It started with a math textbook.
Kai wasn't even paying attention in class—just doodling in the margins, trying to distract himself from the feeling of eyes crawling up his spine.
He drew a circle. Then a triangle inside it. Then five dots in the corners.
When he looked down, his breath caught.
The lines weren't his.
They were darker than his pencil. Sharper.
He had traced something that was already there. Hidden beneath layers of printed equations, barely visible unless you were looking for it.
A sigil. Faint, burned into the paper like an impression.
Below it, in the same font as the textbook's headers:
"Protocol IX. Activation Pending."
Later, in the library, Kai was searching for old student records—something to distract him—when he came across a shelf labeled "Faculty Archives – 1990s."
He grabbed a dusty binder and flipped through it. Nothing strange.
Until he saw a list of transferred staff.
There, halfway down:
Suda, Rei — Transferred from [Redacted] Institute of Social Patterning. Assignment: Integration Oversight. Status: Active.
Kai froze.
Mr. Suda.The teacher who didn't exist.The one who watched without blinking.
He'd never heard of the institute.
So he Googled it on his phone.
No results found.
Even the connection timed out.
The librarian told him to leave as dusk fell, but something tugged at him. He passed by the school's trophy case on the first floor—lined with plaques, old medals, and class photos.
He glanced at the one from 2002. Thirty-five students. Neatly lined.
Then something struck him.
He counted again.
Thirty-six.
But the plaque said thirty-five.
One face didn't belong.
A boy, center row, uniform crooked, hair too long, eyes that looked straight at him through the glass.
Kai.
It was him.
Two decades before he enrolled.
He staggered back, knocking over a broom against the case.
The librarian came running. "Are you alright?"
Kai pointed at the photo. "Do you see him?"
She squinted. "Who?"
He looked again.
The face was gone.
Back home, Kai searched his bag and found something he didn't remember picking up.
A flash drive.
Unmarked. Small. Scratched.
When he plugged it into his laptop, a single file appeared:
INSTITUTE_REPORT9.mkv
A video. Grainy footage. Date-stamped 1998.
A room full of children sitting at desks in sterile uniforms, monitored by men in lab coats. A voice narrated over static:
"Subject Set 9 exhibiting cross-reality contamination. Symptoms include identity confusion, mirrored projections, memory fractures. Previous subjects rendered non-viable. Containment suggested. Integration into Morino Campus to proceed under passive surveillance."
The feed glitched. Frames repeated.
Then a final shot: a dark room. A camera turned slowly toward a mirror.
The figure in the reflection wasn't holding a camera.
It was holding a knife.
The video cut off, but Kai's speakers kept buzzing.
Then a voice, low and distorted, barely audible:
"You are not the first version of yourself.
They will reset you soon.
Hide what you know. Or you won't survive the rewrite."
Then silence.