Everyone thinks the lowest floor of the Academy is Sublevel 9.
They're wrong.
There's a door beneath the door, a staircase hidden behind a false wall in the simulation bay. The kind of place you only find when you've stopped being part of the schedule.
I found it by accident. Or maybe it found me.
It started with a whisper.
"Anchor detected."
The wall flickered. A door formed where there wasn't one.
No handle. Just a reader. A thin line of light.
My HUD pulsed.
UNLISTED ACCESS: GRANTED
The door slid open without a sound.
Stairs led down into darkness.
The air below felt older. Thicker. Like memory had weight.
Lights lined the walls—dim, green, and too few.
At the bottom, a hall stretched ahead, marked by flickering signs:
ECHO CLASS Z
I stepped inside.
The room was wide, shaped like a broken hexagon. Training pads, server stacks, fragments of simulations left running on loop. A combat dummy floated mid-glitch, stuck in a punch it never finished.
And people.
Three of them.
Juno. Elrik. Kane.
But not my Kane. Not exactly.
The one standing there was... different.
He looked at me, and something behind his eyes buzzed.
"You're late," he said.
Juno didn't speak. She never did. But her eyes glowed faintly. Like she could see something in me I couldn't.
And Elrik... he shouldn't have been breathing.
"He died," I whispered.
"Did I?" Elrik tilted his head. "Funny. I don't remember that part."
My HUD registered nothing. No names. No vitals. Just one shared label:
ECHO INSTABILITY: ACTIVE
A voice boomed from hidden speakers.
"Welcome to Shadow Class. Echo-tier systems only. You are not students. You are anomalies."
I looked up. There was no instructor. Just the ceiling, cracked and pulsing with faint static.
"Why am I here?" I asked.
No answer.
But Juno stepped forward, handed me a data shard.
It was black. Cold to the touch.
When I slotted it into my wristband, my HUD exploded in warnings:
ANCHOR NODE INSTALLED
STABILITY: UNTESTED
WARNING: PERSONALITY BLEED RISK DETECTED
Elrik chuckled. "First one always hurts."
I doubled over, clutching my head as the world fractured for a moment. A memory surged forward—mine, but not mine.
A classroom. A girl with braids. A secret handshake. Then a flash of white, and screaming.
It faded.
I gasped.
Juno nodded. As if that was normal.
"What is this place?" I asked.
Elrik grinned. "This? This is where the broken get useful."
The rest of the session wasn't a lecture. It was a test.
A training sim booted up on its own. No prompts. Just a room full of shadow figures, each glitching and moving in unnatural ways.
We were told nothing.
We fought anyway.
Juno moved like she knew every line of code behind each opponent. She danced between their blows like she could see the world in wireframe.
Kane—this version of Kane—fought like someone trying to punish the air itself. Brutal, fast, and without hesitation.
Elrik didn't fight. He walked through the simulation like a ghost, touching the enemies and causing them to fall apart like corrupted files.
And me?
I moved on instinct.
Each time I took a hit, I saw something—fragments of memory, flashes of data. A younger me, playing in an empty field. A voice shouting a warning. Blood on a white floor.
I started noticing more with each blow. Some of the opponents wore academy uniforms. One had my old boots. Another had a copy of my face—older, scarred, angry.
The simulation wasn't just a fight.
It was a message.
The simulation ended without fanfare. The enemies dissolved. The room reset.
I was on my knees.
Kane helped me up.
"You'll get used to the bleed," he said.
"I don't want to get used to it."
"You will. Or you'll stop being you."
After the session, we sat in a circle of broken chairs. Juno handed me another shard—this one green. It pulsed faintly.
"Echo anchor two," Elrik said. "They're not just memories. They're functions. Capabilities that survived deletion."
"Why me?"
Kane actually laughed. "You think you're special? You're just the only one who didn't burn out on the way down."
I stared at the shard.
"What happens if I use too many?"
"You stop being Vael," Elrik said. "You become the system's echo. Its recorder. Its mirror."
"And if I don't use them?"
Juno finally made a noise. A soft static hum. Like the sound of a signal fading.
"Then you lose."
At the end of the hallway, my wristband buzzed. The data shard inside flashed briefly.
Then I heard a voice.
Not Glint.
It was buried under the rhythm of my pulse.
"Two anchors found. But you're not alone."
I turned around. Nothing.
The corridor lights flickered. Once. Twice.
Each blink revealed someone else where I had just stood. Copies of me. Same walk. Same posture. Different choices in the eyes.
"They're echoes," Glint said, finally cutting in. "Versions that almost worked."
"Why are they here?"
"Because every time you install a node, the system's memory boundaries weaken."
"So they're failed copies?"
"Maybe. Or glimpses of paths you didn't take."
I kept walking. The hallway grew quieter. Each footstep felt like it carried weight I couldn't explain.
My HUD stuttered as I approached the surface.
RECALIBRATING IDENTITY LAYER
CORRUPTION THRESHOLD AT 40%
Then a new warning appeared:
ANCHOR REJECTION RISK: MODERATE
"Glint, what does that mean?"
"If a node rejects you, your memories might stay, but your personality won't."
"So I'll be like the others?"
"Worse," he said. "You'll function exactly as they want."
When I reached the junction near the main corridor, the overhead lights steadied. I merged with the stream of students. Same uniform. No collar rank. But I felt different. Heavier.
Like the system was trying to figure out what I had become.
"You're not part of the student body anymore," Glint said.
I didn't argue. He was right.
And I wasn't sure how long I could stay like this.