The alarms don't stop so much as give up, one by one, like kids who finally admit the game is over. The building exhales, long and shaky, and everything smells like hot metal trying to cool down.
Ryo is still standing in the middle of the chamber floor, hand open like he's waiting for the harrower to hand back the receipt. The pin is back to room temperature, but it feels… fair, like we both paid something and nobody got cheated.
Through the glass, Mara hasn't moved an inch. She's watching him the way you watch a bomb that just chose not to go off.
"Vitals green across the board," someone says in her earpiece.
"Define green," she mutters.
Ryo's voice comes out cracked and small. "Lieutenant… am I still me?"
Kwan opens his mouth (probably to say something about resonant waveforms) and Mara just looks at him. He closes it again.
She hits the intercom. "We're coming up. You and me. Try not to turn into anything weirder on the way."
He almost smiles. "No promises."
—
The elevator smells like old coins and disinfectant. Sato and Rey ride with us, one statue, one fidgeting mess. Mara stands in front, arms folded, staring at the floor numbers like she's daring them to misbehave.
"You remember what it felt like?" she asks without turning.
"The harrower?"
"You."
He thinks about it. The memory is still warm, like a bruise you keep pressing.
"I felt… seen," he says. "Like someone finally read the manual nobody gave me."
Mara's reflection in the metal door nods once. "Get comfortable with that feeling. It's not going away."
—
Topside, District Seven is pretending nothing happened. The sky is that tired orange cities wear when they're too proud to admit they're hurt. Drones circle lazily overhead like bored vultures. A couple of teenagers are already live-streaming the cordon tape, narrating conspiracy theories to twelve viewers and a bot farm.
Mara steers him toward an armored wagon that looks embarrassed to be black. "Central wants a full scan before anyone asks you your star sign."
"Scanned for what?"
"Anything your body's hiding from both of us."
He snorts. "Pretty sure my bones are worse liars than I am."
—
The scan room is all white curves and humming rings. It feels like being inside a very expensive MRI that secretly judges you.
Kwan shows up practically glowing, coat half-on, hair doing its usual impression of an explosion in a mattress factory.
"Ryo, this is incredible. The shard's frequency is literally rewriting sequences in your cells. Not overwriting—integrating. Like your DNA just got a software update from the future."
Ryo blinks. "So I'm… a patch note?"
Mara folds her arms. "Great. He's a thumb drive with anxiety.
Kwan ignores her, too excited to care about insults. "We're calling it the Hollow Code. Because it doesn't fill space; it makes space. Every time we try to read it, it writes a newer version of itself. It's beautiful."
Ryo tastes the name. Hollow. Yeah. That fits. There's a space inside him now that wasn't there yesterday, and something's already moving furniture in.
Before he can answer, every light in the room dims like someone turned down the sun.
The holo-screens stutter, then freeze on a single frame: his own face. Except the timestamp says Sublevel Three—right now—and the eyes looking back are way too calm.
"Uh," a tech says, "that feed is live."
"But he's here," Sato points out, hand already on his sidearm.
On every screen, the other Ryo smiles the slow smile of someone who's been waiting a long time to be recognized.
He lifts the pin. It glows the exact same red that's currently camped out under Ryo's ribs.
He mouths one word. No sound, but every system in the room translates it the same:
Return.
Then the lights cut to black.
When power snaps back thirty seconds later, the screens are blank.
The only thing left glowing is the pin in Ryo's hand.
It's warm now.
And it's humming hello to something on the other side of the dark.