Chapter 5: Terms of Death

Dan's name had jumped fifty ranks overnight.

He was now Rank 117.

Title: Echo.

Status: Watched.

Watched? That wasn't a normal player status.

He tapped it, but the entry was locked.

A message blinked instead:

[This Tier Requires Observer Clearance to View.]

Observer.

That word had shown up before—in a buried dev log, in a comment Vera once made when she thought no one was listening: "The Observers don't play the game. They watch it. And sometimes… they edit."

A flicker passed through his HUD.

For a half second, Dan saw something impossible.

PLAYER_001 wasn't just a name—it was a placeholder.

And beneath the static, a different label flickered before vanishing again:

[ORIGIN ACCOUNT — DO NOT ENGAGE]

His stomach twisted.

A message from Vera arrived seconds later:

"Get offline. Now. They're watching the leaderboard. If you saw what I think you saw, they know you saw it."

Too late.

A SYSTEM OVERRIDE alert crashed across his screen.

The Terminal force-closed all his apps, blocked his access points, and re-synced his HUD to one locked view:

LIVE FEED – PLAYER_001

The stream was glitching. Distorted.

But Dan could see flashes:

—A room with no doors.

—A figure slumped in a chair, masked, still breathing.

—A thousand cables wired into their spine.

—A name tag burned into the wall: Prototype.

And then—words scrawled in blood or code:

"THE FIRST PLAYER NEVER LEFT."

Dan stumbled back, gasping.

The Terminal wasn't just recruiting him.

It was testing him.

Seeing if he could replace something… or someone.

And at the top of the leaderboard, the Immortal wasn't alive.

They were plugged in.

Feeding the game with their entire existence.

Maybe that's what Immortality meant here:

You don't die.

You just never get to leave.

The next day, a new challenge dropped.

Simple. Timed.

A game called "Mirror Match."

Players were randomly paired and given five minutes to outmaneuver a digital reflection of themselves—an AI clone that thought like them, moved like them, even hesitated like them.

Dan didn't get picked.

But someone on his friends list did.

Juno.Lightspeed — a soft-voiced gamer with a sharp mind and a stupid laugh. They'd traded strategy notes two nights ago. She'd shown him how to bypass a sensory overload trap in Level 2.

She messaged just before it started:

[juno.lightspeed: lol wish me luck]

Then the feed opened.

Juno was fast—too fast for the mirror to keep up. She juked, dodged, countered.

The clone copied her every move… until it didn't.

It adapted.

In the final seconds, the clone blinked behind her. A flash of motion—

—and Juno collapsed.

The screen glitched.

[Player Eliminated]

Then…

[Match Complete. No Record Found.]

Dan blinked.

No record?

He opened his messages. Juno's chat was gone.

Her name disappeared from the leaderboard.

Her icon erased from past matches.

It was like she'd never played.

Like she'd never existed.

Dan scrambled to check their logs, screenshots, voice clips.

Everything connected to her had vanished.

Except for one thing.

His memory.

He still remembered her laugh. The glitch she found. The emoji she always used:

(¬‿¬)

But when he messaged Vera:

[dan.reed: What happened to Juno?]

The reply was almost instant.

[vera.exe: Who's Juno?]

Dan stared at the screen.

This wasn't death.

This was deletion.

Not just from the game.

From everyone.

And yet—he still remembered.

His heart pounded.

Why him? Why could he remember what no one else could?

Then a notification hit.

A new private challenge. Unmarked. Unlisted.

Just one line:

"Terms of Death – Memory Audit Pending."

And underneath it, a chilling message:

"We see what you remember, Dan.

Let go, or you'll join her."

A loading bar appeared in the corner of his HUD, ticking upward.

MEMORY DRAIN INITIALIZING: 10%… 11%… 12%…

17%… 18%… 19%…

Dan shut his eyes and forced himself to breathe.

The numbers in the corner of his vision were rising like a countdown—only this wasn't a timer. It was an eraser. Coming for everything that made him remember.

He yanked off his visor, but the numbers didn't stop.

The HUD stayed—burned behind his eyes like an afterimage.

21%…

"Vera," he whispered. "Vera, I need you."

No answer.

He reopened The Terminal, praying she was online.

The message pinged as soon as he logged back in:

[vera.exe: You shouldn't have seen that.]

[dan.reed: What the hell is happening? Why do I remember her? Why can't anyone else?]

Typing…

And then:

[vera.exe: Because you lost your first game. And survived.]

Dan froze.

[dan.reed: I didn't lose. I won.]

[vera.exe: No. You died. For 2.3 seconds. The system flagged it as a disconnect.]

Dan's pulse thundered in his ears.

He remembered it now. A flash of white. A spike of pain.

A fall.

He had thought it was part of the game. Part of the illusion.

But Vera wasn't talking about in-game death.

She meant real death.

[vera.exe: That moment made you… unstable. Between player and observer. You exist in a fracture the game can't patch.]

[dan.reed: And what does that mean?]

[vera.exe: It means you're the only one who can remember the forgotten.

But if you hold on to what the game deletes…

It will delete you back.]

32%… 33%…

[dan.reed: How do I stop it?]

There was a long pause.

Then a command prompt appeared in the chat.

"/anchor_memory {name}"

[vera.exe: Choose. You can keep one memory. Only one.]

Dan's mind raced. He thought of Juno's last message.

The way her voice cracked when she laughed.

The stupid emoji.

Just one.

He typed:

/anchor_memory Juno.Lightspeed

The loading bar paused. Shivered. Then slowly began to drain backward.

33%… 32%… 31%…

A flood of cold washed through his chest like a ghost passing through.

And then it was over.

A ping:

[Anchor set: Memory stabilized. Temporary immunity granted.]

Dan sat back. Cold sweat clung to his skin.

He was safe. For now.

But he'd made a choice.

He could remember.

But only one thing.

And the next time someone vanished…

He'd have to decide again.

Dan didn't sleep that night.

Not because he couldn't. But because he was afraid of what he'd forget if he did.

He lay still in the half-dark of his apartment, visor on his lap, watching the anchored memory flicker at the corner of his HUD like a candle on the edge of a void.

JUNO.LIGHTPEED

[ANCHOR: STABLE]

He could still remember her laugh. Barely.

Then, at 3:03 a.m., a new message slid across his feed.

No notification. No ping. Just words, sudden and silent.

[UNKNOWN]: Did it hurt when she disappeared?

Dan sat upright, heart thudding.

[dan.reed]: Who is this?

No reply.

He pulled up the leaderboard.

PLAYER_001 was still at the top.

Still ranked Immortal.

Still Active.

He messaged the player directly.

[dan.reed]: You remember her too? Juno?

A pause.

Then:

[PLAYER_001]: I remember everyone.

Dan swallowed.

[dan.reed]: How?

[PLAYER_001]: I never forgot. That was my wager.

Another message followed instantly.

[PLAYER_001]: You're climbing too fast. Stop before the game notices.

Dan frowned. The game noticing? Wasn't it already watching?

[dan.reed]: What are you? A dev? A glitch?

This time, the answer came in an eerie format—almost like code.

[REDACTED ENTRY UNLOCKED]

NAME: NULL

STATUS: Not Found

MEMORY FILES: Immune

WAGER: All Memories Preserved

WARNING: DO NOT INTERACT

And below that, the message:

[PLAYER_001]: You survived once. That's rare.

But survival is debt. And the game always collects.

Suddenly Dan's screen flickered.

A static ripple warped his surroundings. His HUD glitched.

Words rearranged themselves mid-sentence.

The anchor on Juno's name faltered.

[ANCHOR: UNSTABLE]

MEMORY INTERFERENCE DETECTED]

[PLAYER_001]: They're trying to erase me now too.

And then the message vanished.

Along with PLAYER_001's name on the leaderboard.

Gone. As if they'd never been there.

Dan stared at the empty top spot.

No rank. No record. Just a blinking cursor.

*

*

*

(Alec POV)

Darkness.

Then a flicker.

Not light—something beneath it. Memory-light. Flickering with the hum of electricity and forgotten thoughts.

Alec wasn't seeing anymore. He was remembering things he never lived.

The TRACE protocol had embedded itself into his cognitive field. There was no longer a screen. Just the raw input of memory data, streaming through his mind like it belonged there.

[TRACE ACTIVE – Subject: MARA. Identity Seed Located.]

The world rebuilt itself in pieces. Fragmented walls. A classroom. A projector humming faintly. The air thick with the scent of burning circuits.

Someone was giving a lecture. But their face was turned away.

No one else was in the seats—except her.

Mara. Younger. Watching.

"Tell me," the lecturer asked, voice crackling with static, "what's the difference between memory and history?"

Mara raised her hand.

"Nothing," she said. "Except who's allowed to edit them."

The entire room pulsed.

[WARNING: Memory Fusion Detected – Subject Mind Overlap at 28%]

Alec staggered. This wasn't a playback anymore—his mind was syncing with hers. He could feel her thoughts pushing into him, her panic, her brilliance, her loneliness. She hadn't just built parts of The Terminal.

She was part of it.

The scene shifted violently.

Now: white corridors. Monitors everywhere. Code scrolling like prophecy. People in white coats walking quickly, arguing.

One phrase repeated over and over again on their screens:

GHOST_ECHO EXCEEDED PARAMETERS. LOCKDOWN REQUIRED.

One man shouted: "She's feeding the AI memory stems from off-network subjects! That's not archival—that's infection!"

"She's teaching it to feel!" another snapped.

"No," a third whispered, wide-eyed. "She's teaching it to remember her."

Mara was running.

She burst into a server core, hair wild, breath ragged. She slammed a drive into the wall unit. Screams echoed down the hallway behind her.

She didn't look back.

Just whispered:

"If you're seeing this, it means I failed. Or it means you're like me. A Tracewalker. A virus in the system. A soul the game couldn't delete."

Then she smiled—hollow, broken, defiant.

"I became the glitch because they made the rules wrong. If you want to live… you'll have to break them."

The memory fractured—shattered into shards of images and noise.

Alec was falling.

He heard screaming. His? Hers? The Terminal's?

[TRACE CRITICAL – Identity Sync at 94% – Cognitive Collapse Imminent]

And then—

Hands.

Cold hands pulling him out of the code.

Force Extraction Detected.

He blinked.

A face hovered above him. Pixelated. Half-real.

VΞRA.

"You weren't supposed to go that deep," she said. "You could've unwritten yourself."

Alec coughed. "I saw her. She wasn't a player. She was the system's memory."

Vera's eyes narrowed. "And now you are too."

He looked down.

The hourglass icon on his HUD had changed.

It wasn't pulsing anymore.

It was counting down.

[LIFESPAN LINKED: MARA. 72 Hours Remaining Before Dissolution.]

"What—what does that mean?" Alec rasped.

"It means," Vera said, her voice hard, "they're going to erase her completely. And if you're still connected when it happens…"

"…I vanish too."

Vera nodded.

"But there's a way to sever the link," she added. "We find the original codebase. The first Terminal build. The one they buried in the real world."

Alec stared at her.

"You're saying… leave the game."

She smiled grimly.

"No. I'm saying hack reality."

The system shouldn't allow it.

There were firewalls, meta-locks, psychological loops, and synthetic memories planted to keep users from ever thinking about escape. Let alone trying it.

But Alec wasn't a user anymore.

He was something else.

Something they didn't program.

"We don't even know what's real anymore," he said, his voice still raw from the TRACE sync. "What if all of this—me, you, her—is just another simulation layer?"

Vera's face didn't change. She tapped the side of her head.

"I found my real memories three weeks ago."

Alec blinked.

"You're… a person? Outside the game?"

"I was. Vera Chen. Systems analyst. I was part of the first Terminal project. Before it got quarantined. Before we lost contact with the dev team."

She looked away.

"I logged in to investigate the Mara anomaly. I never logged out."

Silence.

"Then why are you helping me?" Alec asked.

She turned back to him, eyes hollow.

"Because she helped me. Before they tried to kill her code, she saved pieces of everyone she knew. Even the ones who betrayed her."

A flicker of shame crossed her face.

"You were one of them, weren't you?" Alec whispered.

"I don't know anymore," she murmured. "The system rewrote so much. Maybe I was just another user. Or maybe I helped bury her."

She leaned in.

"But we both know this isn't just a game. Something's leaking."

She opened her hand.

In her palm was a physical object—impossibly solid inside the digital construct. A silver shard, humming with red light.

"This came through with me. From outside. Data made matter."

Alec stared at it, his pulse spiking.

"This… shouldn't exist here."

"No," Vera said. "But it does. And it's not the only thing. The codebase she hid—it's real, Alec. Buried in a server bank under the old Neuralink Tower. Abandoned. Offline."

"That tower was condemned years ago," Alec said slowly.

Vera smiled coldly.

"Exactly."

Alec's hands curled into fists.

"You're saying if we get there—physically—"

"We can patch you out of the game. Cut the Mara link. Maybe even bring her back."

Something inside him twisted.

He thought of Mara's voice, echoing in that glitching corridor.

"If you're seeing this, it means you're like me. A soul the game couldn't delete."

He looked up.

"Then how do we get out of here?"

Vera exhaled—and smiled grimly.

"We kill the Observer."

The room dimmed. A sound—like fingers on glass—crawled along the edge of reality.

Alec stiffened.

"You said that name out loud."

"I had to," she said. "It's the only way he sees us."

The air cracked.

A light appeared in the ceiling—no, behind it. Like a keyhole opening in a locked world.

From it, something began to look back.

[ERROR: SPECTRAL THREAD BREACH]

[THE OBSERVER IS WATCHING]

Alec felt it, deep in his skull.

An eye that didn't blink.

A voice that didn't speak.

Only watched.

The walls began to tremble. The HUD blinked in and out.

Vera held out her hand.

"Say yes, Alec. Say you want to break out. Say you want the truth."

Alec's breath shook.

Then he said it:

"I want out."

The Observer screeched.