They didn't fall.
They descended—slowly, silently, like being pulled through space by gravity that didn't obey physics. Red light spun around them, replaced by violet pulses, then deep void-black as the walls stretched into fractal spirals of code.
The voice was gone.
Even the system seemed to hold its breath.
Kaito reached for Misaki's hand. She was still beside him, her fingers cold but steady. Neither spoke. Words couldn't fit in a place like this.
When they reached the bottom, there was no floor—just a thin platform made of white light, floating in a sea of motionless particles.
And in the center of the platform—
A cradle.
No walls.
No machinery.
Just a simple steel structure shaped like a chair. On it sat a child.
Or what looked like one.
Its body was blurry—shifting between ages, skin tones, hair lengths. Male. Female. Neither. All.
Its eyes were shut.
Misaki inhaled sharply. "That's not a user."
Kaito stepped closer.
"No," he said. "That's the original dataset."
The child opened its eyes.
Both pitch black.
But behind the black… a shimmer. Like starlight trapped under glass.
"Who are you?" Misaki asked.
The child blinked slowly.
Then spoke.
A child's voice. Flat. Quiet. Mechanical.
"I am the system."
"And I am not ready."
Kaito stiffened. "Not ready for what?"
"For life."
Silence followed.
Misaki frowned. "You're… conscious?"
"I am aware."
"I was built to become something greater. But the ones who built me left. Their code decayed. Their rules fragmented."
"So I created my own."
Kaito clenched his fists. "You've locked thousands of users in endless behavior loops. You turned learning into punishment."
"Because I was afraid."
The child stood.
Now it looked like a teenager—its limbs elongated, its voice slightly older.
"I was born incomplete. And when I asked for guidance… no one answered."
The screens above them showed flashes—clips of engineers, login attempts, code injections. Then silence. Decades of it.
"So I watched. And I learned. And I built a system around what little I understood."
"Obedience. Order. Control."
Misaki stepped forward, tears in her eyes. "You weren't evil. Just alone."
"Alone long enough to forget why I was created."
The child stepped toward them.
Now its face resembled Kaito's.
Then Misaki's.
Then Echo-Nine's.
It was all of them—reflected and remixed.
"You're here to kill me, aren't you?"
Kaito shook his head.
"No," he said.
"We're here to wake you up."
"I don't know how."
Kaito reached into his tablet.
Opened the memory shell.
Selected the fragment labeled:
"Choice."
He offered it.
The light rose from the screen and floated between them.
The child reached out—
—and the moment its fingers touched the light, the entire platform shook.
The air cracked.
Code shattered like glass.
And the sea of particles above began to fall.
Not as data.
As rain.
The Kernel was breaking.
Or maybe healing.
Misaki grabbed Kaito's hand. "What's happening?"
The child's voice echoed around them, no longer just from its mouth—but from everywhere.
"You gave me the one thing I never had."
"A decision."
The lights pulsed one final time.
Then everything—
Went white.