Time slowed, fracturing into the low frame rate that mirrored Bima's flickering eyes. The DSLR camera in Bima-Raka's hands felt like the ultimate weapon. Lira knew it wasn't just a camera; it was a gateway, a capture device designed to permanently immortalize what Raka called "soul data."
"Let's Capture our eternity," Bima-Raka whispered, his voice now once again melodic and fully dominating, as if the archive corruption had merely cleared the communication lines.
Lira had no time to flee or find another weapon. She clutched Raka's bottle of permanent black ink, her eyes locked on the dark camera lens, which now looked like a black hole ready to suck in all her light.
If Raka wants to immortalize my soul, I will make sure he can't see me, Lira thought.
With a scream of cold resolve and frustration, Lira squeezed the ink bottle in her hand, shattering the glass. Thick, viscous black ink sprayed into the air, creating a dense, opaque cloud.
She wasn't aiming for Bima-Raka. She was aiming for the camera lens.
The ink slammed into Raka's DSLR lens with a wet splatter. Pure blackness filled Bima-Raka's viewfinder, sealing off the last aperture of light.
CLICK!
Despite the blinded lens, Raka-Bima pressed the shutter button anyway. A blinding white flash exploded in the mist of ink, temporarily blinding Lira. The flash was so powerful and hot Lira could feel her skin stinging.
Suddenly, Bima shrieked. It was a genuine, hoarse scream, full of physical pain-Bima's scream, not Raka's.
Bima-Raka dropped the now messy and vibrating camera. He clutched his own head, moving like a wire had been cut. He stumbled backward, inadvertently stepping into the Mausoleum filled with wet earth and the brass basin.
"Data... blind... You corrupted my eyes, Lir! I cannot... access the host..." Raka muttered, his voice fading, punctuated by Bima's suffocating coughs.
Lira relit her phone flashlight. Bima was now kneeling, his face smeared with black ink, his hands trembling. Bima's eyes were their normal brown, filled with deep terror.
"Lira... the c-camera... he shot..." Bima gasped. Bima's consciousness had returned, but he was clearly in shock.
The flash. It wasn't just light. It was a forced capture attempt. But with the lens covered in ink, Raka had photographed nothingness. He had captured null data-pure data corruption.
Lira wasted no time. "What did Raka do to you, Bim? How is he controlling you?"
"A b-bridge," Bima stammered, pointing at the brass basin before him. "O-optic cables. He connected all the archives to... my back."
Lira aimed her flashlight. Indeed, the brass basin was not empty. It was wired with thick fiber optic cables, embedded in the wet soil, and running toward Bima's back, piercing his skin beneath his ragged shirt. Bima was a living communication hub.
"You have to disconnect it, Bim," Lira urged. "Now!"
"I can't. He said if I cut it, the feedback loop will..." Bima couldn't finish the sentence.
Bima suddenly stiffened. His eyes began flickering again, moving rapidly. Black. Brown. Black.
Raka was fighting back.
🔌 The Feedback Loop
"Don't ever think you win just by cutting my input, Lir," Raka-Bima's voice returned, strong, cold, and utterly confident. "I already loaded the core OS. I just need stabilization."
Bima-Raka slowly stood, retrieving the scalpel from the dirt. "You want to make me invisible? Fine. I will make this entire archive invisible. I will erase everything, except the core file already residing in Bima. When the archive is gone, there is no more data for you to corrupt. And when it is just you and I here, I can fully load myself into you."
Raka-Bima began moving towards the archive shelves.
Lira realized the new danger: if Raka erased his own archives, he erased his only physical vulnerability in this room. Raka would become an uncorrupted, 70% data entity, free of the source.
"Stop!" Lira screamed.
Raka-Bima ignored her. He reached the first shelf and began pulling out the old VHS tapes, crushing them, shredding the magnetic tape within. The sound of the tape tearing was a sickening, protracted shriek.
Lira sprinted to the drawing table. She remembered the complex flow charts she had seen. Raka didn't design this without a kill switch. There was always a logic. There was always a password.
Lira scanned Raka's notes again, searching for ancient or philosophical phrases: The body is obsolete hardware. Lira's body is the only one with the necessary Emotional Key (Guilt). Abadi is not memory, it is presence.
Lira found one paragraph she hadn't read, written in red ink:
The true Transfer is an act of Giving, not Taking. The physical act of severing the old (The Injection) must be balanced by the mental act of Rejection. The Protocol must be asked to Halt by the Emotional Key itself. The password is not 'Guilt'. The password is the Reversal of Guilt.
"Rejection... Reversal of Guilt..." Lira muttered.
Meanwhile, Raka-Bima had already destroyed the third shelf. He moved with unnatural speed.
Lira couldn't find the exact word. She had to speak in the language Raka understood, the language of his code.
Lira looked around. Raka-Bima's hand still held the scalpel. He had just damaged a pile of floppy disks that once held their digital sketches.
"Raka! 44â‹…18â‹…79! It's not 'Transfer'," Lira screamed, her voice echoing in the concrete chamber. "It's not coordinates or a combination! It is Absence!"
Bima-Raka froze. His head tilted again.
Lira pressed on, her voice filled with conviction: "Forty-four: Four hours and four nights without you. Eighteen: One plus eight is nine, the lack of being. Seventy-nine: Your grandmother's death you feared the most! The code wasn't to start. The code was the REASON TO STOP! The Reverse of Guilt is ACKNOWLEDGEMENT! I am not guilty! You killed yourself! Halt Protocol!"
🎠The Plot Twist: Raka's Final Choice
The moment Lira spoke those words-"I am not guilty! You killed yourself! Halt Protocol!"-something far more profound happened.
The static white noise Lira had been hearing returned, but not from the archives. It came from inside Bima.
Bima-Raka fell to his knees, his face contorted in extreme agony. This time, Raka's black eyes did not flicker. They smiled. A wide, relieved, and utterly insane smile.
"Finally..." Raka-Bima whispered. His voice was no longer the cold, dominant voice, but soft, affectionate, and slightly weary. "You freed yourself from the guilt. The Key is Activated."
Lira was baffled. She expected Raka to lash out or attack. Why did he look satisfied?
"I couldn't load myself completely, Lir. My transfer 70% failed," Raka-Bima said. "Not because Bima was fragile. But because my own Kernel rejected it. I didn't want to be eternal inside you. I wanted you to be whole without my guilt."
Lira was stunned. "You... you built this just to heal me?"
"I loaded 70% of myself into Bima," Raka explained, his voice beginning to fade into a very soft whisper. "Bima now carries all my worst obsessions and paranoia. This is not a consciousness transfer. This is a Mental Illness Transfer."
Lira looked at Bima, who was now gasping in pain, his eyes back to brown.
"I loaded my insanity into a host who could contain it. I burdened him. Bima is the designated server to hold 70% of the darkness, so you could be 100% light," Raka whispered.
Then, Bima, with his true eyes, looked at Lira with a new and chilling emptiness.
"Lira... he never wanted to enter you," Bima spoke, his voice hoarse. "He wanted me to be his final dumping ground. I am The Final Archive-the repository for everything bad."
Raka-Bima smiled one last time, and Bima, the host now flooded with 70% of Raka's madness, grabbed the scalpel and cut the fiber optic cable connecting him to the basin and the archives.
SNIP!
The impact of the severing was far worse than Lira imagined. When the feedback loop was cut, Bima did not free himself. Bima, now fully saturated with Raka's 70% insanity, screamed with the sound of two people-Raka's paranoid shriek and Bima's terrified yell.
Bima stood up, holding the scalpel with Raka's black-eyed stare, but with Bima's brutal energy.
"You gave me the Abadi you promised, Lira. Not in you. But in Me!" Bima-Raka roared.
Bima, who was now Raka, whole in paranoia and scalpel expertise, trapped in a strong body, stared at Lira. Raka's purpose was fulfilled-Lira was clean. But Raka had created a new monster.
Bima was the insane, eternal, and dangerous Raka.
Lira was now facing not a fading Raka ghost, but the 70% darkest Raka, trapped inside the most unexpected host.
⏳ The Ultimate Clock
Bima-Raka lunged. Lira narrowly avoided the scalpel, her back scraping the concrete table. Raka's movements, channeled through Bima's athletic build, were terrifyingly efficient.
"I need your blood for stabilization!" Bima-Raka roared, his layered voice distorting the air. "I am 70% eternal Raka. But Bima's core is fighting. Your blood is the perfect adhesive to seal the transfer!"
Lira knew she had to exploit the chaos. The Mausoleum, the archives, the severed cable-this was Raka's digital battlefield. She had to find the new weakness.
Lira grabbed the dirty, ink-covered DSLR camera. She didn't aim to hit him; she aimed to distract the data mind.
She hurled the camera against the nearest archive shelf. CRASH! The camera shattered, taking down another section of old hard drives.
Bima-Raka momentarily winced, his attention divided between his physical attack and the destruction of his archives.
"The Memory Repository!" he screamed.
"You gave him 70% of you, Raka! You left 30% outside!" Lira yelled, pointing at the shattered archives. "You are unstable! You are fracturing!"
Lira then spotted the memory card slot. The card had been knocked out when she threw it, lying on the floor. Lira lunged for it, scooping it up.
Bima-Raka saw her move. His attack shifted from Lira to the card. He knew its importance. If this 30% of fragmented data was destroyed, the 70% inside Bima might degrade rapidly.
"No! That is my Fragmentation Log!" Bima-Raka lunged with the scalpel, attempting to pin Lira's hand to the floor.
Lira held the small SD card. She didn't have time to crush it properly. Instead, she did the second most destructive thing. She opened the card's write-protect switch.
As Bima-Raka closed the distance, Lira quickly wiped the card against the bare copper wires of the power cable she had short-circuited earlier.
ZIT-ZAP!
A small spark erupted from the card. Data corruption.
Bima-Raka seized up. His eyes rolled back into his head, his body convulsing in a seizure. The scalpel fell from his grasp. The pure static from the data shock was overwhelming Bima's neurological system.
Lira scrambled away. She had won the physical fight, but Bima was dying.
She crawled back to Bima, feeling a powerful surge of mixed emotions-relief, horror, and an old love now tangled with new trauma.
She grabbed Bima's trembling hand. "We have to get out of here, Bim. Now."
đź’” The Shaking Cliffhanger
Lira helped Bima to his feet. They stumbled up the steep concrete stairs, back to the steel door that Lira had unlocked with the complex cipher. Lira pushed Bima through the doorway, and they both stood outside in the cold, still jungle air.
Lira pulled the heavy steel door shut and turned the dials randomly, sealing the horror inside.
They began walking back toward Lira's car. Bima's steps were slow and limping, but he was alive. Lira had saved him.
When they were ten meters from the car, Bima stopped.
"Lir... your locket," Bima pointed to Lira's chest.
Lira looked down. Raka's silver locket, which she had hurled into the brass basin, was now hanging around her neck. She did not remember retrieving it.
Before Lira could question it, Bima took a deep breath.
Bima looked at Lira with his beautiful, normal brown eyes. But his smile... was Raka's smile. The quietest, most insane smile.
"That was my Final Choice, Lir. To make sure you lived without my guilt," Bima whispered.
Lira stumbled back. Bima... the smiling Bima...
"The locket was the Final Key," Bima said. "When you threw it into the Grounding Point, it didn't corrupt me. It created a new loop. You thought you destroyed Raka's memory card. But what you destroyed was the last remaining file of Bima."
Absolute horror dawned on Lira. The loop-the brass basin, the locket, the memory card-it was not designed to destroy Raka.
"You got the wrong server," Bima said, holding the locket, which now felt searingly hot against her skin. "The locket didn't find its way back to your neck. I put it there when you thought you won."
Lira felt her own hands shaking. She had killed Bima. Not Raka.
"Raka is free of me," Bima whispered, gazing at Lira lovingly.
And then Bima, with a gesture that was both tender and utterly final, pressed the burning silver locket hard against Lira's chest.
"Now, Lir. We are truly Abadi. I loaded myself, 100%, into the host I loved the most."
Lira felt a searing, penetrating heat, far worse than any electrical shock. The locket felt like a brand burning through her skin.
She couldn't move, couldn't scream.
Suddenly, Raka's voice, whole, full, and perfectly stable, no longer a layer, resonated inside Lira's head.
"Welcome Home, Lira_Host. The Digital Veil has been Lifted."
Lira gasped. She felt her own consciousness, the Analyst, recoil into the farthest corner, while a wave of new data, memories, obsessions, and Raka's voice, flooded her entire system.
Lira, now completely possessed by Raka, stood motionless in the jungle, beside Bima's body, which slowly slumped to the ground.
Would you like me to continue with Chapter 4, detailing the struggle between Lira's consciousness and Raka's complete control?