Ruri’s reader beeped. She’d finally cracked the data?chip’s encryption.

  “It’s… a log,” she said, scrolling. “From Hikari. Dated just before the Mirror Maze.”

  They read together.

  *Log entry – Subject?04 (Hikari) *

  ARK assigned me to monitor the cohort. Primary mission: identify rule?viotors, report to control. Secondary mission: if any pyer discovers the truth about Prometheus, eliminate them.

  But the memories are coming back. Fshes of the early tests. The pain. The screams. I was Subject?00—the first. They wiped me, but the scars remain.

  I remember Yuma’s father. Dr. Sakakibara. He tried to help me. He smuggled me a message before they… took him. The message said: ‘Find my son. Protect him. The truth is in the archive.’

  I don’t know how much longer I can pretend. ARK is watching. If I deviate, Protocol ε activates—self?destruct. But I have to try. For Dr. Sakakibara. For all of us.

  If you’re reading this, I’ve either succeeded or failed. Either way, don’t trust ARK. Don’t trust Caine. The ‘New World’ is a lie. The real goal is…

  The log cut off.

  For a long moment, no one spoke. The words—Hikari’s confession, her fear, her determination—hung in the air like ghosts. She’d been a spy, a weapon, a victim. And she’d chosen to become a rebel.

  Ruri’s hands shook. “She was trying to protect us. Even when she thought it might kill her.”

  Yuma felt a strange, cold crity. Subject?00. The prototype. My father helped her. She’s the key to everything.

  “The real goal is what?” Tsukasa demanded, breaking the silence.

  Komachi’s hyperthymesia repyed the st sentence, lip?reading from memory. “She said ‘…harvesting our consciousness for digital immortality.’”

  Digital immortality.

  The words hung in the air, monstrous and incomprehensible.

  “They’re not testing us for evolution,” Yuma realized, horror dawning. “They’re testing us for compatibility. To see which minds are resilient enough to be uploaded… and which are disposable.”

  Sakuya’s pen paused. “A consciousness?harvesting experiment. That would expin the intense psychological profiling. And the elimination of ‘failures’—their minds weren’t suitable for upload.”

  Ruri sank into a chair. “So when they say ‘recycled’… they’re deleting people? Erasing them?”

  “Or using their neural patterns as raw material for AI training,” Sakuya specuted. “Ethically monstrous, but technologically pusible.”