🌑

“Make it happen,” you tell Zeta.

“I can always improvise an adapter, but I’ll need some wires, little ones...” it says.

You signal Akiko to sign to her. “We need wires.”

She hands you her bag, opening its front pocket. Inside you see bundles and coils of many sizes and standards of wires and cables. You hand it to Zeta. “Will that suffice?”

“Wow, yeah probably. I’ll get it done!”

“Be careful!” you say.

“If the thing trying to kill us is hosted on the mainframe, it probably won’t risk anything down there,” it says.

“Just in case, I’ll try and lure it away. It seems to be targeting me,” you say.

“Good luck, Aydan!” It hugs you, then steps onto the elevator and slams the button. The gate closes and it descends out of sight.

Akiko clings to you, signing, “It’s so cold...”

“It’s not safe here. Let’s go up to the surface,” you say. Something about those words echoes in your mind. You don’t understand. The surface? You call the elevator back and ascend.

It’s dark in the factory. It should still be early afternoon, but no sunlight shines through the shattered windows. A chilling wind blows through, carrying dust that glimmers, with no light source around.

“What’s going on, Aydan?” Akiko signs.

“I wish I knew...” You cross the dusty floor back to the entrance, with Akiko following, still holding your hand. The shining particles drifting through the air pass right through your body.

The Earth’s gravity feels much weaker up here. Maybe a third as strong, somehow. And even when you’re standing still, you have the strangest sensation of motion.

You open the door and freeze--the ground beyond the factory has vanished. The Academy, or Akiko’s school, or the city, the trees, the fence--all gone. All you see is a glass wall in the distance between you and a void that seems at once impossibly far and just within reach. You see the same bizarre constellations you caught a glimpse of in the portal. Most of them are covered by spectral clouds--white and grey, ever shifting, turning, breaking, melting--enveloped by black auras that occlude the darkness beyond the stars.

You take a deep breath. Even that doesn’t feel real. You sign to Akiko, “It’s all gone...”

“What do you mean, gone?” she signs.

“It’s taken everything, whatever this darkness is. The school, the world, everything but this place, where its mind is rooted...” You lean back against the door frame, staring out into non-space. “I don’t even know how to describe what I’m seeing. Does everything feel wrong to you too?”

She slides her fingers across the door, over the wall. “Everything feels empty...no texture, no temperature. Except you, you feel as soft and warm as ever.”

“At least I might be real...” you sign. “But what does that say for the rest of the world? What’s going on?” You try to think back on the events of the past few days. They stick in your mind, every moment clear. But before that...nothing. “Akiko, can you remember last year?”

“Now that you mention it...I can’t remember...”

“Your school? Your childhood?” you sign.

“No...”

“Me neither...not even...any other people but you and Zeta.”

Akiko feels the wall. “It’s getting...thinner...brittle...”

“We might not be safe here. Let’s go.” You return to the elevator. You look back as the gates close, and no longer see the wall, the door, or half of the floor.

“Wait...” You take a step back out, and another meter of the floor appears at the edge. “It’s not closing in on the building, it’s closing in on me. It’s...nothing far from me is...rendering?”

“What does it mean?” Akiko signs.

“I don’t know, but I need to see if Zeta’s okay.” You hit the button again. You watch the walls drift up around you through the holes in the gate, but you can’t feel the motion of the platform--only the strange sensation of sideways motion that persists everywhere you go.

You stop at the terminal layer, now freezing cold. Air no longer seems to matter, if you don’t think about breathing.

“Aydan!” Zeta sits at the terminal. “Everything okay up there?”

“Not in the slightest. Everything real to me is falling apart...I don’t know what will happen next! At least you’re okay,” you say. “What about the transfer?”

“It’s all working, I got it hooked up, got out of that glitchy chat program to a shell, got it to recognize the storage...it’s easier than it should have been, almost like it wants me to do it.”

“It’s ÆON...” you say. “Æ’s still in there, so there’s still a chance to save Ær. Do it.”

“All I need is your encryption password to access the drive.” Zeta offers you the chair and the keyboard.