, he had smiled a chilling, predatory smile, patting them both firmly on the back for their sheer genius.
Then, the Department Head dropped a new restricted data drive onto Eevlas's desk.
"Excellent work, you two. Now, apply your frequency algorithm to this new material," the Head had ordered smoothly. "The Dagmani Thesis."
They both stood in absolute silence, reading the scrolling data and listening to the heavily encrypted audio files of the thesis.
The data explicitly detailed how the specific, sub-audible frequencies emitted by the Dagmani race could violently influence the brain. The soundwaves entered through the ear canal, completely bypassing the subject's conscious filters, and violently jumbled their mental state.
Logan looked over at Eevlas. Her milky eyes were wide, and her tendrils were shivering. She looked profoundly uneasy.
Before he could even ask her what was wrong, the Department Head smoothly stepped between them. He politely excused Eevlas, asking her to step out into the hallway so he could speak to Logan in private.
Once the heavy laboratory doors hissed shut, Logan sat down at the conference table. The Head poured a glass of cold water from a carafe and slid it across the table to him.
"So," the Department Head asked smoothly, steepling his fingers. "What do you think, Kim?"
"I think we must get those Accord troopers the help they need," Logan said immediately, his chest tight. "They are clearly suffering severe neurological side effects from the campaign. And... what about that audio log? Why do I hear a continuous, high-pitched scream in the background?"
The Department Head let out a heavy, incredibly convincing sigh. "That sound... were the Dagmani warriors. They bravely laid down their lives because of their leaders' stubborn, archaic mindset. It is a tragedy of war. But look past the tragedy. What else do you see from this thesis?"
"I see that we must hurry," Logan urged, leaning forward with naive, burning determination. "If we understand how the Dagmani frequency damages the brain, we can build a machine to broadcast the exact inverse of it. We can reverse their side effects. We can heal those troopers."
The Department Head stared at him for a long moment. Slowly, a warm smile spread across his face. He stood up.
"Thank you, Logan," he said softly. "Please, go call Eevlas in for me. I need to speak with her as well."
Logan nodded, walking out into the sterile hallway. Eevlas was standing by the wall, her hands clasped tightly together. She looked visibly nervous, almost terrified.
Logan smiled, stepping up and placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Hey. It's going to be okay. Just go in there and tell him honestly what you think. You're a brilliant scientist, Eev. You're far more capable than me."
Eevlas gave a small, shaky nod. She took a deep breath and walked inside. The heavy doors hissed shut behind her.
And so, he waited.
Logan leaned against the wall. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Then an hour. He continuously checked his chrono, a knot of worry forming in his stomach. 'Why was it taking so long?'
Finally, the doors slid open.
A light, musical laugh echoed out into the hallway. His jaw dropped slightly. The Department Head was walking Eevlas out, his hand resting comfortably on her shoulder. They were chatting amicably, completely relaxed, sharing an inside joke as if they were old friends.
The sheer, terrifying contrast between her previous horror and her current laughter gave him a profound sense of whiplash.
Another year passed.
Logan buried himself in the research, determined to build the healing machine. After twelve grueling months of analyzing the Dagmani audio logs, carefully isolating the frequencies so they wouldn't drive themself crazy in the process, their work finally bore fruit.
They had found it. It was an incredibly subtle, underlying acoustic frequency that bypassed the eardrum entirely. It physically moved and shook the amygdala. It could aggressively hijack a person's emotions, unearth suppressed memories, and constantly trigger primal survival responses.
They had done it. With this mapped out, they could begin the clinical trials to inverse the frequency and cure the traumatized Accord troops.
Logan excitedly rushed into the lab to show Eevlas the completed algorithm.
But when he found her, she was packing her personal terminal into a sterile corporate crate. She was wearing a brand new, crisp grey uniform. Stitched directly onto the shoulder was the silver insignia of the BSO.
"Eevlas? What... what are you doing?" He asked, the datapad dropping slightly in his hand.
Eevlas paused, tracing her fingers over the edge of the crate. "The BSO Tech division made a forward toward me, Logan. I accepted a transfer."
"A transfer?" Logan stammered, stepping closer. "But... the algorithm! We just finished it! We can build the medical machine now!"
Eevlas turned to face him. The warm, gentle Qerrian girl he had protected for years looked entirely different. Her unseeing eyes were cold. Pragmatic.
"Logan," she said softly, her voice entirely devoid of emotion. "With this frequency... interrogation will be completely revolutionized. The BSO won't need truth serums or physical coercion anymore. We can simply play a sound, and their own amygdala will break their minds for us."
The air in his lungs vanished. The room started to spin.
"Eevlas, no," he pleaded, his voice cracking, desperately trying to reason with her. "You can't give this to them!"
"I already did," she replied flatly.
Logan stared at her, entirely heartbroken. His hands shook. "Why?"
"Because this is exactly where the research was leading from the very beginning," Eevlas stated, shutting the lid of her crate with a heavy, definitive click.
He was completely speechless. The betrayal felt like a knife twisting directly into his chest.
Eevlas picked up her crate. As she walked past him toward the door, she paused, tilting her head slightly toward his silence.
"Come on, Logan. You're much cleverer than that," Eevlas whispered, a hint of pity bleeding into her cold voice. "You already knew what they wanted. It's just that you're too stubbornly idealistic to realize it."
…
The sterile, painful memory of the laboratory faded away, returning Logan to the dim, quiet reality of the Round Table Studio programming wing.
Logan took a slow, heavy sip of his brewka, his eyes staring blankly at the dark monitor.
"After that... all my papers were abruptly confiscated," Logan continued, his voice hollow. "I was dragged before a closed-door tribunal. Eevlas and the Department Head testified against me, officially claiming that I was the one trying to steal her research."
Logan let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "It was a flawless execution. I was found guilty. I was immediately stripped of my citizen class and downgraded to a Class F, with an absolute, permanent bar on rank progression."
Arthur sat frozen in his hover chair, his blood running cold.
"I was let go, officially," Logan sighed, tracing the rim of his cup. "But the Ministry of Technology has a strict minimum class requirement for all its employees. So, by Accord law, I was automatically terminated. And because Class F citizens are legally barred from holding intellectual property rights... every single patent I had ever filed automatically defaulted to the Stellar Accord."
Arthur couldn't form words. He sat there, utterly speechless.
He stared at his Head of Programming. When Arthur had originally hired him, Ratik had warned him about Logan's Class F status and the massive gaps in his resume. Arthur had simply assumed Logan was a brilliant guy who had caught a bad break, maybe a victim of corporate downsizing or a minor legal dispute. He couldn't even begin to fathom that the man sitting in front of him had literally designed an acoustic biological weapon, only to have his entire life systematically erased by the Accord.
"I–uhhh," Arthur stammered, completely overwhelmed by the sheer, terrifying weight of his friend's past.
Logan didn't look at him. Instead, he slowly lifted his hand and pointed directly at the untouched Animus 1.0 sitting in the corner of the room.
"That machine is dangerous, Art," Logan warned, his voice trembling slightly as the fear returned. "I've been reading the codexes you gave us. I see what it really does. It physically trances the user. It taps directly into the brain, traces the ancestral DNA, and simulates their senses at one hundred percent capacity."
Logan turned to Arthur, his eyes wide and panicked. "We need a safety net. Way more of a safety net than any of us currently think. The Stellar Accord has the brightest, most ruthless minds in the entire galaxy. When we release our VR machine, they will buy it. They will dissect this machine down to its atomic base. And when they do, they will absolutely find out what it is truly capable of."
Logan gripped his hair, the months of isolated stress completely spilling over. "We've already parsed the code. We're ready to start building our own version of the 1.0. But what if I miss something? What if I overlook a single line of bio-feedback code? What if I handed them another weapon?!"
"Logan."
Arthur's voice was firm, completely cutting through the rising panic.
Logan looked up.
"Then we shall bear it together," Arthur said.
Arthur looked directly into Logan's terrified eyes, his demeanor shifting entirely from a shocked 21 year old into the fiercely protective CEO of Round Table Studio.
"And we will do our absolute utmost to ensure that never happens," Arthur continued, his voice an unshakable anchor. "We already have it under control. We're separating the hardware. We're actively removing the genetic memory readers entirely. And we're isolating and deleting the function that causes the Bleeding Effect. It'll just be a game console. Nothing more. Granted, our internal 1.0 prototype won't be perfect... but we'll do well on the released 2.0."
Arthur stood up from his chair. The ambient light of the hallway caught his silhouette, casting a long, commanding shadow over the desk.
"Besides," Arthur said, offering a small, resolute smile. "I've already decided to protect what is mine. And that includes you."
Arthur reached out and gently tapped the edge of Logan's desk.
"So go forth, Agravaine," Arthur commanded softly. "Build us the future."
The suffocating, decades-old weight resting on Logan's chest suddenly felt a fraction lighter. The crippling paranoia that had driven him to the brink of exhaustion slowly began to recede, replaced by an overwhelming sense of loyalty to the young man standing before him.
Logan couldn't help but smile. He let out a long, shuddering breath, finally feeling safe.
He offered a firm, respectful nod.
"Good night, Art."