The door slid shut, and the robot slammed against it a moment later, its metal fingers scraping the surface. Sparks flew, but the lift began to move.
In his panic, Sameer had pressed the button labeled B1.
"The basement?" Anna asked, panting. "Why there?"
"I didn't mean to! It was the only one still lit!" Sameer replied.
The newcomer stood silently watching the floor numbers descend on the flickering screen:
> 2 → 1 → G → B1
But when the screen passed B1, it kept going.The humming grew louder. The air felt heavier.The lift shook violently as it descended past the lower floors. Sparks burst from the control panel, and Sameer screamed, clutching the railing.
The floor indicator blinked past B1, then B2, then nothing at all. There was no basement below—only a deep void the machine had no right to enter.
"Anna! It's not stopping!"
"I see that!" Anna shouted, gripping the side as the walls around them blurred into darkness.
"Uh… is it supposed to go this far?" Sameer asked nervously.Before anyone could answer, the lift jolted violently. The lights inside flickered, then steadied again.
Then—CRASH!
The lift tore through rusted metal and shattered beams before finally slamming into something hard. The force threw them to the floor. Dust and debris filled the air. The sound of grinding metal echoed for a long moment before silence returned.
When the smoke cleared, the lift's doors creaked open crookedly.
The three coughed, staggering out. What they saw was not a basement—It was like a cave under the store. cold and silent. Only the distant sound of dripping water echoed through the hollow space.
When they looked up, they could still see the underside of the old basement floor—crcked and half-destroyed, hanging above them like a ceiling that might collapse at any time.
Sameer whispered, "We fell through the world…"
Anna steadied him. "Stay close. Don't touch anything unstable."
As they stepped carefully over the rubble, a faint blue light flickered ahead—coming from a broken piece of circuitry still sparking with life.
Someone was there.
A girl crouched beside a shattered circuit board, tinkering with its wires. Her fingers moved quickly, and small sparks danced across the metal as she adjusted its connections. The moment she twisted the last wire, a section of the ruined store above flickered to life—the same lights they had seen earlier.
The girl glanced up, startled by the sound of footsteps. Her sharp eyes narrowed, defensive at first.
"Who are you?" she demanded, standing up.
She has long, dark hair that falls to her shoulders in uneven layers, slightly wavy and always a bit tangled from the dust of the ruins. Strands often fall across her face, and she pushes them aside absentmindedly when she's thinking. Her eyes are a piercing amber-brown, sharp and intelligent, but with a trace of sadness that never quite fades.
Her skin is light brown, marked with faint scars along her arms and neck. She's slender, her movements quick and precise, like someone used to running, hiding, and fixing broken things.
She wears a faded dark-blue jacket over a pale undershirt, the edges torn and frayed. She carries a small tool pouch on her hip
Before Anna could respond, Saleem—who had frozen in shock replied.
"Riya…?" he whispered.
She turned. They stared at each other for a long moment,
"You… you were also transferred." Asked Saleem
"Who are you? and how do you know my name?" The girl named Riya said with confusion lingering in her face as she tried to remember who Saleem was.
"You don't remember it's me Saleem. The boy who helped you break into the world record management facility." Replies with worry of being forgotten by the only person who cared about him.
"Sorry I don't remember any one named Saleem . Maybe you have mistaken me for someone else? "
"NO I am sure I can never forget the face and voice of the only person who took care of me when everyone turned their back to me. The one who gave me a reason to live."
Riya stepped back slightly, confusion tightening her brow. She glanced toward the faint glow of the broken circuit board beside her, as if searching for stability in its steady blink.
"I…" she began softly, her voice trembling. "I don't remember anyone. I don't even remember how I got here. The last thing I recall was… running from something—then a flash of white. After that… nothing."
Saleem's eyes widened. "No… no, that can't be. You're Riya! You fixed the central tower's circuits, you decoded the world computer and managed to unlock the knowledge of the universe and save millions of people. You saved me from the experiment World Simulation."