The air was different in the lower zones of Kōto City.
Colder. Heavier. Even for a virtual world, it felt weighted—like the code down here had been stitched together in haste, hidden away like a secret no one was meant to uncover. These weren't the zones Ren and Kenji had explored before. No neon lights, no crowds, no missions marked on the map. Just silence, darkness, and the soft mechanical hum of a city watching from the shadows.
They had followed a trail buried in the cube's data—a file fragment labeled "Access Point: Sector Null."
A dead sector.
It didn't show up on the in-game map. Didn't have coordinates. But somehow, the cube had unlocked a path—a hidden subway line beneath the industrial zone. The kind of thing only developers were supposed to know about.
"Why does this even exist?" Ren asked as they passed flickering lights in an abandoned underground tunnel. Rusted train cars hovered off the tracks, long since shut down.
Kenji kept his rifle raised. "Because Konran is hiding something. And I think this is where it starts."
Even the AI companions—Aiko and Botan—were silent now.
No witty comments. No mission advice.
They simply followed.
As they moved deeper into Sector Null, Ren's HUD began to glitch. Health bar flickering. Ammo counter resetting. The world distorted for a moment—walls bending like rubber, lights flashing irregularly.
"I'm getting weird sync issues," Ren muttered.
Kenji stopped. "Same. The game's trying to reject us."
They pushed on.
Eventually, they reached a steel door at the far end of the tunnel—unmarked, sealed, glowing with a strange red pulse. The cube in Kenji's inventory vibrated softly.
"It wants to open this," Kenji whispered.
Ren looked at him. "And what's on the other side?"
Kenji didn't answer. He just placed the cube into a slot at the center of the door. It fit perfectly.
The door let out a low mechanical groan—and then hissed open.
Behind it was… nothing like they'd seen before.
A massive chamber—dark and metallic—lined with floating data cores, each suspended by black cables that pulsed like veins. In the center: a cylindrical tower filled with green light and flickering silhouettes.
People.
Digital silhouettes.
Thousands of them.
"Are those... players?" Ren asked, stepping forward.
Kenji nodded slowly. "They're not logged in. They're… stored."
Stored. Like files. Frozen in time.
Each core had a name tag.
Some Ren recognized from old mission logs—players who had gone inactive. Disappeared. Some were top-ranked. Others just randoms from public chats.
And all of them were silent.
"Konran didn't kick them out," Kenji said, his voice low. "They trapped them."
As they moved through the chamber, one core flickered more violently than the others. Kenji paused. Walked closer. His hand hovered over it.
Then he froze.
The tag read: KS-03
Status: Active. Neural Sync – 92.1%.
Condition: Stabilizing.
"...That's me," Kenji said.
Ren stepped beside him.
It was identical to the file they'd seen earlier.
Except now, it wasn't just data.
It was real. It was visual. It was alive.
They backed away.
Alarms didn't trigger. The room didn't react. But something else happened.
The cube, still in the door slot, cracked—emitting a high-pitched whine and a final pulse of energy. Then it disintegrated into code.
The door behind them slammed shut.
"Now we're in," Ren muttered.
"And we're not supposed to be," Kenji added.
From above, a spotlight flared.
A voice echoed through the chamber.
"You've seen too much."
They raised their weapons.
Konran wasn't just a villain anymore.
It was watching.
It knew who they were.
And it was coming.