Chapter 6: Echoes in the Code

Chapter 6: Echoes in the Code

“How in the hell did you know that would work?” Lyra’s question, raw with astonishment, echoed in the sterile white corridor of the Fearscape’s safe zone.

Kaelen’s heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The adrenaline from his desperate gamble was only just beginning to recede, leaving a familiar, shaky exhaustion in its wake. He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't explain a power that even he barely understood, a skill that literally showed him the path to avoid failure.

“Patterns,” he said, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth. It was only a partial lie. “The simulation… it’s just code. It has rules. The insects' pathing was too uniform, they avoided that specific spot. It was a bug in their AI. And the wall… the texture detail was repeating. It was a lazy loop. Marcus was trying to break the system with brute force. I just looked for the loopholes.”

He sounded more confident than he felt. It was the kind of analytical breakdown his anxious mind might actually produce, which made it believable.

Lyra stared at him, her bright eyes narrowing slightly. He could practically see the gears turning in her head, analyzing his explanation, comparing it to her own observations. She was a genius hacker; she understood code better than anyone. While she might not have bought his explanation completely, she couldn't immediately disprove it either. “A lazy loop,” she repeated slowly, filing the information away. “Right.”

Elara, who had finally stopped trembling, just looked at Kaelen with a sort of terrified awe, as if he were some kind of strange digital ghost who could see the bones of the world.

[OBJECTIVE UPDATED: PROCEED TO EXTRACTION POINT.]

The system’s cool, impersonal voice broke the tension. A door at the end of the corridor slid open.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Kaelen said, wanting nothing more than to be out of the shared nightmare.

They proceeded down the corridor, their footsteps echoing in the unnatural silence. But Kaelen couldn’t relax. The afterimage of his [Path to Victory] skill lingered, leaving his senses raw and unnaturally sharp. He was noticing things.

It started with a flicker in his peripheral vision. A momentary distortion against the perfect white wall, like heat haze. When he turned to look, it was gone. He dismissed it as a rendering glitch.

Then came the sound. A faint, half-second snippet of audio, overlaid on the hum of the simulation. It was a panicked voice, a boy’s, shouting a word Kaelen couldn't quite make out—“…siphon…”—before it was cut off.

“Did you guys hear that?” Kaelen asked, stopping.

Lyra paused, tilting her head. “Hear what? All I hear is the standard ambient hum.”

Elara just shook her head, her eyes darting nervously into the empty corners.

Kaelen frowned. He was the only one who had heard it. Was the simulation buggier than he thought, or was his own mind, taxed by his power, starting to fray?

They kept walking, but now he was looking for it. He scanned the walls, the floor, the seams where the ceiling met the corridor. And then he saw it again. This time it was clearer. For a split second, the translucent image of another initiate flickered into existence. He was slumped against the wall, his face a mask of terror, reaching a hand out towards a specific access panel before dissolving into static. It was an echo, a ghost in the machine.

“There!” Kaelen pointed. “Right there. The wall panel.”

Lyra and Elara saw nothing. “Vance, there’s nothing there,” Lyra said gently, her tone laced with concern. “Are you okay? Your power… does it have side effects?”

“I’m fine,” Kaelen insisted, his voice tight. The image had been too real. The desperation in the boy’s eyes was haunting. He walked over to the panel the ghost had been reaching for. It looked identical to every other panel in the corridor. “Lyra, can you access this?”

“Access what? It’s a decorative panel. There’s no interface port.” She walked over, tapping it with her knuckle. It was smooth, seamless. “See? It’s just part of the wall.”

“The ghost… the echo, whatever it was, he was trying to open it,” Kaelen said, his analytical mind latching onto the anomaly. The simulation was supposed to reset completely between sessions. There shouldn’t be any residual data, let alone a visual and auditory imprint of a previous user. Something was fundamentally wrong. “There has to be a way.”

Lyra sighed, but his intensity was infectious. She was a creature of curiosity, and a good puzzle was irresistible. She pulled a thin, metallic tool from a hidden pocket in her sleeve—something she had clearly smuggled into the Academy—and began to scan the edges of the panel.

“Well, I’ll be,” she whispered after a moment. “There’s a micro-seam here. And a faint energy signature behind it. It’s shielded, but…” She worked her tool into the seam, her fingers moving with practiced dexterity. With a soft click, the panel popped open, revealing not wiring, but a small, hidden alcove.

Inside sat a single, battered-looking datapad, its screen dark. It was an older model, not Academy issue.

“What is that?” Elara whispered.

“Looks like a personal device,” Lyra said, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of discovery. She picked it up. “It’s been hard-wired into the simulation’s substructure, drawing trickle-charge power to stay active. Whoever left this here was smart. Vex’s system sweeps would never look for an unauthorized device inside the simulation itself.”

She worked her magic, her fingers flying across the datapad’s surface, bypassing a simple password with contemptuous ease. The screen flickered to life, displaying a single text file. A log.

Log Entry 01: My name is Leo Thorne. Squad Beta. If you’re reading this, you’ve seen the ghosts too. They’re not glitches. I think they’re imprints. Residual psychic energy left behind by users under extreme emotional distress. The system is supposed to wipe everything after a dive, but it doesn’t. The energy readings never zero out.

Log Entry 02: Vex says our fear is fuel for our powers. It’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. I’ve been tracking the energy flow. During a dive, our fear generates a massive amount of raw, quantifiable energy. When we manifest our powers, we use some of it. But most of it… it gets routed somewhere else. It’s not deleted. It’s not dissipated. It's collected.

Log Entry 03: Where does the fear go? The Academy is hiding something. This isn’t just a school. I saw the schematics in a data fragment. This whole place, the pods, the Fearscape generator… it’s built like a power plant. We’re not the soldiers. We’re the batteries.

Log Entry 04: I convinced my squad to help me push deeper into the code during our last dive. We tried to follow the energy stream. The system fought back. It wasn't the usual simulated enemies. It was something else. A security measure. It felt… hungry. It got Joric. He didn’t just get eliminated. He flatlined. Real-world bio-signs terminated.

Final Entry: They know I know. Vex looked at me differently today. This will be my last dive. The real enemy isn’t what she tells us. The Fear-Eaters she describes… they’re real, but they’re not the ones we should be afraid of. The Academy… they’re feeding something. This simulation isn’t a training ground. It’s a harvesting ground. It’s a farm. Don’t let them—

The log ended there. The last word was cut off.

A profound, bone-deep chill settled over Kaelen, colder than any fear the simulation had thrown at him. Leo Thorne. He remembered the name now, from the first day. One of the three whose pods had glowed red. Vex had said he was purged for being weak. He hadn’t been purged. He’d been silenced.

They weren’t being trained to fight monsters. They were being raised as livestock. Their fear, the very thing that gave them power, was being siphoned off and fed to some unknown, horrifying entity. The Academy wasn't a shield against the dark; it was a larder.

[WARNING: TEAM IS DELAYING AT NON-OBJECTIVE POINT. PROCEED TO EXTRACTION IMMEDIATELY.]

The system’s voice was suddenly menacing, the cold threat behind the words now terrifyingly clear.

Lyra quickly wiped the datapad, her face pale and grim. “We have to go. Now.”

They reached the extraction point a minute later, the simulation dissolving around them. As Kaelen awoke in his pod, the cold reality of what he’d learned settled in his gut like a block of ice.

He stumbled out into the great hall with the others. He looked at the obsidian walls, the glowing panels, the impassive guards. It was all a facade. A beautifully constructed abattoir.

Then his eyes met Instructor Vex’s. She was looking at their squad, her expression unreadable. But Kaelen saw it now. He saw the cold, pragmatic calculation of a farmer inspecting her stock. He had survived the Fearscape, but he had lost something far more valuable: his ignorance. He now carried a secret that could get him killed, a truth far more terrifying than any simulated nightmare.