The fog thickened by the second. At first it only tickled throats like cigarette smoke, but within moments it began to bite deep, leaving a metallic, cold taste in everyone's mouth.
"Someone open all the doors! Emergency ones too!" yelled a voice by the east exit, pounding the panel with his fists.
"Valves! CLOSE THE VALVES!" shouted the cooling tech, her voice already breaking.
Carter vaulted a cable, reached the console, and tore off the fuse cover. His fingers, starting to tremble, tapped frantically across the touch keys.
[OMEGA-CLASS EMERGENCY PROCEDURE ACTIVE]
[ACCESS DENIED]
[PERMISSIONS: INSUFFICIENT]
Omega-class Emergency Procedure? What the hell is that? I've never even heard of it… Carter thought, staring at the system lines.
"Manual! I'll do it manually!" he snarled to the two operators beside him, then glanced over the rest of his team, who were coughing and choking.
"EVERYONE wet cloths over your mouths! Stay low to the ground!"
Two men dashed to the supply cabinet. Someone else, blindly, dropped to one knee and began muttering a prayer under his breath.
The first person fell at the calibration table a young analyst who moments ago had been joking about the numbers. He tried to stand, but his knees turned to wool.
The second a woman from Section Three started hyperventilating, gulping short, shallow breaths, then slumped beside him.
"Keep calm! Carter calm down. In a situation like this, panic won't help," Carter repeated to himself like a mantra, trying to keep his head as he dropped to one knee by the manual release lever behind an armoured pane. He smashed at it with the metal housing of a scanner.
"Come on break, damn you!" he shouted, swinging the scanner with all his strength.
The glass cracked under the repeated blows; several shards flew, cutting his face and slitting his clothes.
He didn't feel pain only terror as the feeling faded from his fingertips and a long, piercing eeeeee rang in his skull.
Suddenly he heard someone by the west door hauling up a colleague who was sliding down the wall; another man, eyes wide, slammed his forehead against the evac panel, leaving damp smears of sweat.
The screams cut off one by one, replaced by ragged coughing.
Carter roared and drove his elbow into the centre of the shattered pane. The glass burst aside. In one motion he reached for the manual door-release lever.
It didn't budge a millimetre.
[MECHANISM SWITCHED REMOTELY]
[PRIORITY OVERRIDE: OMEGA LEVEL]
"No…" he whispered. He tried again, knuckles whitening. "I won't leave you…"
His knees gave way this time for good. He leaned his back against a service cabinet and slid down the cold metal. For a moment he tried to breathe slower, just as he'd taught others: long exhales, short inhales.
It worked for a second, maybe two. Then the sound in his ears dimmed, as if someone were turning down a radio.
"Carter…" a rasp drifted from the floor. "Did it… work?"
He smiled briefly more to himself than to anyone. I'm sorry. He glanced up at the LED strips wavering above him like underwater lights and thought, absurdly, that he should have replaced the filter in Section Two's coffee machine.
Tomorrow… there won't be a tomorrow.
I'm sorry, Kagyama…
I won't be able to fulfil your life's dream the one you worked so hard for… With the last of his strength, Carter looked towards the door the Director had passed through.
His hand slipped from the lever. His head fell to his shoulder. His eyes tracked the pulsing lines of LEDs on the ceiling for a heartbeat longer, and then the light went out of his blue eyes.
One by one, the people in the room stopped moving. Panic burned itself out like a fire without oxygen.
Where moments before the music of commands had played, there was now only the blare of the alarm - until, after a time, it too cut off, leaving only the cold white LED light from the ceiling, illuminating dozens of bodies lying on the floor.
***
Several floors below, the man in the black suit lifted his head slightly.
A new message appeared on the screen before him:
[External Personnel: Neutralisation 100%]
He shifted his gaze from the main monitor to the side screen on the right. Body after body his people, his team, those he knew by name.
He sat in silence for a while.
His eyes moved slowly across the faces on the floor, as if trying to commit each to memory.
At last his gaze settled on Carter, whose body lay beside the lever, his expression still frozen in terror and despair. The man looked deep into the still-open blue eyes of his friend.
The Director drew a shallow breath. His voice carried something between regret and resolve.
"Now… there's no turning back."
He turned back to the main screen.
A new message pulsed on his watch:
[Sequence "New World": Stage Two ready for activation]
The Director dragged a finger across a map of light; the active-player counter climbed by several hundred. A strange gleam flickered in his eyes not joy, exactly, but a quiet satisfaction.
"A little longer," he said slowly. "Let them get used to the world. I don't want them frightened too soon. When we reach fifty thousand, we'll launch Stage Two."
His watch vibrated; the same neutral female voice sounded from its speaker:
[Confirmation: Standby mode active. Activation threshold: 50,000 users.]
The Director leaned back; his hands began to tremble slightly.
"Our experiment is not an ordinary game," he told the empty room, as if explaining the plan not to the machine but to himself. "We want to see how humanity develops when we let it break biological limits strength, longevity, abilities that existed only in myth. We will see whether a new kind of society forms, whether virtue emerges from layers of chaos or tyranny."
Sociological graphs flashed up, modelling possible outcomes. The Director pointed to one a sharp peak of anarchy, then a long decline and stabilisation at a higher level of cooperation.
"That is what we want. But to limit risk and preserve the narrative of 'safe entertainment', we need a support structure." He glanced at his watch and gave the order.
"Prepare official communications to minimise deaths caused by external interference. First: automatic notification to the government of Poland to secure logistical and medical support for experiment participants. Ensure the messages include transport procedures to medical facilities, isolation and safe-transfer guidelines, and a list of contact points. Second: generate a legally formatted notice outlining possible consequences of external disconnection intended for law enforcement and emergency services. Secure the digital pathways and prepare evidence for verification."
The woman's voice answered without a trace of emotion, with the same precision that could count millions of bits:
[Order received. Preparing communications. Versions: concise (for services), full (for government), and crisis notification for health organisations. Secured data channels. Confirmed contact addresses and priority routing.]
The Director nodded, as if approval were a mere formality.
"Once the communications are prepared, send them automatically when Stage Two activates."
The AI returned a burst of confirmations. New statuses appeared on the screen:
[Service message - prepared], [Channels secured - confirmed], [Government contact: defined].
The Director watched the blinking map of player activity for a moment. He decided it wasn't enough to trigger the next wave of change in the virtual world. He needed a catalyst something to stir the game's narrative, to spark ambition and conflict, yet remain monitorable.
"Create," he said at last, "ten items with legendary properties. Call them Divine Relics. Let their designs draw from myth and history, but base each construction on real archetypes of objects from different cultures. Each weapon must have a unique ability that interprets a mythic element into game mechanics. Make them spawn randomly in the world, in hard-to-reach places, available to both players and monsters to balance the odds and introduce unpredictability."
The AI processed the order with mathematical speed; prototypes, silhouettes, and descriptions began to resolve on the screen:
[Creation: DIVINE RELICS - 10/10]
A side layer appeared: spawning algorithms for locations, randomness mechanics, and cooldown times. The Director studied them closely.
"Distribute them randomly," he ordered, "but ensure 20% of spawns are in locations accessible to players, and 70% in forbidden or boss zones. No easy finds. The weapon must be a reward for risk."
The AI confirmed, generating simulations of possible outcomes.
Seeing this, the Director nodded, quietly pleased.
"Good. Observe and report. Log every instance of use, together with the player's biomedical data - we'll analyse the impact on the brain and psyche."
The screens confirmed:
[Divine Relics - generated; spawn algorithms: active]
He darkened the main monitor and stood for a moment in the half-light, listening to the steady breath of the servers a sound that, to him, was the respiration of a new order.
"Let the game live," he whispered. "Let people decide for themselves who they will become in this world."
***
Walking the main street along the stone road, Adam and Paul looked around in mild disbelief at the crowded avenue full of players.
"Did we teleport to some other city when we came out of that alley?" Paul asked, staring at the throng in amazement.
"Right? I feel the same. In the beta there were barely twenty of us, so this is new for me too seeing this many players in one city," Adam replied, eyeing the beginners in their identical starter outfits.
Most players were simply taking everything in the buildings, the sky, the physical sensations of the game they were experiencing for the first time.
Paul suddenly noticed a player named UltraThief trying to enter a building via an open balcony.
"I wouldn't recommend that," he murmured under his breath, glancing up.
"What did you say?" Adam asked, pulling his gaze from the crowd to look at Paul.
Rather than answer, Paul pointed with his right hand at one of the balconies.
Adam frowned, not understanding, then followed the gesture and saw a short man haul himself up onto the balcony.
Just as the man, smiling faintly, was about to step over the threshold, a system prompt appeared:
[Identifying player… Entry forbidden]
Before UltraThief could finish reading, a powerful gust blasted out from the building's interior.
Thud!
The force tossed the short man back over the railing; he hit the stone road on his back, stirring a commotion among the street's players.
Several heads turned at once towards the source of the sound.
UltraThief lay flat in his basic starter gear, arms spread, staring blankly up at the sky. A hush spread slowly around him.
"What the…" someone muttered nearby, trying to make sense of it.
"Did he just fall? Did he actually fall off the building?" asked a girl from a nearby group, unsure whether to laugh or start recording.
"Probably testing gravity," someone quipped from the back, drawing a few scattered chuckles.
Adam and Paul exchanged a glance.
"There you go. Told him not to try," Paul muttered.
"Looks like you've got experience with this sort of thing," Adam added, narrowing his eyes.
"Hehe. Why do you think I landed on your back out of nowhere?" Paul replied, grinning foolishly at him.
Adam sighed and moved on. "Seems I don't need to spell it out for you, but breaking into buildings is automatically detected by the system. If you want to enter residential buildings, you have to rent or buy them."
Paul nodded, giving the balcony one last look.
"Come on, YourMumOP. We haven't got time to waste, we need to reach the shop fast."
A shiver ran down Paul's spine at the sound of his own name; he hurried to catch up with Adam.
"Please don't use that damned nickname," he said, giving him a serious look.
"Yes, yes, I won't anymore. Promise," Adam answered lightly, not even glancing at him.
Why on earth did I set that as my login name… Paul thought, catching the faintest hint of a reaction from Adam.