The steam had begun to thin, turning from a thick, opaque curtain into a translucent shroud that clung to the marble walls. For a few minutes, the silence in the basin felt absolute. I actually thought we were offline. I thought the system had finally hit a buffer overflow and granted us a moment of genuine latency.
But the admin never sleeps. The system never actually powers down; it just waits for your pulse to stabilize before it injects the next nightmare.
A brief, cerulean blue flicker ignited in the corner of my vision.
It was a sharp, digital intrusion that made my retinas ache.
"Huh, are you still bringing that?" Velvet asked. Her eyes flickered with a dull, exhausted confusion as she watched the reflection of my HUD in the water's surface.
[D-DRIVE GAME TRIAL CHALLENGE NO. 2 – ROUND 1 WILL BEGIN IN 6 HOURS. PLEASE CONSERVE YOUR ENERGY AND TAKE A REST. – just now]
Wow. How groundbreaking.
"Challenge No. 2."
