Tether Breach

The lab lights flickered.

Not from power loss—this was something else.

Nao stood alone now. Kuro had left the moment the threat disappeared from the screen, muttering something about "protocol updates." But Nao stayed. Not because she was ordered to.

Because she owed them.

She stared at the screen replaying Runner-09's collapse—frame by frame. One moment, hostile. The next, shattered like a discarded dream. And at the center of it all: Rei, trembling and human.

She whispered, "You weren't supposed to get that far."

She meant it as awe. But also as guilt.

The Runner Program had started as a cognitive therapy model—"a simulation loop to work through trauma," they said. Aya had been one of the first volunteers. She wasn't a subject. She was a scientist. Nao's partner. The tether expert.

Until she vanished in the system.

They called it a memory fault.

But Nao always knew: Aya didn't get lost.

She chose to stay.

"We can't build an exit without first understanding why they run," Aya had once told her. "And that means staying longer than we're comfortable."

Nao hadn't believed her then.

She did now.

The logs crackled again. Fragmented whispers bled through the audio feed.

—error—

—tether breach initiated—

—Subject 0—manifestation unstable—

Her fingers hovered above the command terminal. The simulation was weakening. Rei had pierced something fundamental. Runner-09 wasn't just a program. It had been a legacy. A reflection of their failure—and Rei had stared it down.

Nao couldn't watch from outside anymore.

She began the tether override.

"Confirm neural sync," the AI prompted.

Her throat tightened.

She hadn't been inside the Rift in over a year—not since Aya disappeared. The side effects were unpredictable. Your thoughts drifted. Memories got sticky. You forgot who you were supposed to be.

But she didn't hesitate.

"Confirm."

Lines of red code crawled across the screen.

"Injecting control tether: Nao Yamazaki. Countdown 5… 4… 3… 2…"

Inside the Rift.

She landed hard.

The dreamworld greeted her like a punch to the senses—muted skies, buildings folded like origami in mid-collapse. The simulation was decaying.

It smelled of rust and burnt plastic.

She reached for her head, but there was no helmet. The Rift didn't need one anymore. It was inside her.

A flicker in the sky.

She looked up.

A tower had appeared on the horizon—monolithic, smooth, and alive, pulsing like a heartbeat. She didn't recognize it from any program build. The architecture wasn't theirs.

"Rei didn't build this," she muttered.

She felt it in her stomach. Aya had.

Footsteps behind her.

She spun.

A boy—maybe twelve, wearing a tattered hoodie and cracked boots—watched her with wary eyes.

Not Rei.

Someone else.

Another Runner?

"Who are you?" she asked.

He didn't speak. Just pointed toward the tower.

And vanished in a ripple of static.

Nao's breath hitched.

There are more of them.

She ran.

Not to flee.

To find.

She had to reach Rei before the system collapsed completely. Before these echoes of unfinished programs—these failed tethers and corrupted memories—overwrote what little of him was left.

As she sprinted through a street peeling away like old wallpaper, she whispered to herself:

"Aya, if you're still in here… please help him hold on."