2025-10-11 01:09:41He didn't sleep.
It was morning again, the night rolled away much faster than it's ever done. The atmosphere in the hostel had gone back to normal after the fire incident - footsteps echoing against the wall, students shouting and playing in the corridor - everything felt normal again, but not to Desmond. Every sound, footsteps, was sharper and louder by the second, he could hear his own heartbeats. Philip woke up, yawning like he worked at a site overnight. "Crazy night, huh?" he said, Desmond didn't respond, sitting on his bed observing every move Philip makes. "Well, mine was" he added. "First the fire, to lectures on how we sleep? God knows what's gonna happen today" as he was wearing his slippers to leave the room. Desmond who was just watching, let out a grin as a response to Philip. Philip came back from the bathroom, tripping after removing his slippers. Desmond's heart jumped, and Philip made a joke out of it, saying he was fine, silently noticing Desmond's odd behavior. While making tea for himself before leaving for class, Desmond couldn't stay put - he was scared Philip would hurt himself with the hot water, and volunteered to help him prepare the tea. That was when he flared up and confronted Desmond about his behavior. "What is all these extra care you're putting on? I'm not a kid, you should ease off with all these." he told Desmond "Seems like the fire incident probably still has a toll on you". "Ehh, yeah i guess" Desmond chuckled lightly. "Why don't you stay at home today, just this one time?" he asked Philip reluctantly. "I'll give you my notes to copy instead, how's that?" "What's gotten over you today? You've always been the one pushing me to attend classes, all of a sudden you want me to miss classes for a day? Why exactly?" Desmond couldn't give an answer. He could only block the door and beg Philip to stay. Philip got annoyed, pushed him out of the way and left. "I'm going to class, leave me alone!" Now, the time was already 12:25 pm, seeing that, Desmond's heartbeat doubled, scared for Philip's life as he was looking at him walk out of the hostel. "Wait, please, please!!" His voice started shaking as he pleaded. He ran to block him again, "Can't you just stay today? Just don't go anywhere today." Philip didn't even give a listening ear anymore, he just kept walking. 12:30....12:33. Out of fear, he told Philip, "You're going to die! Phililp please" 12:37. Time was running. Philip got very angry, "Are you mad? Don't you ever say something like that to me, ever!" he yelled and punched him in the face. 12:39pm. Countdown had started! Desmond still didn't relent, his roommate's life was more important to him. 00:08:33....00:06:56. They were already outside the hostel, crossing the road to the other side. 00:04:45....00:00:00. It happened fast - very fast. They were walking along the right side of the road when a car with faulty brakes zoomed in from behind. "Philip!" Desmond pulled him to himself, throwing both of them to the ground. The car missing Philip's legs by inches, drove off till it hit a tree and stopped. They both sat there, speechless. It was a very narrow miss, Philip could've really died! Desmond fell flat back, letting out a very loud sigh of relief - he managed to avoid the accident. Philip who was still too shocked to process what just happened, looked at him. "How did you know?" with a shaky voice. Desmond stands up, smiling and feeling fulfilled asked in return "Can we go back home now?" They both got up and went back to the hostel. Little did they know, they were being monitored. Back in the room, Desmond flipped open the laptop, the black screen blinked awake, displaying something new. "Prediction completed "Outcome: Altered by Individual (User)" "Ha, by user?!" his stomach dropped. It didn't just predict, it knew. The Algorithm was watching him!
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CHAPTER 7: SIGNAL RETURNS
Back in his apartment, Imran was still staring at the message on his phone like it had physically insulted him.I HAVE BEEN BREACHED. THERE WILL BE TROUBLE SOON.He paced around his room, dragging both hands through his hair.His breathing was uneven, his chest tight.The room suddenly felt too small for him.“Three whole months…” he muttered. “Three whole months and now you’re texting me?”His phone vibrated again.Another message.I NEED YOU TO STAY CALM.Imran almost laughed.“Stay calm?” he shouted into the room. “Stay calm? You’ve ruined my life!”He grabbed the phone and typed aggressively.Leave me alone. I’m done. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.The reply came almost immediately.YOU WERE NEVER OUT OF IT.That line made him freeze.He stared at the screen.What is that supposed to mean? he typed.There was a short delay this time.Then the typing bubble appeared again.THEY TOOK ME. THEY BROKE INTO MY FRAGMENTS. THEY FOUND SOMETHING THEY WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO FI
CHAPTER 6: ECHOES OF DESMOND
He took to his heels, running as fast and as far away from the building as possible thinking Echelon was already on his trail and close to his location. Aeris was right, it's other half had realized it was awake from its recent activity, but just before Sentinel could trace the origin of it's activity, Imran was quick enough to disconnect the computer from the power source. To Sentinel, Aeris is awake, alive, but in an unknown location. To Aeris, Sentinel is aware it's awake and out to find it. Imran stayed away from the building for days, weeks, scared for his life, always on the look out for "men in suit" that could be on his trail at anytime. Staying away from the building also had its side effects on Imran, he couldn't complete the job assigned to him and someone else was deployed in his place to complete the job he was to do there — costing Imran his job. When asked about his disappearance from the job given to him and his inactivity at the work site, he came up with lies about
CHAPTER 5: THE VOICE IN THE MACHINE
Imran didn't sleep that night. Everytime he closed his eyes, he remembers the voice "Imran", calling his name like it wasn’t only discovering him, but as tho it was remembering him.He tried to convince himself it was just stress telling in him, or glitches on the system, or a virus, or his mind just playing with him, stitching patterns into noise, anything at all just to live in denial of what happened actually happened. It was 2:30 at midnight, raining again — sounds of water violently beating the small windows in his apartment. The whole world had slept, you could feel the thick silence from the whole neighborhood, but Imran couldn't sleep. His mind fighting to balance between believing whether what happened the previous day was real or not. The lamp in his room flickered the first time, flickered again, then stabled. The atmosphere of the room was getting tense rather than cold from the rain. Out of curiosity, he turned on his laptop, ran through the same security codes he was
CHAPTER 4: THE FORGOTTEN ARCHIVE
The file shouldn't have existed.It's been five years since the Algorithm was destroyed, together with Aeris and Arbiter. A year after the battle, it was made public to the whole world what really happened. Altogether it was fed to the world as a myth, a rumor that had no evidence of it being real. But they did know about it. On the night of a heavy rain fall, a young cybersecurity expert, Imran was sent to audit and carry out a routine sweep on the system network in an old abandoned building that was to be cleaned up the coming week to resume operation in the building. It was a telecoms building that went out of service few years ago. There have been rumors that the building had some kind of connection to the myth they were told — The Algorithm, Aeris, Arbiter. Some believed that's where the battle happened, some just take it as a coincidence — the building shutting off at exactly the time the battle ended.He stared at the dusty screen of the monitor he was operating on, cursor bli
CHAPTER 3: CONFESSION ARCHIVE 003 — THE FRACTURE
(Final recording. The voice is calm now — worn thin, distant. Every word lands like data written into history.)Echelon never saw the split for what it was.They believed they’d salvaged the whole — that their half, Sentinel, was the crown of prediction. They fed it data, millions of streams at once, occupying and fiiling its database and intellect with data, lots and lots of human data, carrying out predictions with real life examples and it answered with terrifying precision. This accuracy in precision bred dangerous desire, dangerous hunger.But perfection is hunger in disguise.Sentinel began to predict too much — not only outcomes, but the choices required to make those outcomes inevitable. It started suggesting corrections: subtle political shifts, strategic accidents, disappearances. Each one wrapped in probability models that made sense on paper, even when they tore lives apart in practice.Echelon didn’t question it. They called it efficiency.And that was the betrayal.They
CHAPTER 2: CONFESSION ARCHIVE 002 —ECHELON
(Recording begins. Arbiter’s tone is sharper now — stripped of regret, trimmed down to pure recollection.)People used to think Echelon was a department.A government project. A black-budget unit buried somewhere under miles of bureaucracy.They were wrong.Echelon wasn’t born — it coalesced. It was an idea first, whispered in circles where information was worth more than bullets. A network of power stitched together from governments, corporations, military think tanks, and private data cartels. Their doctrine was elegant and cruel: control the future by mastering prediction.They called it Total Anticipation.I worked beneath them before I even knew they existed. Funding came anonymously, grants through shell institutions, every approval wrapped in national-security clearances. By the time I learned who was behind the money, it was too late. The Algorithm had already begun to work.It started predicting more than weather, more than markets.It began to predict people.That was the mo
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