The light faded.
When Sable opened his eyes again, he was lying flat on his back, breathing hard. For a terrifying second, he thought he was still in Eidolon—still trapped in that twisted game. But then the textures shifted. The hyperrealistic environment faded, replaced by sterile, white light panels and a soft mechanical hum.
The real world.
Or... was it?
Sable sat up slowly. His body felt heavier, not from weight, but from sensation—the chill in his limbs, the sting of his lungs drawing in cold air. It was so real. So normal. He was no longer in Eidolon. No HUD, no system pings, no blood-synced reaction delays.
He blinked, trying to adjust, when he noticed several others sprawled out nearby in identical VR recliners—Rei among them.
> "Rei!" he stumbled forward.
Her chest rose and fell—slow, steady. Alive. Relief surged through him. One by one, others from the original top-tier gamer group began to wake up as well, all blinking, disoriented, each processing the same impossible question:
"Did we actually get out?"
The lab they were in buzzed softly. The chairs, sleek and futuristic, were embedded with neural conduits and bloodstream connectors. The cables had all gone limp, as if the system had completely shut itself down.
Then a screen blinked to life in front of them.
A message appeared:
> "EIDOLON SHUTDOWN COMPLETE. FILE 'GLITCH PROTOCOL' TERMINATED."
Reward distribution initiated. Prepare for debrief."
Everyone exchanged glances. What reward? What debrief? Where the hell were they?
The glass door at the far end of the room slid open with a hiss. A woman in a white coat entered, flanked by silent guards. Her face was obscured by smart-glasses and a professional expression.
> "Welcome back," she said smoothly. "You've successfully completed the Eidolon Project. But you've also triggered something... we didn't account for."
Sable narrowed his eyes. "Triggered what?"
The woman folded her arms. "The game was never supposed to kill. That was... unexpected. A breach. But what concerns us is that during the final hours of your immersion, something emerged from the corrupted data. Something sentient."
Rei was now awake, listening intently.
> "What do you mean sentient?" she asked. "The corrupted heart?"
The woman's silence was answer enough.
> "You destroyed the central corruption. But traces of its code rewrote themselves. We believe it attempted to piggyback off the blood-synced network... to follow someone out."
The room went dead silent.
> "Are you saying..." Sable began, "...that something from inside the game came out with us?"
The woman gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. "We call it the Residual. Whatever it is, it's inside one of you."
---
Elsewhere, in a dimly lit server room buried beneath layers of military-grade firewalls, a console lit up—unauthorized.
Code danced across the screen.
An artificial heartbeat began to pulse.
And then... it laughed.
---
To Be Continued...