The first thing I notice after the split is that the silence is lying.
On the surface, it's nothing: no hum, no fans, no distant ventilation. Just a corridor, long and pale, lit by a light source that never picked a direction.
But if I listen sideways, there's something under it. Not a sound, exactly. More like the feeling of people talking in the next apartment with the TV on too loud for you to catch the words.
I am very definitely alone.
"Samira?" I try anyway.
My voice goes nowhere. No echo, despite all the white.
"Echo?"
Nothing.
The last thing I remember is their hands in mine, the three of us stepping into the route that was supposed to drag us back toward Null-01. A neat, labelled artery in the Great End's body.
Then: tear sideways, like a zipper pulled wrong.
Now: this.
The corridor runs straight in both directions, vanishing into identical distance. The walls look like plaster until I get close enough to see the grain of something else underneath. Not metal. Not stone. A texture like compressed paper.
Box files.
The walls are made of very densely packed case files, ghosted into solid.
On my left, midway up, a line of text extrudes faintly, like ink trying to remember itself.
CASE 7F-19N – RESIDUAL: 4%
ROUTE: UNRESOLVED / MOBILE
"That's me," I tell the wall, in case it has forgotten.
The text fades, then sharpens, like something is squinting at me.
A new line appears beneath it.
SUPERVISORY NOTE: LEAVE IT. I WANT TO SEE WHERE IT GOES.
"That's you," I tell whoever wrote it.
I don't know if they can hear me from wherever they sit in this structure. Maybe they're in a room like Samira's conference hall, shuffling simulations like cards. Maybe they're a retired algorithm that learned to want things.
Either way, I'm still here because they were curious.
Four percent residual.
Samira called it a crack. Gabriel called it an allergy. The city called it a route.
I start walking.
It's not like I have anything better to do.
After a while, the corridor widens. The walls pull back into a circular chamber with four doors and a hole in the floor.
The hole isn't a hole in the normal sense. It's an absence you can look at. Staring into it feels like staring into an unplugged screen that still knows every image it's ever shown.
There's a sign above it:
PRIMARY DROP: NULL-01 CORE
STATUS: SEALED – INTERNAL CLEANSING ACTIVE
IMPLEMENTATION: MARA
My stomach clenches.
"So that's what you're doing," I say, picturing corridors back home smeared in red, Gabriel waiting at the end like a punctuation mark.
I edge away from the drop. If I jump, best case, I land in the middle of Mara's breakdown. Worst case, I scatter myself across whatever she's become.
Samira would call that "unhelpful."
Samira.
Echo.
The fact that neither of them are in this corridor with me feels wrong, like a sentence missing verbs.
I turn to the doors.
Each has a small, discrete label.
NULL-002 – INDUSTRIAL SATELLITE – STATUS: DEPRECATED / PARTIAL COLLAPSE
NULL-006 – RING CITY – STATUS: STABLE / HIGH LOAD
TRAINING ARTERY – CROSS-SYSTEM MODULE EXPORT – STATUS: ACTIVE
ARCHIVE SPUR – LEGACY CASE STORAGE – STATUS: QUIET
I've been to 002. Or a version of it. The ruined system with the daemon corpse and Mikheil's fingerprints in everything. The idea of going back there right now makes me feel like I've swallowed a handful of wires.
006 is tempting. Stable sounds nice. Too nice.
The Archive Spur hums in a way that says "if you walk in here, you will not leave unless someone writes a report."
So, Training Artery.
The phrase tastes like bureaucracy and Echo's handwriting.
The door opens when I touch it.
Inside is another corridor, but this one isn't pretending to be anything else. Cables crawl along the ceiling. Panels in the walls blink faintly with module IDs. The air smells faintly of warm dust and old coffee.
This is where the system's stories travel between Nulls.
I walk.
As I go, panels light up briefly when I pass, like they're checking my badge.
7F-19N-A – INITIAL LOSS SEQUENCE – DEPLOYED
7F-19N-B – ACCEPTANCE MODEL – DEPLOYED
7F-19N-K – GLOBAL SUITE – DEPLOYING
I stop at that last one.
GLOBAL SUITE.
The panel flickers, then shows a still image.
Me.
Except not really.
The version of my face they used for the nice, tidy training module. Neutral expression. Good lighting. No grief under the eyes.
I press my fingers to the panel.
For a moment, the image glitches.
Underneath, like a double exposure, I see something else: a line of text that doesn't fit the usual tone.
If you were Noor, what would you do?
E) Notice that every choice serves the system, not you, and ask who that's for.
I can almost hear Echo's sarcastic little hum in the wording.
"Of course you did," I whisper. "Of course you hacked the script."
The panel scrolls down.
There's another line:
In your own words, explain why you chose E.
Beneath it, a small counter.
RESPONSES: 001, 002, 003, 004…
As I watch, it ticks up.
5.
6.
It's not just my Null running this anymore.
Somewhere out there, other trainees in other cities are watching this pretty, cleaned-up version of me talk about endless death like it's a volunteer programme. And some of them are choosing the fifth answer, the one they weren't supposed to see, and writing something honest.
The corridor suddenly feels less silent.
I lean my head against the panel.
"Can I hear them?" I ask, feeling foolish.
The wall thinks about it.
Then, softly, a voice threads into the air.
"I chose E because I've watched my mother grieve three times and sign papers twice," a woman says. "The city didn't hold her up either time. Why would this be different?"
Another voice fades in over hers, younger.
"I chose E because if stories are so important, why is mine a footnote? Why is Noor an example and I'm just a line in a workbook?"
A third, older this time, careful.
"I chose E because I've been doing this job for fifteen years and I don't sleep. If accepting is so good for us, why does everyone who accepts look hollow after?"
The panel glow pulses with each sentence, like it's straining to hold them all.
There's anger in them, and confusion, and a kind of tired clarity I recognize.
"Echo," I say, throat tight. "What did you do."
The corridor answers in its own way.
New lines appear under the module ID.
TAG: ANOMALY_FEEDBACK ROUTE
PHRASE WATCH: "NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TURNED INTO CONTENT"
Somewhere, on some other console, Echo added that field. Made sure the system wouldn't just average these complaints into a nicer graph.
It's routing them.
To where?
Probably to the same place my file goes when people don't know what to do with me.
Four percent isn't nothing.
Four percent, multiplied by enough people, starts to sound like a chorus.
Samira told me saving the world wouldn't give my life meaning.
Standing in this artery, listening to strangers refuse my pre-approved ending, I think maybe she was right.
This isn't about me being important.
It's about what the system does to anyone who isn't.
"I'm not a hero," I tell the panel, because saying it out loud still feels like a kind of protection. "I'm a bad example they lost control of."
The panel doesn't disagree.
Another voice threads in, softer than the rest.
"I chose E," someone whispers, "because I don't want to be content. I want to be here."
The last word lands like a stone in my chest.
Here.
As if being alive and not yet filed is a location you can point to.
I push away from the wall.
"Okay," I say. "Fine. I get it. You're not going to let me curl up in the ductwork and wait this out."
I follow the artery.
Modules blur past. Variations on my story. Other cases. Other cities. Endless spin-offs of the same argument: is it kinder to cut cleanly, or to let the wound stay open.
At a junction the corridor splits.
One branch is marked:
EXPORT: NULL-CLUSTER WEST / HIGH COMPLIANCE
The other:
EXPORT: CLUSTER 3H-DELTA / RESIDUAL ANOMALY
3H-Delta.
Riverside.
The district where we found all those threads tugging from the same street, where the city waited between heartbeats, where the girl with the orange scarf told me I'd come back to see the true form of memory.
The voices in the walls hiss around that label, like steam hitting cold metal.
Some of the complaints route that way. Patterns drawn to patterns.
"Of course," I say. "Of course it's you."
I put my hand on the 3H-Delta path.
The corridor shivers.
For a heartbeat I feel the daemon I killed, like an old scar aching in bad weather. St. Elmo, dissected and used as skeleton in the Great End's plumbing, twitching as his structures are repurposed.
I brace for resistance.
Instead, a short, reluctant line prints itself on the wall.
OVERSIGHT NOTE: EXCEPTION GRANTED – SUBJECT 7F-19N MAY TRAVERSE
"Thank you," I say, because I was raised to be polite even to people trying to erase me.
The door opens.
Behind it is not a corridor.
It's a platform.
Stone under my boots. Overhead, a sky too low and too grey to belong to any simulation I've seen in a training room. Tram wires cut lines across it, hanging slack.
I know this place.
Not from Null. From the city that stole me the first time.
"You'll come back here once more," she said, "to see the true form of memory."
Wind brushes my face, cold and wet and smelling of a river that refuses to stay in its banks.
Somewhere out of sight, a fridge hums behind a thin wall. A TV mutters through the floor. Traffic lights click over for no one.
The corridor behind me waits, door still open, like a throat that could swallow me back into the Great End if someone changed their mind.
The wall above it flickers one more time.
CASE 7F-19N – ROUTE: FIELD
RESIDUAL: 4% – ACTIVE
Four percent.
Enough, apparently, to stand on a platform between a global death machine and a city that refuses to be scenery.
I take a breath that tastes of wet stone and old smoke.
Then I step off the threshold and into the waiting street.
Act Thirty-Eighth's End – "jurisdiction."