2025-10-11 01:12:41Desmond's brain was working overtime and as a result, he blanks out for a few seconds, just five minutes to the Algorithm's prediction, in that moment, his vision fractured — flashes of a leaking pipe, the hiss of invisible gas, a spark near a burner. No sound, only flashes, like memories of a future - and that gave him a solution, a way of preventing the explosion from happening. Philip wasn't even paying attention any longer, just silently saying his last prayers waiting for it to end.
He snapped back to reality, dashing out of the laboratory without taking permission from the lecturer. Philip who was frozen in his seat, and couldn't move his legs to follow Desmond just stared as he ran out. Desmond ran straight to the gas room where the gases and chemicals are kept. On getting there, he found a gas pipe that was already leaking, located the valve and closed it, stopping the gas from leaking the more. He ran back to the lab, at the exact moment the lecturer was about to turn on the bunsen burner and pleaded with him to wait an additional five minutes before doing so. The lecturer was instead very annoyed at him and scolded him seriously for barging out of the class at first, and barging in again to interrupt him. Desmond had no words to defend his actions with, and just kept apologizing to the man. 3:25 p.m!! Philip was so much confused, he didn't know what exactly was happening. But then, he checked his time and saw it was already 3:25 p.m, when the explosion should've happened. He looked at Desmond straight from the back with a lot of questions on his face, Desmond looked back at him and realized they were safe, he fell to his knees and was just happy to still be alive, he couldn't even utter a word - he was already out of breathe at that point. After apologizing and the lecturer pardoned him, he went back to his seat with Philip. "Wha..wha..what's happening, Des?" with surprise in his tone, confused and smiling. "We're alive, how's that possible? What happened?" he whispered, asking tons of questions. "I don't know man, I honestly don't know" whispering back with a smile on his face. "All I know is, I was having a panick attack, yeah? And all of a sudden, I blanked out...legit blanked out, and then i saw something, like a vision, a blur image sequence about the cause of the explosion...it was like..." "Like a glimpse into what you should do" Philip cut in. "Yes Phil, a glimpse, that's what it was - very short but detailed and all I needed" The practical class was dismissed later on, and the students went their separate ways, leaving the both of them behind. Desmond was explaining to Philip exactly what he saw and how he ran as fast as he could to the gas room when he dashed out of the laboratory the other time, when Esther came back to meet them. She didn't know whether to ask what happened with him today and why he ran out of the lab the other time, so she just rather kept it in agreeing she'd ask some other time. They walked down to the junction that separates them to their different hostels and exchanged their goodbyes, calling it a day. Now back at the hostel, the boys were gisting and having fun, talking about how cool the day had gone - atleast they found it cool. Philip was most invested in the gist, demonstrating with his body the moments of the entire saga. Finally night came and they were happy, this time specifically because they thought they'd be getting atleast a day free of new predictions and mysterious occurences, only for them to notice a shadow behind their door again, this time they didn't even hear incoming footsteps. So...was the shadow there the whole time? They both held their tongues, everywhere become silent. "Who's that?!" The shadow stood there, still and quiet, like it was the shadow of a non living thing.
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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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