Goji’s calm deanor wavered, his gaze narrowing, a flicker of sothing—guilt, perhaps—crossing his face. He didn’t speak imdiately, his mouth pressing into a thin line as if searching for a response.
But beside him, Asurik stood unfazed. His smirk remained firmly in place, an expression that seed to taunt Elias’s outrage. The faint glow of his magma Ikona flickered brighter for a mont, catching the sterile light and casting faint shadows that danced across the walls.
His eyes t Elias’s with a cold, calculated calm, the corners of his lips curling ever so slightly. "You don’t get it, Elias," he said finally, his voice level, steady, as though they were having a casual conversation. Beneath that calm, though, lay sothing colder. "I can’t risk the arena death match, and neither can Junjio."
Elias stiffened at those words, but Asurik didn’t pause. "Spur a rebellion," he continued, the words falling with deliberate weight, "knock off a few heads—fair trade for freedom." His tone carried an unsettling chill, a pragmatic callousness that cut through the room’s tension like a blade. "So, what’s it going to be?" he asked, his voice tilting into a quiet dare. His gaze lingered on Elias, steady, unflinching. "You coming with us, or not?"
Elias’s shard throbbed violently, the tir hamring in his mind—5 minutes remaining. The air in the room felt like a vice, tightening with each breath as his rage reached its peak. "You’re risking lives just to save your own skin!" he bellowed, the force of his voice making the sterile walls seem closer, the flickering overhead light stuttering like it might give out entirely. His hands balled into fists as he turned to Junjio, his voice raw with desperation. "We have to go back! They need us—Vira’s fighting, Oliver’s gas is killing everyone. We can’t just leave them!"
Junjio froze. His wide, tear-filled eyes darted back and forth between Elias and his father, his trembling hands raised uncertainly. A faint ring of light began to form beneath him and Hiroshi. The portal Ikona flared bright, shimring with distorted edges that wavered like heat waves in the sterile air. "Junjio, wait—" Elias began, but before he could finish, the portal ring flared sharply and swallowed them whole. The faint, high-pitched pop of its collapse was followed by utter silence. No trace of them remained. The room’s cold stillness returned, the conduits humming softly as if mocking the chaos that had just vanished.
Elias stood frozen for a heartbeat, then cursed aloud. His shard pulsed with frantic intensity—4 minutes remaining. The sound of his boots hitting the steel floor echoed sharply as he sprinted back down the corridor. Pipes and conduits flashed by in his peripheral vision, their soft hums a stark contrast to the storm raging in his thoughts. Junjio’s gone. Goji gone...
He repeated the words as if to anchor himself, but they didn’t help. His mind was awash with images of the people left behind—Kikaru’s drained face, Faye’s trembling hands, Tidwell’s bloodied body, Paul’s quiet despair, Wes’s steady resolve fading with every second. He could see them all, pinned by the nets, their Ikona dimming, their lives slipping away.
The chaos of the hub pressed at the edges of his senses.
He could almost hear it again: the plasma fire hissing through the air, the guttural screams, the wet thud of bodies falling, and Vira’s grotesque puppets shambling through the gas-choked battlefield.
Oliver’s venomous green clouds consud everything, and Yui and Kimi moved with surgical precision, their energy suits dominating the shattered remains of the resistance.
It was a battlefield of blood and betrayal, an inferno Elias couldn’t escape. The tir burned hotter in his mind, the words—Who am I supposed to save?—rising above all else.
But the answer refused to co. Every step, every breath carried him deeper into the unknown, the sterile corridor around him feeling more like a tomb with each passing second.
The walls seed to close in, the hum of the conduits a constant reminder of the cold, chanical indifference of Cube X.
He ran toward the storm, toward the chaos, not knowing if he was chasing answers or simply running from the mounting weight of his own failure.
Elias’s boots hamred against the steel floor, the sound too loud, too sharp in the suffocating silence of Cube X. Sweat clung to his skin, soaking into the thin fabric of his sleepwear, the faint blue pulse of his shard leaking through in ragged bursts. The air felt thicker the farther he ran, the tallic tang curling in his throat like a warning he couldn’t spit out.
The system prompt floated overhead, unrelenting:
[Save a life] — 4 minutes remaining.
He barely registered it. Not because he didn’t care — because the weight pressing into his chest was heavier than the tir could ever be. Every step stretched the distance between him and the ones he’d left behind. Kikaru’s glare, Faye’s trembling hands, Tidwell’s blood pooling across the pod floor — faces etched into the back of his mind like scars.
He stumbled once against a wall, hand catching a conduit slick with condensation. The cold shocked him back to focus, breath scraping against the recycled air. The hallways blurred together — sharp turns, endless stretches of sterile gray — a maze that seed to fold back on itself no matter how fast he moved.
There was no map. No plan.
Just the storm in his head, pulling him forward because standing still would an admitting he didn’t know what the hell he was doing anymore.
Junji’s gone. Goji’s safe. Asurik’s gone too.
The lies repeated themselves, looping without conviction.
He wiped his palm against his thigh, saring sweat into the fabric, trying to ground himself, but the floor tilted under him — not really, just the pressure mounting inside his skull. The low hum of the conduits vibrated against his bones, a reminder that Cube X didn’t care if he broke apart here.
The corridors split again — left or right. No signs. No hints.
Reviews
All reviews (0)