The light in the chamber was not light. It was exposure. Sterile. Blinding. Infinite. No walls. No ceiling. No floor. Just The Table—a geometric impossibility, twelve-sided yet circular, material yet intangible, floating in the center of the pale endlessness. A symbol as ancient as the first encryption key. The center of the Nasu Order. The architects of the simulation web.

  They gathered without bodies.

  Twelve translucent data masks, shifting patterns of fractal code and barely-formed faces suspended in the dead air. Names forbidden. Titles whispered. Essence confined to abstract geometries of cold power. At the apex chair hovered the most complete mask: an unsettling humanoid silhouette composed of sharp, shifting silver wireframe lines. It wore no pretense of humanity and death. Elijah. Firstborn of the Conquest line. The Seer of Politics and Protocols.

  No breath was exchanged. No movement observed. And yet the chamber seethed with ancient authority. A crystalline chime echoed—a soundless bell that split thought from matter. The Council was in session.

  Elijah spoke first. His voice rippled through the void like data compressed into menace. Cold. Clinical. Certain.

  “The humans accelerate.”

  The statement dropped like a coded sentence in a kill file. The masks responded only with flickers of pattern and heat distortion.

  “The symbiote seed-bonds have exceeded projections. Seven unauthorized host pairings confirmed in this cycle. Six more predicted by the next shift. The algorithm fails to contain the evolutionary breach.”

  One of the lesser masks distorted into a spiral lattice.

  “Containment squads have already been dispatched.”

  “I am aware,” Elijah answered flatly.

  His mask shifted, lines tightening into perfect angular symmetry.

  “Your squads will fail. They always fail.”

  There was no rebuttal. Failure was an accepted byproduct in the grand Nasu algorithm of dominance.

  Another mask flared blood-red for an instant.

  “Humans are becoming aware.”

  “The rogue host known as Rico Dawson merged with Halal Nasu.”

  The chamber temperature seemed to plummet at the name. A glitch-ripple passed through every mask.

  “Impossible,” one said.

  “One Fang is gone. Halal’s mind is lost without Wafu.”

  “Yet the host persists,” Elijah stated coldly. “The proof of anomaly stands.”

  A pause. Silent calculations. Probabilities reduced to zero. The birth of the unsolvable paradox. Elijah continued, unbothered.

  “The balance must be restored.”

  The mask opposite him flickered with jagged indecision. It voiced what none dared:

  “You propose a cull.”

  “No.” Elijah’s form contracted, becoming lean and predatory. “I propose a purge protocol.”

  The words were not spoken; they were written across reality. The chamber reacted. Invisible subroutines activated. Access keys granted. The data table in front of them fractured open like an atom splitting. Spinning columns of cascading energy—millions of human records—streamed into the void. Birth dates. Neural patterns. Symbiote bonding potential. Personality threat matrices. A lifetime of stolen human data stripped and filed for analysis in milliseconds.

  “We call it: The Circle of Death.”

  The name sent pulse distortions across the gathering.

  “A public system testbed,” Elijah explained. “Hidden in plain sight as competitive entertainment. Global broadcast. Open applications. Self-selection will filter the strongest candidates into a single closed-loop construct.”

  Another mask spoke, voice glitching between male and female registers.

  “A ritualized hunt.”

  “A culling of viable host anomalies.”

  “Survival of the fittest.”

  Elijah allowed the faintest pulse of satisfaction to ripple outward.

  “The illusion of free will must remain intact. They must choose to enter. Only the unbreakable will survive. Only the uncorrupted shall emerge.”

  A single thread of crackling static wound around the chamber. The Contract was being written. The simulation would not breach the laws of consent, only weaponize them.

  “What of the losers?” one mask asked softly.

  Elijah’s silhouette sharpened into perfect mathematical beauty.

  The answer was chilling in its simplicity.

  “The losers fuel us.”

  No emotion. No cruelty. Only optimization.

  The phrase struck deep into the synthetic ether. There was no further dissent. The Circle had been approved. The chamber began retracting the data flows into encrypted lock states. The glowing mass of humanity’s fates shrank back into the silent archive. The Council was adjourned. A soft tone signaled the final protocol initialization:

  “The Circle begins August 5, 1984. Let them play.”

  The masks began to dissolve one by one into cold particles of unfinished code. All except one. Far beyond the projected Table perimeter, unseen by the primary focus of the Council, a lone human presence hovered outside the firewall. Clinging to a thin access stream between fragmented layers of outdated security code.

  Peter Fales. Simtech programmer. Ghost in the machine. Sweat streaked the side of his temple under the flickering emergency lights of his private access terminal. They didn’t know he was here. Not yet. Peter stared in horror as the full scope of Elijah’s plan unfolded before him on his stolen interface window. He whispered aloud, voice hoarse from disbelief.

  “You’re going to feed on them…”

  He recognized the list of targeted human candidates scrolling by. Athletes. Scholars. Innovators. Soldiers. Artists. Scientists, Educators. All former Influencers and all Outliers. Those who did not fit the algorithm's expectations of compliance. Those who lost some clout and come seeking to regain their fame. All marked for deletion… He would delete them from existence or worse.

  Peter’s eyes narrowed. His hands danced rapidly across the cracked interface keys as he began writing the first lines of a rogue intervention program.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  The countdown for the first batch participant lock-in appeared. The first name illuminated: Malcolm Jacobs.

  “Target acquired. Prepare for transfer.”

  Peter’s breath caught.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I’m sorry, man…” he whispered. “But you’re already inside.”

  He hit send. And somewhere far beyond the firewall, an ordinary man in Los Angeles reached the point of no return. The digital tendrils snaked through the ancient architecture of the Nasu network, each line of code a whisper in a language predating the internet. Peter Fales navigated this labyrinth with the desperate precision of a surgeon operating in the dark. He knew the system intimately, had helped build parts of it in his younger, more naive days before the true purpose of the Nasu Order became chillingly clear.

  His rogue program, a digital seed of rebellion he’d hastily coded, was now burrowing into the core framework of the Circle of Death simulation. It was a long shot, a whisper against a hurricane, but it was all he had. His plan was simple, bordering on suicidal: inject a failsafe, a hidden backdoor that might, just might, allow him to influence the game from the inside, to protect the targeted outliers.

  The emergency lights in his cramped, unauthorized access point flickered erratically, casting dancing shadows on the banks of obsolete hardware he’d cobbled together. The air hummed with the low thrum of processing power, a stark contrast to the sterile silence of the Architects’ Table. Here, in the forgotten corners of the network, the raw energy of the digital world was palpable, almost alive.

  Each successful line of code execution was a small victory against an insurmountable foe. Peter felt a sliver of hope amidst the crushing weight of the Nasu Order’s power. He could almost hear Elijah’s cold, certain voice echoing in his mind, dismissing his efforts as insignificant. But Peter pressed on, fueled by a righteous anger and a growing sense of responsibility for the lives caught in the Order’s web.

  He reached the subroutine governing participant acquisition, the digital mechanism that would pluck Malcolm Jacobs and the others from their unsuspecting lives and deposit them into the Circle. His fingers flew across the keyboard, weaving his rogue code into the existing structure. It had to be seamless, invisible to the system’s primary oversight protocols. One false step, one corrupted packet of data, and his presence would be detected.

  The tension in the small room was thick enough to cut. Peter could feel the phantom weight of the Architects’ gaze, even though he knew they were operating on a higher plane of digital existence, their awareness spread across the vastness of their network. He was a flea on the back of a titan, daring to bite.

  As his program reached the final integration point, a warning flashed across his monitor—a spike in system activity near his physical location. Containment protocols were being initiated. They knew something was wrong, even if they didn't yet know it was him. Panic flared, but Peter forced it down. He was close. Just a few more lines of code. He could almost taste the metallic tang of adrenaline in his mouth. He slammed the Enter key.

  “Sorry, Rico, it looks like you must complete my task for the Time Keepers. I hope you survive because you may be our last hope.”

  The rogue program vanished into the network’s depths, a ghost in the machine. He had done what he could. Now, all he could do was wait and see if his desperate gamble had paid off. The door to his access point hissed open, revealing two figures clad in the sterile white uniforms of Nasu security. Their faces were impassive, their eyes cold and devoid of emotion.

  One of them spoke in a low, dark, and sinister voice, “Peter Fales,”

  Meanwhile, the fan turned in lazy circles above the couch, slicing the heat into uneven shadows that painted the walls like moving scars. Dust motes hung in the sunlit air like suspended thoughts, drifting slowly in the stillness of early evening. On the television, the date is displayed.

  August 5, 1984 — Los Angeles.

  Temperature: 104 degrees.

  Time: 7:06 PM.

  Malcolm Jacobs lay half-draped across the sofa, a cold beer sweating into the worn carpet beneath his hand. His shirt clung to his chest. A local news anchor blared through the TV’s tiny speakers, describing Olympic gymnastics highlights between periodic static bursts.

  “Kerri Strug—no, that’s not right,” Malcolm muttered.

  He blinked, eyes glazed. The screen wasn’t showing a broadcast from 1984.

  It was showing something else.

  Someone was walking through a desert. A silhouette. A man with long hair, shirtless, bleeding from the ribs. The figure moved like he had nowhere else to go but forward. The image bled into color bars. Then returned. Now the man was carrying a child wrapped in a cloth marked RJ. The remote didn’t work. The channel button vanished from the set.

  “What the—”

  A cry broke the air. Sharp. Young. Familiar. RJ. Malcolm pushed himself upright, brushing sweat from his eyes. The apartment had changed. Slightly. Almost imperceptibly. The bookshelf was missing two novels. The window blinds were moving on their own despite the absence of wind. The coffee table bore a crack that hadn’t been there that morning. The phone was off the hook. He never left it off the hook. He stood, suddenly too aware of the sound of his own breath. The ceiling fan whirred above like a countdown. He stepped toward RJ’s room.

  “Wafu?” he called out, but the name echoed as if it had been spoken inside a glass box.

  No answer. Only RJ’s crying. Only the heat. Only the flicker of something unseen peeling around the edges of perception. Inside the nursery, RJ sat blinking in the crib, not crying anymore. Just watching him. But it wasn’t RJ. Not entirely. The child’s irises flickered faintly, silver-blue like burning mercury. His mouth curled as if trying to form a word.

  “D-Da—”

  The light bulb above them popped. A humming started in the floorboards. Malcolm staggered back into the hallway and caught sight of the hallway mirror. And froze. The man in the reflection wasn’t just him. It was Rico. A man who should’ve been dead. Or forgotten. Or never known in this life. His own image warped—flickering between faces. One face bore the scar across the nose. The other didn’t. One had eyes of rage. The other, sorrow. They both looked afraid.

  "Halal…" Rico’s voice echoed through his bones, not his throat. "Something’s wrong. This ain’t time travel. This is memory theft."

  Malcolm backed away. Or tried to. But the hallway was already dissolving. Peeling apart like layers of bad film. Behind the walls, things moved. Code shimmered. Shadows reached. A low frequency boomed inside the bones of the building. He grabbed the doorway for balance and the apartment glitched.

  RJ was gone. So was the crib. So was the ceiling. Now it was all white. Sterile. Artificial. The entire apartment had been peeled away like a skin, and beneath it was a construct. A lab. No walls. No home. Just light and a single door. It opened with a hiss.

  He stood—barefoot, sweating, trembling—inside a steel room that didn’t exist in the 1980s. Glyphs ran down the walls like blood made from code. They pulsed, each symbol throbbing like a heartbeat carved into metal. They weren’t written in English. Not even a language he knew. But Rico knew them. Nasu glyphs. Markings of the Order. The Architect had extracted him.

  “You’re not in the world anymore,” Halal whispered inside his skull. “You’re in Elijah’s garden. And we’re the fruit.”

  A voice rose from nowhere. Low. Mechanical. Genderless.

  “Contestant 840805: Identity confirmed…. Welcome to the Circle of Death.”

  Malcolm turned to look for the voice. There was no speaker. No console. Just walls. Then the floor lit up beneath him. A rotating hologram—his own vitals. DNA helix. Neural overlays. Stress levels. Combat profile. Another screen blinked to life.

  PHYSICAL BODY STATUS: Not Present.

  CURRENT FORM: DIGITAL HOST — Avatar Shell 11.

  He looked down at his hands. They weren’t his. The fingers were wrong. The veins didn’t line up. His skin tone was too clean, too symmetrical. Too designed. He slammed his fist into the side wall. It didn’t hurt. Because there was no body to hurt. Only code.

  Suddenly, a second interface snapped open in midair—glitched, raw, jagged. A private message. Text only:

  PRIVATE MESSAGE

  “You don’t belong here.

  I can help.

  Say nothing.

  Wait for my signal.

  — P.F.”

  Peter Fales.

  “We’re not alone,” Rico said inside. “But we’re compromised. This isn’t random. Elijah pulled you because he wants me.”

  “Why?” Rico, whose mind was gradually integrating with Malcolm’s, asked inside.

  “Because I was also Malcolm once, and I remember things he buried. This version of us... is tethered to a piece of my truth.” Halal replied.

  Malcolm swallowed.

  “This is about Wafu?”

  “It’s always been about her. And RJ. And the fact I died before I finished remembering.”

  The air shifted again. A low hum filled the room. Then, a voice returned.

  “You were chosen for your performance, your anomaly, and your instability…. Compete for survival. You will be monitored. Scored. And if you fail…”

  The lights flickered red.

  “You will be recycled.”

  Malcolm’s hands clenched. Or tried to. The avatar responded, but not how he wanted. He was trapped in a body he didn’t build. In a system he didn’t enter. In a life he couldn’t remember. He looked at the wall again. And suddenly, the glyphs rearranged. Into a single phrase. Written in both Nasu and English.

  "YOU WERE NEVER MALCOLM."

  The truth hit like fire through ice. This body wasn’t Malcolm’s. It never was. It was Rico’s last avatar, reconstructed, re-skinned, and inserted into 1984 as part of a containment breach.

  “I was the bait,” Malcolm said aloud, voice hollow. “But Rico… Rico was the memory they couldn’t kill.”

  And Elijah didn’t want Malcolm to win.

  He wanted to draw Rico out. He was feeding on timelines. Splicing memories. Trapping anomalies in an endless digital loop. Rico was the echo of Malcolm—and a similar host for Halal. He grew up with Pantu the Guardian around him, who taught him to contain the truth.

  The final screen blinked once more. Now a live camera feed opened in the corner. Twelve contestants stood in separate pods. Various races, genders, timelines. All blinking. All confused. Each one held potential symbiote markers. Each one a threat to the Nasu Order. Elijah’s voice came through, colder than the Warden’s:

  “They believe they fight for freedom. But they are fertilizer.”

  “The Circle doesn’t choose a victor.”

  “The Circle feeds.”

  Malcolm stared, trembling. And then whispered:

  “He’s feeding on Halal’s and many of the great leaders' bloodlines of humans’ past…”

  The lights dimmed. A countdown began.

  Circle of Death Activation: T - 00:00:10

  The pod began to dissolve around him. And the final thought Malcolm heard before the light consumed them was Halal’s voice, clear and urgent:

  “This is not a game. It’s a harvest.”