The sirens are gone, but the quiet feels fake, like a kid holding his breath so you won't notice he broke the lamp.
Ryo sits on the edge of the gurney, legs dangling like a little kid legs. The pin rests in his palm, warm now, the way your phone gets when it's been working too hard.
Mara leans in the doorway, arms folded so tight her knuckles are white. She looks like someone who's trying to decide whether to hug him or handcuff him to the bed so he can't vanish again.
Kwan is rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Nine minutes, forty seconds of perfect static field. Hollow Code never even tried to jump. It just… watched."
"It waited," Mara corrects.
"It watched," Kwan insists, voice cracking with leftover awe. "From half a second to the side of now."
Ryo closes his fingers. The pin doesn't cool. It settles, like it's happy to be home.
"It smiled," he says.
Sato mutters from the corner, "Copies don't smile. People do."
Rey, quiet until now, whispers, "Maybe it's not a copy. Maybe it's a version."
The room gets heavier.
—
They herd him into a tiny briefing room that rattles every time a train passes underneath. The holo plays on loop: the blackout, the dead screens, then that one frozen frame of his own face mouthing Return like a glitchy subtitles.
Kwan sketches glowing lines in the air. "We've been translating wrong. Hollow Code isn't a message. It's grammar."
"English, Doc," Mara sighs.
"It's not saying 'come back.' It's saying 'return this value to the function that called it.'"
Ryo is the result that got sent back."
Ryo's throat clicks when he swallows. "Who made the call?"
Nobody answers. The silence is thick enough to chew.
—
They name the plan Ghost Protocol because giving scary things cute names makes soldiers feel braver.
The idea: let the Hollow Code "phase" Ryo into whatever sideways place the other him is hiding, slap an anchor on it, then yank. Worst case, they lose one Ryo. Best case, they only lose one Ryo.
Mara hates every version of that sentence.
In the prep bay she corners him alone.
"If the tether snaps and you get stuck," she says, "you cut it yourself. You hear me? No waiting for me to play hero. You cut it."
Her voice is steady, but her eyes are doing that thing where they shine too much.
"I'll try," he says.
"Try harder."
He almost smiles. "Yes, ma'am."
—
The tunnel they pick is an old commuter line the city gave up on twenty years ago. Concrete arches overhead like a dinosaur skeleton that forgot to finish dying. Air tastes like pennies and wet cardboard.
Kwan's team sets up twelve projectors in a ring around a chalk circle that looks way too much like a target.
Rey runs cables like he's trying to tie the universe in a knot it can't escape.
Sato paces, counting steps nobody asked him to count.
Ryo steps into the circle.
The world hiccups.
One second he's standing on cold concrete.
The next he's walking down a hallway made of deleted scenes from his own life.
Streetlights that never existed. The lab, but the lights are wrong. The elevator that smelled like metal and fear. Rain that never fell on the night everything started.
At the far end, a little cursor blinks—same color as the inside of your eyelids when you press too hard.
Mara's voice, thin through the earpiece: "Talk to me, kid."
"I'm in a hallway built out of stuff I didn't choose," he says.
"Don't choose anything," Kwan squeaks. "Just look."
Ryo walks.
A kid version of himself steps out of a doorway, wearing a school jacket he never owned, looking exhausted.
"Return," the kid says, like he's reading a line he hates.
"I know," Ryo answers. "Who called me?"
The kid points behind Ryo—into the past, into the dark. "He did."
Ryo doesn't turn around.
He keeps walking.
An older version sits on stairs that go nowhere, spinning a ring between his fingers like a worry stone.
"Why?" Ryo asks.
The older him shrugs. "It's cleaner to be written than to write."
Another voice from the ceiling—another Ryo, hanging upside down, grinning with a split lip and a grin that hurts.
"We figured out the joke," upside-down him says. "Writing hurts less than being written."
A third voice from the shadows ahead: "I just ran."
Ryo stops. All the versions flicker at the edges like bad signal.
Mara's voice, soft: "Stay with my voice, Ryo."
"They're all me," he says. "And none of them are here to help."
—
He reaches the end.
The cursor turns into the smiling not-Ryo from the lab footage. Same face, but the eyes are older than grief.
"Return," it says again.
"Return to what?"
"To caller. To origin."
"Who called?"
It thinks about it. "You did. Once."
"Then return to me."
The smile stretches, patient. "Can't. You're already used."
The word used lands like a slap.
"By what?"
It lifts its hand. A pin in its palm, but the color is wrong—something you only see in dreams you don't wake up from.
"Hollow Code doesn't fill," it says. "It replaces. You called. You were answered. You are the return value."
Ryo's mouth goes dry. "Then what are you?"
"Caller."
All the versions behind him inhale at the same time.
Mara's voice slices through: "Spike—pulling in three—"
"No," Ryo says. "Wait."
He steps forward.
"You want the return? Take me. But leave them alone."
It tilts its head. "Define them."
"All of them."
"Define you."
Ryo doesn't have an answer.
The corridor folds in on itself.
—
He slams back into his body so hard the tunnel spins.
Mara is already on her knees beside him, hand on his neck like she's checking if his pulse still remembers how to be human.
"I'm here," he croaks.
Sato is swearing at numbers. Rey is crying and pretending it's sweat. Kwan stares at the circle like it just stole his religion.
Because one of the twelve projectors is simply gone.
Not broken.
Gone.
Like the world reached in and took it.
Mara's eyes flick to the empty spot, then to the tether still tied around Ryo's wrist. The line disappears into thin air like it's fishing in a pond that isn't there.
A voice drifts out of the dark, calm, tired, honest.
"It's cleaner to be written."
Mara raises her gun on instinct.
"Don't," Ryo says, grabbing her wrist. "That one's me."
The tether twitches, gentle, curious.
Somewhere in the space the projector used to occupy, something is learning how to be still.
Ryo looks at Mara.
"I didn't bring anything back," he says.
She waits.
"I think we made room."
The pin in his hand warms, patient, like it's been waiting its whole life for this exact sentence.
And somewhere behind reality, a cursor blinks once.
Waiting for someone to press enter.