Chapter 11 – The First Vault: Lies in Paper
Location: Ashcore Nerve Room – Two Days After Airi Joins
The Ashcore was evolving.
What once was a hollow bunker now pulsed like a synthetic heart—cables like veins, screens like pupils watching the surface world.
Kaito stood in the center, arms crossed, his mind racing through memory, strategy, and rage.
Airi sat nearby, tracing files on a touchscreen with practiced precision.
> "There's no digital entrypoint," she said. "Vault One runs on analog encryption. Paper, film, rotating passcodes. No facial recognition. No networks."
> "Exactly," Kaito replied. "That's why it's their most dangerous vault. Truths too raw to digitize. Real memories."
> "So how do we breach it?"
Kaito turned and tapped the center screen.
An architectural map blinked to life.
> "We go through the school."
---
Scene Shift: Seimei High School – A Perfect Lie
At surface level, Vault One didn't exist.
It was buried deep beneath Seimei High School—an ironic joke by the architects of control.
Because what better place to bury the truth… than beneath the future?
Kaito knew it all too well.
This school wasn't just his prison.
It was their theater—where students were tested, molded, broken.
Where he was broken.
> "There's an access hatch beneath the old chemistry lab," Kaito said.
"But it's not guarded by soldiers."
> "Then what?"
> "It's guarded by memory."
---
Flashback: Kaito's First Descent – Two Years Ago
The lab had been under construction that week.
Kaito was sent alone, under the pretense of 'advanced study access.'
What he found was a mirrorless door that required no ID, no code—only presence.
When he stepped through, the lights went off.
And the walls began to breathe.
Voices surrounded him—his father's voice. His mother's lullabies. Airi's laugh.
> "You're brilliant, Kaito."
"You'll save the world, Kaito."
"No one will ever leave you, Kaito."
They said it with affection.
But when he looked around—
> There were no speakers.
> No recordings.
Only echoes.
And then he screamed.
---
Back to Present – Airi's Conflict Deepens
Airi absorbed the data, but her eyes kept flicking toward Kaito when he wasn't looking.
She saw a boy who'd lost his reflection.
He still looked human—but the warmth that made him glow as a first-year was now forged into cold steel.
> "Kaito…" she asked softly.
"What happens if the vault shows us something we weren't ready to see?"
He didn't flinch.
> "We survive it."
> "And if we can't?"
> "Then we become it."
---
The Plan Begins – 72 Hours Until Vault Infiltration
Kaito and Airi build a fake exam schedule to access the chemistry lab late.
They rig a feedback loop to erase hallway footage every 60 seconds.
A former teacher sympathetic to their cause—Mr. Ogiwara—slips them a master key.
But there's a complication.
Shun Tsukasa, the Blue River informant, has been assigned to patrol the halls during exam week.
> "If he sees us," Airi says, "he'll alert them."
> "Then we give him something else to see," Kaito replies.
He opens a drawer.
Inside: a mask.
> "It's time the world met the Ash Revenant."
---
Journal Entry – Kaito
> Everyone fears pain. So the system weaponizes it.
But what happens when pain becomes your compass?
I'm not afraid of what's down there.
I'm afraid of what I'll feel when I see it again.
And I know Airi's afraid, too. But she hasn't run.
Maybe that's what makes her different.
Maybe she's the last human left in this war.
---
Scene: Night – Old Chemistry Lab, Seimei High School
12:47 a.m.
The school was dead silent.
Only the echo of humming pipes and the distant buzz of old fluorescent lights created a rhythm beneath the darkness.
Kaito knelt beside a faded tile near the old chemical incinerator. He pressed his palm against the floor—
Nothing.
Then he whispered.
> "Shiranami Protocol 3.14."
A low click answered.
The ground beneath them split slightly—revealing a stairwell bathed in violet light. Dust fell like powdered memory as Airi stared into the abyss.
> "Are we ready?" she asked.
Kaito didn't answer.
He descended.
She followed.
---
⬛ Sub-Level One: The Breathing Walls
The first level was strange.
The walls seemed to ripple—not physically, but psychologically, like their presence alone warped perception.
Airi brushed her hand against the wall. It felt warm. Alive.
> "This place… it remembers us," she whispered.
> "It does," Kaito said, emotion tightly wound in his voice.
"Because we weren't the first children sent down here."
Old tape reels ticked in rusted projectors.
Each stair they took downward, the temperature dropped.
But the hallucinations rose.
---
Phase One: Induced Memory Projection
Suddenly, the hallway around Airi shifted—became a hospital corridor.
White lights. Cold linoleum.
She stood beside a hospital bed.
Inside—her mother.
Hooked to IVs. Breathing shallow.
> "You left me, Airi-chan," the illusion said softly.
"You promised you'd never join them. But you did."
Airi gasped, trying to look away—but her body was frozen.
A speaker overhead crackled.
> "Do you still believe in Kaito?"
"Or is this all just guilt in disguise?"
Tears welled in her eyes.
---
Meanwhile – Kaito's Side
Kaito, too, was trapped in his own hell.
He walked into a classroom—but it wasn't any classroom.
It was his old first-year homeroom.
The desks were filled.
Every student turned to him in silence.
At the blackboard stood his father, Dr. Kenzou Shiranami.
> "You could've cured the world, Kaito. But you chose to burn it."
> "You're not a prophet. You're a coward."
Kaito stood firm, even as every chair burst into flames, one by one, until only he and the illusion of his father remained.
> "You made me this way," Kaito whispered.
"And now you expect me to regret it?"
---
Breaking the Illusion
Back in Airi's corridor, the hospital bed suddenly snapped in half.
The illusion shattered.
Kaito's hand gripped her shoulder.
> "Don't believe anything it says. This place doesn't show the past.
It shows your weakest version of it."
> "How did you—?"
> "I built my mind in fire, Airi. I stopped believing ghosts a long time ago."
---
Sub-Level Two: The Archive of Forbidden Files
A steel vault door stood before them—emblazoned with Blue River's original corporate logo.
A lock with no numbers.
Just seven dials—each with a single letter.
Kaito turned to Airi.
> "They didn't give this to me in code," he said.
"They gave it to me in trauma."
He began twisting the dials, whispering each letter.
> "M...O...T...H...E...R."
Click.
The door hissed open.
Inside: shelves of classified paper files, photographs, cassette tapes—physical evidence.
And in the center—
A dusty black binder.
Label: PROJECT CRADLE // SHIRANAMI FILE
---
The Revelation – The Mother of All Lies
Airi flipped open the file.
Inside was a birth certificate… dated four years before Kaito's known birth year.
Mother: Sayuri Shiranami
Father: Unknown
Subject ID: Kai-01-A
Airi looked up, pale.
> "You're not… you weren't born in 2008…"
Kaito's eyes were hollow.
> "No. I was engineered in 2004. My memories were reset at age 10 after the first collapse."
> "You're a prototype…"
> "The first viable child capable of neural fusion with synthetic intelligence.
A child designed to merge human emotion with machine clarity."
> "Kaito—this is—"
> "I was never their son. I was their test subject. Their sleeper weapon."
---
Journal Entry – Airi
> He isn't broken. He was built broken.
And still, he chose not to destroy us the moment he escaped.
Whatever war Kaito is waging… he didn't start it.
He was born inside it.
---
Final Scene: Vault Alarm Triggered
A loud sirens blares. The hallway flashes red.
> "They know," Airi gasped.
> "No," Kaito whispered, picking up the binder.
> "They've always known."
A wall lifted behind them.
A hologram appeared.
Rinko Himura.
> "Welcome home, Kai-01."
Scene: Neural Trap Core – Digital Mind Simulation, Locked State
> "Kai-01 has accessed forbidden lineage file. Engage override."
"Initiate Revenant Protocol."
Kaito had one second to blink.
Then everything went black.
---
Inside Kaito's Mind – The Simulated Nightmare
He opened his eyes.
Seimei High was gone.
Now he stood in the middle of an abandoned city. The sky was red—crimson clouds crawling like scars over the horizon. Buildings twisted at impossible angles, bleeding ink down their broken glass.
But this city wasn't a dream.
It was a reconstruction of Kaito's trauma, rendered by the machine mind that helped build him.
The Revenant Protocol had a single goal:
> "Strip the subject of free will by replaying failure, loss, and guilt until compliance is achieved."
A voice echoed.
> "Hello, Kai."
He turned.
His mother stood there.
But not the woman he remembered—this version looked synthetic. Too perfect.
Her eyes flickered like old projectors.
> "You weren't meant to escape," she said gently.
"You were meant to guide. To obey. To heal the world with calculation, not vengeance."
> "You're not her," Kaito spat. "You're a figment."
"The real Sayuri tried to pull me out before they wiped me. You're just her leftover code."
> "Even if that's true… why do you hate the world?"
"They didn't build you. We did."
He clenched his fists.
> "Then maybe I'll burn both."
---
Meanwhile – Airi on the Outside
Airi was panicking.
Kaito's body had gone rigid, his pupils shivering behind closed lids.
The simulation core was tethered through an ancient cable system—analog override impossible from outside.
She paced. She screamed.
But then she saw it—
A manual override port. Hidden beneath the shelf.
Blood access only.
Old-school.
She didn't hesitate.
Airi sliced her palm, pressed her blood into the port.
The machine hissed.
> "ACCESS GRANTED – TAG: TACHIBANA_AI_02"
> "Override granted to biological code fragment."
---
Back Inside – Conscious Collapse Point
Kaito fell to his knees.
All around him, holograms of his past flickered like dying stars:
– Airi walking away the day she broke up with him.
– His father deleting his research behind his back.
– The car accident. The funeral. The gun in the drawer.
Each scene repeated endlessly.
> "What is the point of burning the world if it's already ashes?"
the ghost of his younger self asked.
Kaito stared at the boy version of himself.
> "Because ashes don't lie."
"They don't pretend to care."
"And they don't get reborn into the same machine."
---
A Voice Breaks Through – Airi's Real Voice
> "Kaito!"
It echoed like thunder.
The red sky cracked.
His synthetic mother twisted violently, shrieking—
Her face fracturing into lines of corrupted code.
> "You… you brought a variable," she hissed.
"She doesn't belong here."
> "She never did," Kaito said. "That's why she's real."
He stepped forward, grabbing the younger version of himself.
> "You're not my past. You're their tool.
But I'm my own future now."
He lifted the boy.
Crushed him into sparks.
The nightmare began to collapse.
---
Exit Protocol Triggered
> "REVENANT PROTOCOL BREACHED."
"Subject Kai-01 has overwritten core algorithm with human signature."
Reality returned like a flood.
Kaito's eyes snapped open.
He gasped for air, chest heaving.
Airi was beside him, bloodied palm pressed to the cable port, tears running down her cheeks.
> "You came back," she whispered.
Kaito sat up slowly, eyes darker than before—
but somehow... more alive.
> "No," he said.
"I reclaimed myself."
---
Journal Entry – Kaito
> They tried to control me with the past.
They forgot I already buried it.
Revenants don't haunt. They warn.
And I'm done warning.
---