The Faction 2.5 region is still frozen.
Systemically, everything is under control.
Protocol-wise, there is no movement.
Time-wise, everything is still.
But something that should be dead…
begins to break the silence from within.
There is no sound.
No muscle movement.
But in the locked consciousness,
dreams begin to re-orient themselves.
A single citizen—a terminal rafter—stands in his own mind.
He walks through a nameless city,
seeing crumbling buildings that were never built,
and amid the rubble,
he finds a round chair.
Empty.
But it feels… familiar.
He sits down.
And the world begins to move.
In another zone, a young girl dreams of water.
Not a river. Not an ocean.
Still water.
She throws a rock into it.
It doesn't sink.
It doesn't float.
But it turned into a sentence:
"Form is vibration.
And vibration will return,
even if all sensors are turned off."
When he touched the water,
his eyes opened.
His body remained frozen.
But his mind…
…remembered.
