The smell of burnt keratin still lingered in the air, a sharp reminder of the price of failure. Vance did not look at his ruined finger. He kept his eyes locked on Envy, his gaze steady and predatory.
"Round Two," Vance said, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper. "Let's raise the stakes."
Envy leaned forward on his floating throne, his magnified eyes wide with a mix of sadism and anxiety. He had won the first round, but the victory felt hollow. Vance's calmness was unnerving.
"State your truth," Envy commanded. "And prepare to lose another finger."
Vance smiled. It was the smile of a man holding a royal flush.
"Statement Two: The prisoner known as Nyar is not in Basement Level 3. The cell is empty."
The control room went dead silent. The hum of the servers seemed to vanish.
Envy stared at Vance for a full second, processing the audacity of the claim. Then, he let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.
"That is your gamble?" Envy sneered. "I put him there myself. The sensors read his heat signature. The cameras see the door. You are wasting my time."
"Prove it," Vance challenged. "You have ten seconds. Verify that he is inside. Not the door. Not the bio-readings. Him."
Envy's hands flew to the console.
"Easy."
He brought up the feed for [B3-ISO]. The screen showed the heavy steel blast door, sealed tight. The status light was a solid, reassuring crimson.
"He is there," Envy shouted. "Bio-scan confirms male, 70kg, resting heart rate."
"That confirms there is meat in the room," Vance countered ruthlessly. "It doesn't confirm it's Nyar. And the video feed? Are you sure it's live?"
Vance leaned in, his voice dripping with poison.
"Look closer at the screen, Envy. Look at the grain. Look at the dust motes floating in the infrared light."
"Nyar is a master of memory. He edits reality. Maybe he edited your system. Maybe that feed you're watching is a loop from yesterday."
Envy froze.
His eyes darted to the screen. He watched the grainy night-vision feed. A speck of dust floated past the camera lens.
Four seconds later, the same speck of dust floated past again.
Exact same trajectory. Exact same speed.
It was a loop.
Or was it?
Was it a coincidence? Or was his mind playing tricks on him because Vance suggested it?
"Seven seconds," Vance counted down. "Is it real, Envy? Or are you watching a ghost?"
[Basement Level 3]
While Vance was tearing apart Envy's mind, Cerberus was facing a physical wall of death.
He had dropped from the ventilation shaft and landed silently in the corridor leading to the Isolation Cell. The heavy blast door was twenty meters ahead.
But the corridor wasn't empty.
Cerberus stopped. His enhanced senses picked up a faint, high-pitched whine filling the air.
Acoustic Laser Grid.
It wasn't a standard motion sensor. The walls were lined with thousands of micro-emitters creating a web of sound-sensitive triggers. Any sound above 10 decibels—the rustle of fabric, the scuff of a boot, even a heavy breath—would trip the system.
If triggered, the emitters would fire concentrated laser beams, turning the hallway into a convection oven instantly.
Cerberus looked at the deadly path. He couldn't just walk. He couldn't even breathe.
He closed his eyes. He focused on the thumping rhythm in his chest.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
He needed to be quieter than silence.
He exhaled all the air from his lungs. Then, he sent a neural command to his brainstem, overriding his autonomic nervous system.
[Heart Rate: Decelerating.]
40 bpm... 20 bpm... 5 bpm...
His heart stopped.
The blood in his veins slowed to a standstill. His body temperature began to drop. The sound of his own life faded into nothingness.
He was no longer a boy. He was a corpse moving on sheer will.
Cerberus opened his eyes. He moved.
He didn't run. He flowed. He stepped between the invisible acoustic tripwires, his movements perfectly fluid to avoid creating air pressure waves.
Ten meters. His vision began to blur at the edges from lack of oxygen.
Fifteen meters. His muscles screamed for blood, burning with lactic acid.
Twenty meters. He reached the control panel of the blast door.
He didn't use a hacking tool that might click or beep. He used his tactical knife. He slid the non-conductive ceramic blade into the panel's seam and severed the power coupling with a single, silent slice.
The high-pitched whine died. The grid powered down.
Cerberus collapsed against the cold steel of the blast door. He gasped, sucking in air greedily. His heart kick-started with a painful, violent thud, pumping life back into his limbs.
He had reached the box. Now he just had to wait for it to open.
[Top Floor: Command Center]
"Time's up," Vance said softly.
Envy was sweating. The smell of Rotting Paper and Damp Mold rolled off him in waves.
He was staring at the screen. He had run three diagnostic checks. All green. All normal.
But he couldn't stop looking at that speck of dust.
It looped. I saw it loop.
If the feed was a loop, then the sensors were lying. If the sensors were lying, then the prisoner could be gone. Nyar could be standing right behind him, wearing a stealth suit, holding a knife.
Paranoia, once planted, is a weed that destroys the garden.
"I... I verify..." Envy stammered.
"You verify what?" Vance interrupted. "Can you swear on your life that feed is live? Can you swear Nyar is in that cell?"
Envy opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He couldn't. He didn't trust the screen anymore. He didn't trust the code.
The "All-Seeing Eye" had blinked.
"You can't verify," Vance declared, his voice ringing with judgment. "That means I win this round."
"NO!" Envy shrieked, slamming his fists onto the console. "The system is perfect! He is there!"
" Then prove it," Vance leaned back, exposing his throat, taunting the king. "Open the door. Look with your own eyes. Send your guards to physically touch him. That is the only way to be sure."
Envy looked at the screen. He looked at Vance.
He was trapped in the logic. To prove his system worked, he had to bypass his system. To prove he was the god of this tower, he had to admit he was blind.
But the fear of Nyar escaping was stronger than his pride.
"UNIT 7!" Envy screamed into the microphone, his voice cracking with hysteria. "EMERGENCY PROTOCOL! GO TO B3! OPEN THE CELL! I WANT VISUAL CONFIRMATION ON THE TARGET! NOW!"
Vance exhaled slowly. The pain in his finger throbbed, but the sweetness of victory tasted better than any painkiller.
Envy had just commanded his own guards to disable the security he bragged about.
Schrödinger's box was about to be opened.