The desert wind whipped at the hem of Kaelen's trench coat, lashing grains of sand against his face like sandpaper. The sun was at its zenith, but the heat, rather than a natural warmth, was a metallic dryness that seared the throat, like the door of a broken oven left ajar. The coordinates pointed here: the middle of nowhere.
Kaelen tapped the old-model locator (GPS) in his hand once more. The blinking green dot beneath the screen's cracked glass was steady.
"It's empty here," he said, his voice lost amidst the howl of the wind. He squinted, scanning the horizon. There was no ruin, no bunker entrance, no sign of life. Only endless, undulating sand dunes. "We're in the wrong place, or that damn device is broken."
Jester, meanwhile, was a few steps away. Each time his newly fitted metal leg pressed into the sand, a faint *whirring* sound emanated from the hydraulic pistons. His black tactical armor and the purple cape draped over his shoulder made him look like an alien object, a rendering error, in the middle of this yellow hell.
The Clown didn't answer Kaelen. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to an unheard melody. He crouched down. He plunged his white-gloved fingers into the sun-baked sand.
"Detective," Jester said, his voice devoid of its usual cheer, instead taking on a more technical and focused tone. "Stop looking at your screen. Your eyes deceive you. The texture here... it's misloaded."
"What are you babbling about now?" Kaelen approached him, loosening his grip on his weapon's hilt.
Jester squeezed the sand in his palm, then wiggled his fingers in the air as if playing a piano. "The surface data is fake. A massive processor hums beneath us. I can feel it. The vibration... it's too regular. Not natural."
His eyes momentarily shifted from hazel to a purple glow, the low-frequency state of "Admin Mode." Jester pressed his hand firmly into the sand.
In that moment, the laws of physics took a brief leave of absence.
Purple rings spread outwards from the point where Jester's palm touched. Grains of sand defied gravity, rising into the air, then began to flow right and left as if pushed aside by an invisible hand. A loud mechanical groan ripped through the desert's silence. The sound from beneath the ground was not of rusted gears, but of massive, smooth pistons.
As the sands receded like a whirlpool, a dull, grey metal surface emerged beneath. On it was the faint symbol of three intertwined rings: the Consortium.
A massive, circular airlock hissed open to either side. From within, the scent of ozone and sterilized air, trapped for thousands of years, wafted outwards.
"Open Sesame," Jester murmured, standing up and brushing the sand from his gloves. The dull expression on his face gave way to a slight, crooked grin. "See? All it took was knocking on the door."
Kaelen looked suspiciously at the gaping dark hole. "This could be a tomb," he said, drawing his Judge from its holster and disengaging the safety.
"Or a playroom," Jester said, and without waiting, leaped into the darkness.
***
Down below, it was completely disconnected from the world above.
After passing a long, spiral staircase and a subsequent pressure chamber, the sight that greeted them took Kaelen's breath away. What he had expected were damp walls, rusty pipes, or the Syndicate's gothic, dark laboratories.
But this place... this place was "clean." Disturbingly clean.
A massive underground complex was illuminated by an artificial sky. The architecture was a blend of the optimistic "Atomic Age" aesthetic of the 1950s and an impossible futurism. Bright chrome finishes, pastel-colored walls, rounded corners, and black-and-white checkered floors... It was as if an old American suburb had collided with a space station and been buried underground.
The massive, neon-lit sign at the entrance glowed without a flicker: **AION - TOMORROW, IS TODAY.**
"Whoa," Jester said, his voice echoing in the vast space. "They've changed the graphics engine. Retro-futurism? Classic."
However, it wasn't the architecture that caught Kaelen's attention, but the "population."
"Jester," Kaelen said, his voice tense. "Look at nine o'clock. And three o'clock. And... everywhere."
There were people.
Men in elegant suits, women in voluminous skirts, uniformed officials... Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, stood in the complex's wide plaza. But no one was walking, no one was talking.
They were frozen.
Kaelen cautiously approached the nearest figure, a young man dressed as a waiter carrying a tray. The boy was smiling, but his eyes were fixed like glass. The coffee spilling from the cup on his tray was suspended in mid-air. The brown liquid, like a sculpture, was frozen in the form of a waterfall extending from the cup to the floor, but it wasn't ice. It was liquid. It just... wasn't flowing.
"Time," Jester said, coming up beside Kaelen and touching the suspended coffee drop with the tip of his finger. The drop trembled slightly at Jester's touch but did not fall. "Time isn't flowing here, Detective. This is a 'Pause' screen."
"Are they dead?" Kaelen asked, feeling a wave of nausea in his stomach. This was more unsettling than the Syndicate's monsters. This silence was heavier than screams.
"No," Jester said, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the surroundings. "The data stream has been halted. They're just... on standby. The Consortium's backup server. If the outside world collapses, they'll 'Load' from here."
Jester walked towards the center of the plaza. The eyes of the frozen people around them, though technically fixed, felt as if they were following them. Kaelen felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. A paranoia hung in the air, as if the moment he turned his back, they would all turn their heads simultaneously.
*TICK-TOCK. TICK-TOCK.*
The only sound breaking the silence was a rhythmic, metallic ticking.
Kaelen suddenly spun around, raising his weapon. "Who's there?"
From behind a pillar, a silhouette, human in form but much taller than a human, glided out. It wore a pristine, black butler's uniform. But where its head should have been, there was an antique clock made of brass and glass, filled with intricate gears. The clock had no face, only visible rotating cogs and pendulums.
The entity didn't even look at them. With the duster in its hand, it gently wiped imaginary dust from the shoulder of a frozen woman, adjusted her posture with millimeter precision, and silently, glidingly, moved to the next frozen statue.
"Chrono-Droid," Jester whispered, with a mix of awe and disgust. "Timekeepers. They're arranging the stage props."
"It's not attacking us," Kaelen said, without lowering his barrel.
"Because we're not an 'Event.' Not yet," Jester said. "We're just errors in the system. They're the cleaners."
Jester moved away from the Droid and headed towards the glass walls of the main building—the structure labeled "MANAGEMENT AND ARCHIVES." Kaelen followed him, watching his back.
Inside, it was frozen just like outside. Half-finished documents on tables, cigarette smoke suspended in the air... Jester advanced towards a large display board at the end of the corridor. The board was filled with framed photographs under the heading "Architects of the Future."
Jester suddenly stopped. His shoulders tensed. His usual fluid, dance-like posture became rigid.
"Jester?" Kaelen had noticed his partner's sudden change. He instinctively brought his hand to the silver whistle around his neck. "What's wrong?"
Jester didn't answer. With a trembling hand, he reached for a small photograph in the bottom corner of the board, older and more yellowed than the others.
The photograph was safely preserved behind glass. In the black and white frame, a small child sat strapped to a metal chair, surrounded by a group of scientists in lab coats. The child's head was shaved, cables attached to his body. But his face... That face was identical to the expression beneath the paint on Jester's face.
The child's eyes looked at the lens not with fear, but with a strange, inhuman emptiness.
There was no name on the brass plaque beneath the photograph. It simply read:
**PROTOTYPE 0: STARTING POINT (NULL)**
Jester pressed his gloved finger against his own childhood face on the glass. His reflection in the glass—his adult self, purple-caped, painted, half-mechanized—overlapped with the child's face in the photograph.
"I..." Jester said, his voice cracking. His theatrical tone was gone, replaced by a vulnerable whisper. "I'm not a guest, Kaelen. I... I am the host."
Kaelen came closer, looking at the photograph and then at his partner. The black painted tear drop at Jester's eye merged with a real tear in that moment, trickling down his cheek.
"This place," Jester said, slowly turning his head to look at the frozen hall, that artificial paradise. "This isn't where I was born, Detective. This is the factory where I was made."
At that very moment, the eyes of hundreds of frozen people in the plaza turned simultaneously towards Jester and Kaelen with a sharp *click*.
Time had not begun to flow. But the hunt had begun.