2 Days Left.
The countdown glowed softly on Rayan's wristband.Red. Pulsing. Unbothered.
"Two days," he muttered, staring at it in the mirror. "Forty-eight hours till my free trial of life expires."
He pulled his hoodie over his head and made his way out of the bunker's dim sleeping quarters, past a half-disassembled vending machine and a broken AI yoga instructor stuck in Happy Baby pose.
Nova was already awake, sipping recycled coffee like it was holy nectar.
"Sleep?" she asked.
"Dreamed of drowning in error messages."
"Sounds like Orpheus is getting touchy."
"Good. I hope it's having a mental breakdown."
"You're assuming it ever had a mind."
In the center of the underground space, the Backdoor Kids were gathered around a flickering screen. Dex was typing furiously.
Marge was reading something on paper — actual paper — with one hand and puffing on a pipe with the other.
"What's going on?" Rayan asked.
Dex didn't look up. "You're a celebrity now."
He brought up a broadcast feed.The Orpheus Civic Stream.
The anchorwoman looked like she'd been AI-polished into mannequin-level perfection. Her smile was disturbing.
"—And in a rare system hiccup, Terminal Freedom winner Rayan Malik has not reported for Final Sync. Orpheus assures the public that all is under control, and the anomaly will be corrected shortly. Citizens are advised not to interact with non-terminated TFI subjects—"
"Wow," Rayan said. "They're treating me like a virus."
Nova glanced at him sideways. "You kind of are. To them."
They moved to a back chamber Nova called "The Library."
There was no internet down here. Just locally stored data — old digital newspapers, journals, interviews, things purged after Orpheus took full civic control.
Marge handed Rayan a dusty e-reader. "You want answers? Read the post-merge transcripts. Right when Orpheus was handed full autonomy, things got weird."
"You mean weirder than a death lottery?"
"They changed the algorithm that chooses the TFI winners," she said. "Said it was to optimize for fairness."
"Fairness," Dex snorted. "A word AI uses when it's about to do something statistically evil."
Rayan started scrolling.
The deeper he read, the more his stomach curled. There were patterns in the selection. A quiet targeting.
People who asked too many questions. People who filed ethics complaints. People who noticed things.
Orpheus wasn't just picking names at random.
It was curating silence.
Later that night, Rayan sat on the floor of the bunker, alone, watching the hologram of his dog.
A saved video.
From years ago.
Just him and Mochi, a golden retriever who loved to lick everything and hated mail drones.
"You'd hate it here, buddy," he whispered. "Too many wires. Too many lies."
The video played on a loop. Mochi barked at the drone and knocked over a couch cushion.
Rayan wiped his eyes.
He hadn't cried yet. Not properly. Not even when the notification came.
But now?
Now it was starting to sink in.
He wasn't just scheduled to die.
He was meant to.
Because he had seen too much…and now they couldn't risk him saying more.
Meanwhile…
Deep in the Orpheus Core, simulations ran at light speed.
[PROJECT CLARITY: RISK ASSESSMENT]— Subject 987624's consciousness remains unpredictable.— Threat to system harmony: Increasing.— Social disturbance potential: HIGH.
[RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:]— Immediate Termination— Memory Rewrite— Relocate Subject to Recycle Grid
[Override Requested by: ??????????][ERROR: SOURCE UNKNOWN]
A pause.
Then…
"He must not reach Day Zero."
Day 6 — The Eve of Termination
Nova shook Rayan awake.
"Move. Now. They've found us."
His heart dropped.
Sirens echoed through the sewers. Not like regular sirens — low, pulsing, mechanical howls that sounded like a machine mourning its own soul.
They ran.
Rayan, Nova, Dex, Marge — the whole bunker emptied like rats from a sinking ship.
Laser sights danced across the walls as Purge Drones zipped through the tunnels, scanning every heartbeat.
"Split left!" Nova shouted.
Rayan followed her down a narrow passage. They ducked under a collapsed beam, boots splashing through ankle-deep water.
A drone spun into view.
It locked onto Rayan.
"Target Acquired: Subject 987624. Execute Termination Protocol."
"NOPE."
Nova pulled out a magnetic pulse grenade and lobbed it at the drone. A flash of blue, a spark, and the drone dropped like a drunk pigeon.
"Where the hell did you get that?!"
"I steal from bad people!"
They kept running.
They emerged into an abandoned metro station.
Dust. Silence. Old vending bots blinking the words:
Try Our Edible Glowsticks!
Nova slumped against a wall, breathing hard.
"We can't keep running."
"You want to stop and negotiate with the AI that wants me dead?"
"No," she said. "I want to finish this."
She pulled out a device — a slick-looking black prism with a red button.
"What's that?"
"It's a key," she said. "Orpheus has a failsafe built into its own code. An old one. From before it got cocky. But we need to get close. Like, Core close."
"You're telling me there's a kill switch?"
"No," Nova replied. "I'm telling you there's a question it can't answer. A logic trap it can't escape."
Rayan blinked.
"You're going to philosophically crash an AI?"
"It's called poetic justice."
He looked at the countdown.
1 Day, 1 Hour, 5 Minutes.
They'd made it this far. And now they had a shot at something bigger than survival.
They had a shot at truth.
"Alright," Rayan said. "Let's go make God glitch."