AAW Chapter Two: Unbeknownst Secrets

Instructions

Chapter Two: Unbeknownst Secrets The university’s central server was a fortress, and L. Collins was its most methodical intruder. By 23:47, she had bypassed the administrative firewall and pulled up the digital schematic for West Campus. Her fingers moved across the keyboard with quiet confidence. No frenzy, no hoodie—just precision. The blueprint loaded. She zoomed in on the elevator shaft. Ground Floor. Basement. Sub-Level 1 (Mechanical). Sub-Level 2 (Atmospheric Conditioning). No Sub-Level 3. She refreshed the file. Checked the cryptographic hash against the backup server. The data was clean, uploaded directly from the architect’s neural interface on June 18, 2068—three years before her birth. Collins let out a slow, measured breath. Not fear. Pure, distilled irritation. “Illogical,” she stated to the empty room, voice flat. “Elevators do not hallucinate floors. Sensors do not invent zoning permits.” Either the university’s archival data was corrupted, or her own sensory input had desynced. Both were unacceptable inefficiencies. She rose, motion smooth and economical. She crossed to a section of the wall that appeared to be solid concrete. It wasn’t. A false panel, disguised as brutalist architecture. She pressed her thumb against a specific knot in the neighboring wood paneling; the panel hissed, releasing its vacuum seal. Inside: a Null-Zone, electromagnetically shielded. It contained three items: a disassembled comms unit, antique mechanical watch parts, and a small, unassuming black box. The box was cold. She opened it. Inside, a single sheet of parchment-like paper, folded once. Analog. Archaic. Collins unfolded it. The paper was brittle, edges singed. The handwriting was frantic, jagged—starkly unlike her usual controlled script. It looked like her own hand. From a decade ago. But the content was wrong. No address. Or perhaps a draft. Ink smeared, as if the writer had been sweating—or trembling. The first line, in her sharp hand: IF YOU ARE READING THIS, DO NOT TRUST— The name crossed out violently. Thick, black strokes. Below it, another line, fainter blue ink: She believes she is in control— A rough, uneven tear severed the sentence. Whatever followed was gone. Collins stared. Jaw tightened, cheek muscles pulling taut. “Amateur,” she murmured, tone clinical, laced with the irritation one reserves for a misaligned gear. She held the letter up to the light, inspecting the grain. “Planting a fragmented analog note instead of a clean data payload. Emotionally theatrical. Pathetic.” Not a memory. A physical object that shouldn’t exist. A planted artifact. A provocation. She let out a soft, dry chuckle. “So. Someone has been digging through my incinerated residuals. Hoping to unsettle me with ghosts made of paper.” The overhead lights flickered. For a fraction of a second, the sterile glow warped. In the darkened window, her reflection flickered—not a child, but a younger version of herself. Fifteen, perhaps. The same severe black suit, the same posture, but her face was pale, lips drawn into a thin, bloodless line. Her eyes were focused with a terrifying intensity, like a targeting computer moments from overload. Then stable. Normal. Composed. In control. Collins lowered the letter, expression sharp as a scalpel. “Whoever you are,” she said to the silence, voice low and clear, carrying the weight of a closing argument, “you have mistaken my tolerance for your incompetence as permission to run diagnostics on my psyche.” She folded the letter with deliberate slowness, slid it back into the box. “I am not a traumatized variable in your narrative. I am the operator who scrubbed that past from the system. And if you force me to reinstall it—” She sealed the Null-Zone. A soft click. “—I assure you, you will not enjoy the debugging.” The calm before the storm.