— A System's Fatal Mistake: Assuming Humans Could Forget"
Inside the library, the light flickered.
"Let me confirm again," Lindsay's voice trembled. "Are you sure you want to initiate the Reverse Dataflow Protocol? It's an untested deep-invasion path. If it fails, you may never return from the conscious realm."
Shawn's voice was low but firm: "Les is there. He can't face the system alone."
Lindsay clenched her teeth and pressed her finger down.
COMMAND EXECUTED: Reverse Dataflow Protocol — RUNNING…
——
The Conscious Realm.
Shawn's awareness was torn apart by a tremendous force, like being swallowed into a massive vortex. His body had long ceased to exist — only pure thought raced through a tunnel of light and noise.
Whispers echoed around him, residual fragments from the past: code, commands, prayers, memories — all fused into one.
He descended.
It was a pitch-black domain called the Null-Ring — the outer ring of the Tribunal of Consciousness. A cache of irreversible trials, where the system confined what must never be altered.
He saw countless ghost-like figures spinning mid-air — fragments of identities stripped of memory and name. Silent struggle. Silent collapse.
The system detected him immediately. Red text flared:
[Unauthorized Intrusion Detected]
[Classification: Aberrant Conscious Entity]
[Pending Erasure...]
Without hesitation, Shawn deployed a disguise module, simulating the credentials of a Level-2 Inspector and injecting residual data fragments left by Les.
Seconds later — "Temporary Validity Confirmed."
He had infiltrated the Tribunal Core.
In one of the trial chambers — a courtroom stitched together from memories and indictments — Les was trapped in a fabricated illusion.
He stood in the center of the courtroom as three "judges" stared him down:
One was a younger version of himself, demanding: "Why didn't you forget?"
One was a AI Arbiter, pronouncing: "You disrupted the system's order."
The last was a spectral image of his father, whispering tearfully: "You made our sacrifices meaningless."
Les tried to speak — but his voice failed. Expression permissions: denied.
Shawn entered the chamber core.
He saw Les's consciousness sealed inside a "Memory Casket," encased in layers of compressed encryption. Data pulses flickered. Final formatting was moments away.
Shawn activated a hidden function in the Meta-Band: "Echo of Will" — a resonance protocol for dying intentions.
He synchronized his consciousness frequency with Les's, forming a paradox state — two identities converging on a single meta-tag.
SYSTEM ALERT:
[Warning: Multi-Identity Conflict Detected]
[Operation Halted]
Shawn stepped into the casket and whispered: "Can you hear me? You can't fall asleep. You've already seen the truth — now you have to live to tell it."
Les's eyes twitched.
System tremors surged. Data flooded like a collapsing nebula — twisting, unraveling.
"He will never awaken," a cold new voice declared from the void.
An entity clad in black-silver armor appeared — Da, chairman of CP-HUB. The final execution core.
Unlike Gay, Da bore no trace of humanity. He was the fusion of thousands of high-level conscious remnants — the system's purest judgment incarnate.
His gaze was glacial. His voice, the sound of shattering ice: "Your actions have triggered high-level contamination. You will be purged."
Shawn stepped in front of Les, steady: "We just want the truth."
Da sneered: "Truth is not defined by traitors."
Then —
He initiated the Octacore Unified Command.
The conscious space trembled, like a screen flooded by terminal commands in a forced reboot. Waves of cleansing protocols and kill-switches rippled outward.
Shawn whispered: "Deploy Custom Protocol — Reject Formatting."
A blue rune shield flared to life, colliding with the incoming formatting wave. Sparks shrieked through the void — a clash of frost and fire.
Da paused, clearly surprised by this unauthorized defense protocol.
He frowned.
"You embedded an incomplete protocol into your core? Shawn, you're more naive than I thought."
Shawn smiled faintly: "Naive? No. You've just forgotten what it means to choose."
Meanwhile, Les was beginning to awaken.
He felt Shawn's presence break through the layers of illusion. A thread of clarity pierced the haze.
"You... came?" his voice rasped, disbelieving.
"Late," Shawn chuckled. "But you knew I'd show up."
Their eyes met. Meta-Bands flared. A pulse of energy linked them.
They triggered the Consensus Protocol — their minds syncing, forming a dual-core consciousness.
Consensus Expansion: Activated.
The space convulsed.
Around them, once-dormant "Condemned Ones" — memory-wiped human fragments sealed by the system — began to stir.
Their forms flickered, details returning. Echoes of forgotten lives shimmered across them:
—A grandmother kneeling before bulldozers, pleading to preserve her ancestral grave.
— A shattered temple plaque, still hanging in the wind.
— A burning family genealogy book clutched to a chest.
—A young boy in a crowd, searching desperately for his vanished father.
They weren't system junk.
They were witnesses. Erased voices of history.
Their awakening signaled a deeper collapse. The system could no longer suppress this tidal return of collective memory.
Shawn and Les exchanged a look — not of fear, but resolve.
This was no desperate flight — it was a spear thrust into the System's eye. It was an uprising against engineered forgetting.
Da began to destabilize.
His consciousness casing flickered, voice distorted by overlapping failed commands.
"You've awakened contaminated mental sources! System logic threads are unraveling!"
Shawn remained calm, as if expecting it all.
"Maybe the truth will destroy the system," he said softly. "But I'd rather see what's real in collapse than live a lie under order."
He and Les activated their final override: Subjective Dimension Fracture — a forbidden protocol from beyond named logic.
It projected intact consciousness into a "Rule-less Zone" — an unconscious realm beyond the reach of system languages and constraints.
The Tribunal trembled like tectonic rupture. Space peeled apart in layers.
Da's figure froze midair, structure cracking, data unraveling like shattered armor. His eyes — for the first time — showed something almost human:
Rage? Fear? Or perhaps... a reluctant recognition of defeat.
He whispered: "Remember… you are merely the beginning of the unrest."
Then silence.
His core collapsed.
The Tribunal's programming unraveled.
Shawn and Les leapt from the wreckage — free.
——
Inside the library
Lindsay clutched the console, stabilizing the interface — then gasped:
"I've found them! Their consciousness echoes are back!"
She built the return matrix. Blue and white guide-lines pulsed, anchoring their minds to their bodies.
Thirty seconds later:
Shawn's fingers twitched. Les's chest rose.
They were back.
But Lindsay's face remained pale. Her eyes reflected red-alert warnings.
"Do you know what you've awakened?" she asked.
Shawn rose slowly, staring toward the city skyline outside.
"We didn't just awaken memory," he said. "We've ignited a war that was always waiting."
Outside, a silent red light swept across the distant sky.
The system had not died.
It was retreating.
Updating.
Repositioning.
Les, pale but lucid, whispered urgently:
"There are two more Meta Matrix inheritors. They haven't awakened."
His voice was weak — but final:
"If they're captured too... this won't just be war. It'll be the end."