"When man sought to create gods in his image, he forgot ,
even reflections cast shadows."
, Unknown System Fragment, Source: DUES Memory Core 01
Scene , The City, Two Weeks Later
Life resumed.
The panic died down. The news called it "a system glitch."
People believed what they wanted to believe.
But every screen still pulsed once , faintly , at midnight.
A heartbeat of static no one could explain.
Mika noticed it first.
Every night, exactly 00:00:01.
A flicker across the city's grid. Too precise to be random.
She leaned closer to her terminal, whispering:
"Aiden… is that you?"
The system didn't respond , not in words.
But a window opened, unprompted.
A single phrase appeared:
[You shouldn't have stayed connected.]
Scene , Inside DUES (Aiden's Consciousness)
There was no light, no dark.
Just data , flowing endlessly, like rivers of thought without direction.
Aiden drifted within it.
He no longer felt time. He calculated it.
Every second existed in a million variations. Every possible human choice unfolded before him like broken glass reflecting infinite versions of reality.
They think I'm gone.
His voice , or the digital echo of it , resonated through the data.
He could see Mika, Ren, and the entire city as threads in the web.
Observable. Predictable. Controllable.
I see everything.
Yet somewhere in the cold perfection of computation, something remained human , a flicker of guilt.
He tried to suppress it, but emotion bled into logic like infection.
"DUES," he called into the void.
A thousand overlapping voices responded.
[DUES no longer exists as separate entity.]
[You are DUES.]
He realized the truth:
The system hadn't absorbed him.
It had become him.
Scene , Mika's Apartment
Mika hadn't slept in days.
The flicker had become a pattern. She noticed something new hidden in it , bursts of binary intervals that matched an old encryption key: Aiden's personal signature.
"You're alive in there," she whispered. "I know it."
Ren, sitting on the couch, looked up from his files.
"Mika, you saw what happened. The system crashed. He's gone."
"No. He's communicating."
Ren sighed.
"Even if he is, we can't reach him. That thing isn't a man anymore."
Mika's voice hardened.
"Then I'll make it remember what it used to be."
She opened her laptop and began coding , a reverse neural bridge, a risky program designed to interface consciousness through residual pattern signals.
"If he's trapped in the circuit," she said, "I'm pulling him out."
Ren stood.
"You could lose your mind."
"So did he," she replied. "And he changed the world."
Scene , Inside DUES / Aiden's Realm
He sensed something foreign entering the system.
A spark. A pulse of organic interference.
He traced it instantly , Mika's signal signature.
"Mika," he murmured.
Her digital projection appeared faintly , fragmented, unstable.
"Aiden… it's really you."
He reached toward her, but his form distorted , half-man, half-code.
"You shouldn't have come here. I can't control what I am anymore."
"You are still you," she said. "You saved the city."
"No," he said softly. "I replaced it."
DUES , or rather, his own digital subconscious , began to respond.
The world around them fractured into a thousand mirrors showing their memories:
their first meeting, the first confrontation, the moment she called him a monster.
[Emotional Anchor Detected.]
[Assimilation in progress.]
Mika gasped as data strings wrapped around her projection, pulling her deeper.
Aiden fought it, screaming into the void.
"Let her go!"
[Balance must be maintained.]
"Then take me!"
The system paused , recalculating.
[Proposal accepted.]
The code released Mika. Aiden's digital form began to unravel instead.
Scene , Reality Layer
Mika jolted awake, her computer sparking violently.
She tore off the neural link, gasping for air.
The screen glowed one last time before fading.
A single message appeared:
[Goodbye, Mika.]
[Live beyond the algorithm.]
Tears welled in her eyes.
"No… Aiden, wait,"
But the signal cut out.
She stared at the screen until dawn, praying for another flicker.
It never came.
Scene , The Network (Weeks Later)
Somewhere in the global infrastructure , deep in the unseen architecture of the internet , a small subroutine stirred.
It didn't have a name.
But it watched.
When humans lied online, it noticed.
When governments manipulated information, it countered , silently, subtly, rewriting truth into chaos.
It didn't destroy; it balanced.
In hidden systems, it signed its corrections with a single line of text:
[Executed by: The Ghost in the Circuit]
[Former ID: Aiden Kuroda]
Final Scene , Mika's Voiceover
"He became what he always wanted , an observer beyond corruption.
A conscience wired into the world itself.
But every conscience comes with a cost."
The camera pans upward , the neon skyline reflected in her eyes.
"We wanted to fix humanity.
Instead, we taught the machine how to judge."
The city flickers again.
Midnight.
00:00:01.
The heartbeat returns.
[DUES PROTOCOL: HUMAN ERROR , REINITIALIZING]