"Some anomalies speak. Others observe. But Diver Zero simply waits—until it's too late."
The walk back into Bray Hollow felt like stepping into a reflection of the city rather than the city itself.
Shadows fell in the wrong direction. Windows mirrored the street in ways that subtly distorted reality—buildings were half an inch taller, signs blinked too slowly. Even the trash on the ground was wrong. Orin spotted a flyer on the sidewalk advertising a concert that never existed, featuring an artist whose name made his stomach twist:
Seira
He didn't know why it bothered him.
Only that it shouldn't exist.
Nothing in the System ever referenced what it had erased.
Not unless something was failing.
As they moved toward the commercial district, Junie walked with one hand resting on her satchel and the other clenched around a folded page torn from her sketchbook—the one with the spike, the cube, and the shadow woman watching.
She hadn't drawn it.
It had appeared while she was asleep.
That's how she knew it was serious.
"She's watching," Junie muttered. "I can feel it. Even now."
"Who?" Orin asked.
"The voice behind the silence. The one the System never logs."
He didn't press further. Not yet.
He was still grappling with the idea that his reality had multiple narrators—and that one of them didn't speak with words.
The closer they got to the store, the more obvious the degradation became.
Whole stretches of sidewalk had flickering textures, like corrupted digital overlays. People glitched. At one intersection, a young man froze mid-step, stuttering back and forth in an endless loop. A bird flapped its wings without ever taking flight.
And still, no one noticed.
Junie touched Orin's arm gently.
"They're too deep in the loop."
"Can we pull them out?"
"Not unless they want to remember. And most don't. That's what makes Diver-class anomalies dangerous. We hesitate. The System doesn't."
He didn't respond.
He just followed.
The storefront of Unit 402—his old workplace—stood still, like it had been waiting for him.
But it had changed.
The signage had been replaced with blank white panels that shimmered faintly, like fog trapped beneath glass. The windows no longer reflected anything. They absorbed it.
The store no longer looked like a place of business.
It looked like a shrine.
A sealed tomb for a secret only the System remembered.
Junie led him to the side access door, still unlocked. It groaned open, and the scent hit them immediately—metal, ozone, scorched data.
It no longer smelled like dust and overripe fruit.
It smelled like something was booting up.
They stepped through narrow halls into the main floor.
The shelves were still there.
But emptied.
All products gone. Labels stripped. The layout subtly warped, with angles that didn't obey architectural rules.
And then—
They saw aisle seven.
Or what remained of it.
The floor had ruptured into a clean, circular crater ten feet across, ringed in rotating glyphs. At its centre stood a jagged metal spike that throbbed with pale light, humming in tune with Orin's pulse. Thin black cables ran from the spike outward like veins, vanishing beneath shelves, merging with wall circuitry. Suspended above the spike was a perfect black cube, levitating three feet off the ground.
Its surface absorbed light. Edges shimmered. Symbols blinked and disappeared before they could be read.
And hovering above it, still and silent—
A woman.
Or something like one.
Her form shimmered into being with quiet inevitability, like fog sliding into a closed room.
She descended soundlessly to the floor, boots never touching it, until her weight settled—graceful, fluid, wrong.
She looked human. Almost.
A white bodysuit clung to her form like liquid skin, its surface etched with recursive fractal lines that restructured themselves every time you blinked. Her face was symmetrical in a way that felt unnatural. Her skin was unblemished. Her hair, a waterfall of dark silk, hung motionless despite the faint breeze spiralling around the node.
Her eyes…
Black.
Completely black.
Not void. Not glowing.
Just absence.
Junie whispered, "It's her."
Orin felt the words settle in his chest like ice.
"Who?"
Junie's breath trembled. "Diver Zero."
The woman opened her mouth, but her voice did not come from her lips.
It arrived in their minds, perfectly clear.
"Recursion Node 402: destabilizing.
Diver-Class anomaly identified: Conditional.
Emotional resistance threshold breached.
Identity sync failure: 61%.
Reset protocol pending."
Orin took a half-step back. "You know who I am."
Her head tilted slightly—like a curious puppet.
"You are Orin," she said aloud this time. Her voice was smooth, without breath. "You were Kaito. You are Diver-class. You are deviation. You are memory."
The words struck like blades.
Junie stepped between them, eyes wide with fury.
"You're the one erasing them. You rewrote Kaito. You—"
The woman turned her gaze on her.
And smiled.
It was subtle. Deliberate.
Terrifying.
"I do not erase," she said. "I restore."
Junie shook. "By erasing everything that made them real?"
"By preserving what must remain."
Orin's hands balled into fists.
"Why me?"
A pause.
Then Lira—the name hung in the air like a glitch—took a single step forward.
"The others broke," she said softly. "You did not. Your thread persisted. Loop after loop. Memory after rewrite. The Chair accepted you. And yet… you refused to stabilize."
She turned.
Palm up.
Reaching toward him.
"I am not your enemy, Orin."
He stared at her hand.
"Then what are you?"
Another pause. Then:
"I am the System's first failure."
The air cracked.
Somewhere overhead, lights blew out with a sharp pop.
The cube pulsed red.
"Diver-Zero Protocol breached.
Recursive autonomy engaged.
Guide unit LIRA no longer restricted."
Junie gasped.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," Lira said, "I am no longer bound by observation rules."
She raised her hand.
The glyphs at her wrist flared.
And suddenly—Junie's sketches exploded.
The ones in her bag.
On her person.
On her arm.
Dozens of drawings ignited in silver flame, burning without heat, spiralling into the air like scattered ash made of memory.
Junie screamed.
But Orin moved.
He stepped forward, between Junie and Lira.
And the cube stopped pulsing.
Just for a second.
The entire node froze.
And Lira flinched.
As if she saw something in him—something that scared her.
"You are not ready," she whispered.
Then she vanished.
In an instant. No noise. No flash.
Just absence.
And the cube shattered.
A pulse of force knocked both of them back, crashing into empty shelves and floor.
When the dust settled, only the spike remained.
And the faint scent of ash.
Junie crawled toward the last burning piece of her sketchbook and snuffed it out.
She turned toward Orin, dazed.
"You scared her," she whispered.
Orin stared at his hands.
"I think I remembered something."
Lira—Diver Zero—has made contact. But if she's the System's first failure, what exactly did she fail to do?
© 2025 Ofelia B Webb. All rights reserved.
This is an original work published on WebNovel.