The Final Mission
The city was falling apart around them.
Kōto's skyline shimmered with ruptured code and burning crimson light. Entire districts folded inward, collapsing like shattered glass. Buildings glitched, floating in midair. Sirens echoed from every direction as Konran's grip on the world finally fractured.
But Ren didn't care.
He was focused on one thing: getting Kenji out.
They had done it. Together. Ren and Kenji had broken through Konran's defenses. They had reached the core. They had defeated Ito Konran's avatar. But even now—Kenji hadn't woken up.
And Ren knew why.
He remembered now.
The night Kenji collapsed.
They had been mid-mission—fighting their way into Vault 7, pushing further than anyone ever had. Ren's headset battery was low, and he had to log out. But Kenji didn't stop. He kept going. He was close. Too close.
The last thing Kenji ever said that night was:
"I think I found something… I'll finish it."
Moments later, he was ambushed.
Not by random enemies.
By black-armored figures—silent, faster than any AI he'd seen before.
They knocked him down. Dragged him into a red-lit chamber deep within the vault.
Then came the device.
A sharp pulse of digital energy. A noise that sounded like static and screaming layered together.
A synthetic band wrapped around his avatar's head.
Then—
Darkness.
Kenji didn't just pass out in the game.
He collapsed in real life.
That was never a glitch.
It was a trap.
Konran had built it on purpose. A system buried within the game's deepest layers—activated whenever a player got too close to solving the main mission. Whenever someone posed a threat to their perfect order.
They didn't want heroes.
They wanted control.
Kenji wasn't just caught. He was chosen. Targeted.
Because he was smart.
Because he was relentless.
Because he and Ren were different.
Dual Reboot had become a symbol of resistance—and Konran knew it.
They couldn't let them win.
So they took Kenji. Separated his mind from his body. And used him.
Used him for testing.
Used him for experiments.
They kept his consciousness inside the game while his body rotted in a hospital bed, monitored but unreachable. Doctors never found anything wrong—because the damage wasn't physical.
It was digital.
His mind was being pulled, stretched, rewritten inside Kōto. Every memory. Every thought. Every emotion. Logged, analyzed, broken.
Project Synapse wasn't just about immortality.
It was about domination.
Konran didn't just want to create digital life—they wanted to control all human thought. In the game. In real life.
And now, Ren had seen it all.
He looked down at Kenji's body in the pod, flickering between code and flesh, between avatar and real-world scan.
He clutched Kenji's shoulders.
"Ken. It's done. We beat them."
A faint breath. A flicker in his fingers.
"Come back. Please."
Ren pressed the stim into his chest—one last override, one last chance to wake his friend up.
The pod released a burst of white light.
Kenji's eyes shot open.
He gasped. Choked.
Ren laughed and cried all at once.
"You're back," he said, voice cracking.
Kenji blinked, dazed. "Did we…?"
"We finished it," Ren whispered. "Together."
And somewhere deep in the broken halls of Konran's digital fortress, a final system message flashed:
Project Synapse Terminated.
Dual Reboot: Mission Complete.
But it wasn't truly over.
Not yet.