When Kaito awoke, he wasn't in the classroom anymore. He was lying on cold pavement, somewhere behind the main building, with his head resting awkwardly against the concrete wall. His breath came fast, shallow. The world around him was too still. It wasn't nighttime—he could see the pink hue of early morning cutting through the artificial haze in the sky—but it felt like something had paused reality just long enough for him to fall out of it. His entire body ached, like he'd been physically dragged through a firewall. His mind buzzed with static, fragments of that strange voice still echoing through his thoughts—you are not infected… incompatible… incompatible…
Kaito forced himself up and staggered toward the courtyard. The school was waking up. Students passed through security checkpoints, laughing and swiping through their morning tasks as if nothing had happened. He was invisible to them again—but not in the usual way. Now they glanced at him with unease. A girl near the cafeteria froze mid-step when she saw him. Her system glowed faintly red and auto-adjusted, pulling her back into the center of a group. The system was protecting her. From him.
He kept walking.
Then his ears caught a sound—not from a speaker, not from the air—but inside his head.
A voice.
Not a human one.
Not natural.
[SCANNING TARGET ENTITY – ARASAKA, KAITO – RISK PROFILE: RED CLASS 3]
[ANTIVIRUS RESPONSE DEPLOYED – UNIT ID: HUNTER-1]
His breath caught. Antivirus?
He turned sharply and saw them. Two figures, tall, too perfect, walking side by side through the crowd—students made of synthetic flesh, or maybe fully remote-controlled avatars. Their eyes glowed faintly blue. Their walk was too smooth. They didn't talk. They didn't blink. They moved through people rather than around them. A clean line toward him.
No hesitation.
No warning.
Kaito bolted.
He ducked between the crowd, shoving past students who barely reacted, as if their attention was being filtered. No alerts. No screams. Just the eerie quiet of a system muting its own environment to carry out a purge.
He ran through a hallway, past lockers, past classrooms. The sound of synthetic footsteps echoed behind him. Unstoppable. Calculated. Close. He didn't have a plan—he just moved, pushed, twisted, leapt down a stairwell and slid behind a cleaning drone that didn't register him as a priority. The Hunters didn't care about the drone. They cared about him.
He ducked into the maintenance hallway near the boiler room. The overhead lights buzzed with low energy. A camera followed his movement—then glitched. The system wasn't stable here.
A message appeared on the wall next to him. Not a real message. More like a shadow burned into his vision.
[SYSTEM DEFENSE ACTIVE – HIDE, RUN, RESET]
"Very helpful," Kaito muttered.
Then a voice hissed through a nearby vent. "In here."
He turned.
A hand reached out—real, soft, urgent—and pulled him into the shadows.
It was Misaki.
She slammed the panel shut behind them, locking it with a stolen admin key. Her eyes were wide. Her voice was sharp. "They've never sent Hunters for a student before."
Kaito gasped. "What are they?!"
"System-cleaners. They usually purge corrupted AIs or unstable teachers. You? You're a wildcard. You're spreading instability. The system thinks you're a virus."
"I'm not a virus," he said through clenched teeth. "I didn't do anything!"
"You exist. That's enough."
He stared at her. She didn't flinch.
For a moment, he thought about asking her why she was helping him. Why she'd pulled him out. But the answer was already in her eyes—fear, yes, but also something more. Curiosity. Rebellion.
"You can't keep running," she said. "You're going to need help."
"From who?" he asked.
Then, behind them, a hidden screen flickered to life. A third voice spoke—gravelly, filtered, older.
"From me," it said. "From those of us who remember what the world was like before the system."
Kaito's world, once strange, was now fully cracked.
And someone from the shadows had just extended their hand.