The question hung in the air of the silent transport hub, heavy and persistent. Why? Why would Ben, as the Ghost, make a deal with a digital devil like The Archivist just to deliver this specific message upon his death? If his goal was pure revenge, he could have tormented me with the truth while he was hunting me. He could have whispered his own name in my mind, forced me to confront the reality of who I was killing. But he didn't. He chose this. A posthumous message. A single photograph and a unit designation.
Why not a threat? Why not a final curse? Why a picture of us in our prime, a reminder of our brotherhood, of the men we used to be?
Anya, ever the pragmatist, her mind always working the tactical angles even in the face of emotional turmoil, was the one who saw it first. She pushed herself up, leaning against the console beside me, her eyes fixed not on the photo, but on the line of text below it.
"It's not just a message, Leo," she said, her voice quiet but firm. "It's a clue."
Her words cut through my grief-stricken haze like a searchlight. A clue. He wasn't just reminding me of our past. He was pointing me towards it. He was giving me a direction. A mission.
"He couldn't communicate with me directly," I thought aloud, the pieces starting to click into place with a terrifying, exhilarating speed. "Not while he was the Enforcer. The Archivist's programming, his own rage... it was all a wall between us. He was trapped inside that directive, that hatred. But this... this was his way of getting a message through the noise. He paid the ultimate price to give me this one, pure piece of data, uncorrupted by The Archivist or the System. He was trying to tell me something."
"Something about the crash?" Anya suggested, her gaze sharp.
"It has to be," I said, my mind racing. "The official story, the one that flickered on the news feeds before the world went dark, was that it was an accident. A server overload at the tech center. A one-in-a-billion glitch that caused a cascade failure. But what if it wasn't? Ben was active-duty special forces. I was a veteran of the same community. We were both at the same high-end VR center at the same time. The same center that uses military-grade simulation software."
Suddenly, a hundred small, insignificant details seemed to lock into place, forming a coherent, terrifying picture. The advanced combat AI of the NPCs. The realistic weapon physics. The System's ruthless, military-style efficiency. Aegis Protocol wasn't just a game. It was a military training simulation. A "wargame." And a highly advanced one at that.
"The Ghost's existence confirms that other people from my real life are trapped in the system," I remembered from the Oracle's fragmented truths. "How many others? How many soldiers were at that center that night?"
"Ben was trying to tell me that our past is the key," I said, a new fire kindling in my gut. The grief was still there, a heavy, cold weight in the center of my chest. But now it was joined by something else: purpose. A cold, hard, soldier's resolve that I hadn't felt in years. The part of me I had tried to kill was stirring, not with the ghosts of past traumas, but with the clarity of a new mission. "He wasn't just a random gamer who got unlucky. He was there for a reason. Maybe I was too, and I didn't even know it. Maybe the crash wasn't an accident. Maybe it was an attack. Or an experiment."
My objective, my entire reason for fighting, had just changed. It was no longer about just surviving day to day. It was no longer about simply escaping this digital prison. Escape was not enough. Not anymore.
"I need to find out what happened," I said, my voice steady now, filled with a conviction I hadn't felt since I put on the uniform all those years ago. "I need to know who is behind this. Who created this system. And why we were chosen. Why soldiers were chosen."
This was my new mission. Not for myself. But for Ben. I owed him that much. I owed him everything. I would uncover the truth, and I would burn down the whole damned system if that's what it took to get justice for him.
Anya watched me, her expression shifting from concern to a familiar, grim determination. She saw the change in me, the return of the soldier. "Okay, soldier," she said, a faint, weary smile touching her lips. "So what's the first step? How do we find answers in a world made of lies?"
I looked at the console. The transport elevator was waiting, a silent promise of a path to a temporary, hollow safety. That was the old plan. The runner's plan. The plan of a man trying to forget who he was.
I was done running.
"The Archivist," I said, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. "It's the oldest thing in this system. It's a being of pure information. It collects secrets. It makes deals. And it made a deal with the Ghost. It knows things. It knows why Ben was turned into the Enforcer. It knows who its 'client' was. It's the only lead we have."
"Leo, no," Anya said immediately, her voice sharp with alarm. She took a step closer, her mismatched leg making a scraping sound on the floor. "Going back there is suicide. You saw what it did. It's not our ally. It's a monster. It creates monsters."
"I know," I said, turning to face her fully. "But it's the only monster in this world that seems to follow a consistent set of rules. It trades for information. It honors its deals, in its own twisted way. It gave Ben his final message, just like they agreed. And right now, I have something it might want."
I touched the screen of the console, my fingers tracing the glowing image of me and Ben in our youth. My past. My real-world memories of black ops missions, of classified military intelligence, of things that happened in the shadows of the old world. Secrets the System had probably tried to bury when it trapped us here. Secrets that an information broker like The Archivist would pay a very high price for.
"I'm going back to the Static Core," I said, my voice absolute, leaving no room for argument. "I'm going to make a new deal with the devil."
I looked at the elevator, then back at the dark, forgotten tunnel we had come from. One path led up, to a false safety. The other led down, into the darkness, towards a terrible truth. For the first time since I woke up in this world, the choice was clear.