First Person: The Silence After the End of the World
The last echo of Dr. Dre faded into the air, leaving behind a silence louder than the music. It was a silence filled with the ringing in my ears, the collective gasp of hundreds of students, and, above all, the pounding of my own heart, which now seemed to beat to the rhythm of a funeral march.
From my pulpit in the DJ booth, I surveyed my handiwork. The ballroom looked like a disaster movie sequel. Burst balloons lay like colorful corpses on the floor. Chairs and tables were scattered at impossible angles. A "Congratulations, Ichika!" banner hung by a single thread, the boy's smiling face now looking like a grimace of horror. It was chaos. It was my chaos.
And the feeling of being a sonic god, the puppet master of euphoria, vanished as quickly as it had arrived. The adrenaline, that wonderful drug that had kept me going, receded from my veins, leaving a void that was quickly filled by something far more familiar: the cold, calculating panic of an agent whose cover has just been blown in the most spectacular way possible.
What have you done, you idiot?
The voice in my head was no longer that of a superstar DJ. It was that of my old Quantico instructor, a man who could flay a recruit with just a stare.
You've violated every rule of stealth. You've announced your presence to the whole damn compound. You've turned an escape operation into a music festival. You've signed your own death warrant!
The System screen flickered, ever helpful, to offer me its post-mission assessment.
[EVENT SUMMARY: "PROJECT X V2"]
Result: Overwhelming Success. Morale Boost (Students): +92% Building Structural Integrity: -17% (Foundation inspection recommended). Maximum Decibels Achieved: 125 dB (Equivalent to military jet takeoff). Current Probability of Undetected Escape: 1.8% (Rounding up).
Thanks for the good news, I thought with bitter sarcasm. At least morale is high. Maybe they'll give me a cell with a good view for cheering up the troops.
I watched the crowd. The spell was breaking. Students, faces beaded with sweat and goofy smiles, began to look around, noticing the disarray. Soon, the instructors and security personnel would restore order, and the questions would begin. Questions like: "Who's the guy who just threw an illegal rave and caused thousands of yen in damage?" And all eyes would turn to me.
My window of opportunity was closing at lightning speed. I had to move. Now.
Third Person: The Ghost's Attempted Flee
The man who had been the life of the party turned back into a shadow. Head bowed, baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, he slipped out of the DJ booth. His body, which minutes before had vibrated with energy, now felt heavy, every movement a struggle against the impending hangover threatening to reclaim his nervous system.
He blended into groups of students beginning to drift towards the exit, their faces still lit by the afterglow of the party. No one paid him any mind. To them, he was an entity, a force of nature that had descended to give them the best night of their lives and was now fading back into the ether. Leo counted on that temporary anonymity.
His objective was the service door through which Chifuyu Orimura had forced him to enter. It was his only viable escape route. As he walked, he felt the symptoms returning. A dull ache began to hammer behind his eyes. The taste of last night's cheap tequila, a ghost that had been banished by adrenaline, crept back up his throat. His stomach felt... unsteady.
Hold on a little longer, he told himself. Just a few more meters.
He spotted the door at the end of a short side hallway, partially obscured by a curtain. Freedom was so close he could almost taste it, and it tasted much better than bile. He peeled away from the main flow of students, heading for his salvation.
No one noticed him. No one turned. He was about to make it. His stupid Rank A Luck seemed to be giving him one last, small push towards freedom.
And it was then that the main doors to the hall burst open, flooding the room with the harsh light of the outside corridor.
A group of uniformed instructors and security guards entered with a martial stride. They weren't coming to break up the party. They were coming as an escort. And in the center of the group, supported by two guards, was a trembling, pathetic figure.
It was a scrawny man, clad only in his underwear, with red marks on his wrists and ankles. He had remnants of duct tape stuck in his hair and around his mouth, and his eyes were wide with terror and humiliation.
It was the real DJ.
Second Person: The Curtain Falls
Time freezes.
From your position, only steps from salvation, you turn to see what caused the commotion. And you see it. You see the poor devil you tied to a toilet hours ago. Your walking disguise. Your victim.
A wave of murmurs sweeps through the room, overlaying the post-party hum.
"Is that...?"
"It's the DJ they hired!"
"But if he's right there... then who's the one...?"
And like a single organism, hundreds of heads swivel in your direction.
You are the only other man in the room, besides Ichika. You are wearing the clothes of the man they just found tied up and gagged. The cap cannot hide you. The logic is simple, brutal, and inescapable.
Cecilia Alcott's accusing finger rises, trembling with indignation. "It's him! The impostor!"
Laura Bodewig's gaze locks onto you, and in her eye there is no confusion, only icy fury and the promise of very painful retribution. She remembers your shoe on the rooftop. Now it all clicks for her.
Ichika simply points at you, mouth agape, unable to form a coherent sentence.
But the worst gaze of all is Chifuyu Orimura's. She had moved towards the center of the hall when the guards entered. Now, she slowly turns towards you. Her face shows no surprise. No anger. It shows a kind of final understanding, like a scientist who has just confirmed her hypothesis. And in that calm lies a danger far greater than any shout.
You are trapped. The net has closed. Every exit is blocked. Hundreds of pairs of eyes are fixed on you, the legendary Ghost DJ, now revealed as a fraud, an intruder, a criminal.
And it is at this precise moment, at the peak of your exposure and the nadir of your hope, that your body decides to betray you in the most humiliating way possible.
The "Particle Accelerator" you drank at that party from a universe away, the hangover you've kept at bay with sheer willpower and adrenaline, finally wins the war. You feel a wave of heat rise from your gut. Your stomach clenches violently, like a fist.
You cannot stop it. You cannot control it. The god of music you were ten minutes ago vanishes, replaced by a mere mortal about to vomit.
You double over, one hand on your knees, the other clamped over your mouth. It's useless. A guttural, wet sound escapes your throat, and you projectile vomit the contents of your stomach onto the pristine floor of the IS Academy. It's a miserable explosion of half-digested alcohol, bile, and the remnants of the questionable turkey sandwich from your gacha pull.
The silence that follows is profound, absolute, and filled with horror.
The nearest students recoil with choked gasps of disgust. The aura of legend you had built, that mystique of anonymous musical genius, dissolves into a puddle of puke.
You've gone from an idol to a biological disaster in less than thirty seconds.
First Person: The Run of Shame
My brain shuts down. Rational thought, tactical planning, everything goes down the drain along with my dignity. Only the purest animal instinct remains, the same one that makes a cockroach run when the light comes on.
Flee.
As the crowd remains paralyzed by disgust and surprise, I act. It's my only cover. No one wants to go near the guy who just decorated the floor with his bodily fluids.
I straighten up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and run.
It's not an elegant run. It's a stumbling run, fueled by humiliation and panic. I bolt for the service door, my sole obsession. The world is a blur of horrified faces and uniform colors.
"Don't let him escape!" I hear someone yell, I think it's Cecilia.
I burst through the curtain and launch myself through the door, entering the service hallway again. My feet slip on the waxed floor. The pounding in my head is now synchronized with the thudding of my sneakers.
I hear footsteps behind me. Quick steps. More than one.
I don't look back. I don't dare. I just run, pumping my arms, ignoring the burning in my lungs and the sour taste in my mouth. The door at the end of the hallway seems miles away.
I'm about to reach it when a figure appears in my peripheral vision. An ambush. Someone has come out of another side door to cut me off.
I have no time to react. An unstoppable force slams into my side, right at the ribs. It's like being tackled by a small car. The air leaves my lungs with a whoosh! and the world goes sideways.
I hit the floor with a dull thud that rattles my teeth. I land awkwardly on my shoulder, and a sharp pain shoots through my arm. Above me, pinning me with a knee in my back, is a familiar figure with a silver braid and an eye patch.
Laura Bodewig looks down at me with an expression of cold satisfaction. "Intruder located and neutralized," she says, her voice devoid of all emotion, though I can feel a tremor of triumph in the pressure she exerts on me.
I try to move, but it's useless. She's trained for this. I'm trained to avoid this, and I've failed miserably.
Then, another shadow falls over us. I look up and see a pair of black boots and low heels. My gaze travels up the impeccable instructor's uniform to find the calm, authoritative face of Chifuyu Orimura.
She looks down at me, sprawled on the floor, pinned by her best student, smelling of alcohol and vomit. There isn't a hint of surprise on her face. It's as if this was the only outcome she had considered possible.
She crouches slightly, her dark eyes fixed on mine.
"Party's over," she says, her voice as flat and final as the closing of a tomb.
And there, on the cold floor of an anonymous hallway, pinned by a teenage super soldier and under the gaze of the most feared woman on the planet, I realize my luck hasn't run out. It has simply guided me, through a series of increasingly absurd and chaotic events, to this precise moment. This is the end of the tutorial.
The real game is about to begin. And I've lost the first round in the most spectacularly pathetic way imaginable.