Chapter Four: The First Experiment

Sublevel C smelled like dust, metal, and things that had been forgotten on purpose.

The door groaned shut behind us, and for a moment none of us spoke. The room was larger than I’d expected—wide enough to have once held something important. Old desks were stacked along one wall, their surfaces etched with faint system warnings that had long since faded. The ceiling lights flickered, unsure whether they were still required to function.

“This place feels illegal,” Luna said cheerfully. “I love it already.”

Sera ignored her and surveyed the room with quiet focus.

“No active system terminals. Signal interference is high. That’s probably why it was abandoned.”

“That or something bad happened here,” Luna added.

I swallowed. “Let’s assume both.”

We chose a table near the center, clearing off a layer of dust. My notebook lay between us, blank page open, pen ready. Writing things down felt important. Real. Like anchoring myself.

“Before anything else,” I said, “we agree on rules.”

Luna groaned again. “You and rules.”

“Especially me and rules,” I replied. “If this goes wrong, it goes wrong fast.”

Sera nodded. “He’s right.”

That shut Luna up—for about three seconds.

“Fine,” she said. “Rule one: no dying.”

I wrote it down anyway.

We started with observation. No triggering, no forcing. Just… waiting. I focused inward, on the strange sensation I now recognized as the edge of something else.

The pressure. The door.

Nothing happened.

Minutes passed. The room remained stubbornly normal.

Luna kicked a chair lightly. “Maybe it only works when you’re stressed.”

“I was stressed last night,” I said. “And yesterday afternoon. I don’t think panic is the key.”

Sera leaned forward. “What did it feel like, exactly? Before it happened.”

I closed my eyes, replaying the moment. “Like gravity forgot which way was down. Like the world hesitated.”

“And during?”

“Like stepping into a life that had already started without me.”

The lights flickered harder.

All three of us froze.

“That wasn’t me,” I said quickly.

“I know,” Sera replied. Her gaze had sharpened. “The system reacted.”

A voice cut through the tension.

“You’re not supposed to be down here.”

We spun around.

A boy stood near the doorway, tablet in hand, eyes flicking rapidly between us, the room, and the faint distortion in the air that hadn’t quite faded yet. His stats were unimpressive at a glance, but his Intelligence number was high enough to matter.

“Relax,” he said quickly, raising one hand. “I’m not reporting you. If I were, I’d already be gone.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Sera asked.

He pushed his glasses up, clearly nervous. “Following an error.”

That got my attention.

“I’m Ryo Tanaka,” he continued.

“And your presence triggered a system anomaly alert that wasn’t routed through standard channels. That shouldn’t be possible.”

Luna blinked. “Oh. A smart one.”

Ryo ignored her and looked directly at me. Not at my stats. At me.

“You,” he said slowly, “are not registered correctly.”

My stomach tightened.

“I don’t mean low stats,” he added.

“I mean incomplete indexing. The system treats you like a corrupted file.”

Sera exhaled softly. “So we’re not imagining it.”

Ryo’s eyes lit up. “You know?”

I hesitated. Then nodded. “I can… go somewhere else.”

Silence fell.

Ryo stared at me like I’d just confessed to rewriting physics. Luna’s grin widened. Sera remained still, absorbing the implications.

“Show us,” Luna said immediately.

“No,” Sera and I said at the same time.

Ryo blinked. “Please,” he added, quieter.

“I’ve been tracking inconsistencies for two years. Minor probability fluctuations. Memory overlaps. Dead-end data clusters. They all point to something being sealed off.”

“Other realities,” Sera said.

Ryo swallowed. “Archived timelines.”

The word settled heavily between us.

I rubbed my temples. The pressure was back, faint but insistent. “If I do this,” I said, “we do it carefully. Controlled. I don’t know what it costs yet.”

Luna tilted her head. “Costs?”

“I don’t think the other me… comes back.”

The room went very quiet.

Sera met my eyes.

“Then this isn’t borrowing power.

It’s exchanging existence.”

Ryo looked pale.

“That’s—”

“Morbid,” Luna finished, softer than usual.

“Yeah.”

I stood, heart pounding.

“One minute. No forcing.

If anything feels wrong, you pull me back.”

“How?” Luna asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think intention matters.”

I closed my eyes.

The door responded instantly.

The pressure surged, stronger than before, as if encouraged by witnesses. The room blurred. Gravity twisted. For a split second, I felt resistance—like something trying to hold me in place.

Then I was gone.

This time, the transition hurt.

I landed hard on cracked pavement, the smell of smoke filling my lungs. Sirens wailed in the distance.

The sky above was a sickly orange, choked with ash. My body moved before I could think, dragging me behind cover as something exploded nearby.

Not noir.

War.

Fear slammed into me, raw and overwhelming. This version of me was younger, sharper, wired for survival. My hands shook as they checked a weapon I knew how to use but had never held.

“No,” I whispered. “Too much.”

I forced myself to focus—not on the world, but on the room below Helix Academy.

On the faces waiting for me.

On the idea of return.

The pain spiked.

Then snapped.

I collapsed onto the floor of Sublevel C, gasping. Sera caught me before I hit the table.

Luna swore loudly.

Ryo stared, eyes wide, tablet forgotten on the floor.

I laughed weakly. “Okay. New rule.”

Sera’s voice was steady, but her grip was tight. “Which is?”

“We don’t go there again.”