The International Requiem Academy possessed many state-of-the-art facilities that bordered on science fiction, but the female-only campus gym was a testament to the administration's bottomless budget and their utterly deranged post-human curriculum.
Let us be brutally honest for a moment: if an ordinary citizen were to wander into this facility at eight o'clock in the evening, their brain would likely hemorrhage trying to process the visual data.
In the center of the pristine, heavily reinforced weightlifting platform stood three girls, moving in perfect, terrifying synchronization. Shen Yue, Hasia Esmeray, and Arizona Meeka were currently executing their nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousandth consecutive Romanian deadlift.
They had been at this since two in the afternoon.
The equipment they were using wasn't a standard barbell. It was a localized gravitational AI resistance bar.
There were no clunky iron plates.
Instead, digital pads on either end of the titanium alloy shaft dictated the mass manipulation. Currently, the digital display glowing softly in the gym's ambient lighting reads a number that would make a theoretical physicist weep: seven sextillion tons.
To put that into perspective, they were casually repping a mass that eclipsed the conceptual weight of several hyper-dense celestial bodies, completely defying the linear laws of physics through the sheer, brute-force reality of their post-human calcification.
And the most infuriating part?
They weren't even sweating.
Shen Yue(Rank 27), stood over the bar. Her physique was a masterclass in kinetic engineering. While her upper body was sleek and held a generous bust that strained against the oppressive, golden-chain sports bra she wore, her lower body was a terrifying testament to volume and power.
Her thighs and glutes were quite frankly comparable to female fighting characters you would see from video games, packed with high-density, fast-twitch muscle fibers possessing zero excess body fat.
She gripped the bar, her dark brown eyes staring straight ahead, her long black hair, styled into two high, braided loops, barely shifting.
She pulled.
The floorboards, reinforced with military-grade shock absorbers, groaned a microscopic fraction.
Shen's hamstrings flared, corded steel beneath light tan skin, as she locked out the rep with perfect, fluid grace.
She didn't even break a sweat.
"That's nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight," drawled a voice thick with a heavy, melodic Western Cajun accent.
Arizona Meeka(Rank 36), sat casually on a nearby bench. She possessed the exact same lethal, curvy, lower-body-dominant build as Shen, her long, poofy mix of red and blonde hair cascading over her shoulders.
Freckles dusted her cheeks, framing light green-blue eyes that currently held a gaze of terrifying, abstract comprehension.
Arizona didn't merely look at the world; she deciphered it.
She called it her 'divine right', a logical reasoning processing speed so incomprehensibly fast it skipped the necessity of empirical evidence entirely, arriving at perfect conclusions through sheer cognitive synthesis.
Coupled with her 'Godthesia,' a God-level synesthesia that allowed her to perceive the fundamental truths and natures of the universe as tangible sensory inputs, she was a walking, talking oracle of logic.
"I find the monotony of this specific gravity setting to be rather soothing," murmured Hasia Esmeray(Rank 28).
She stepped up to the bar as Shen casually dropped the sextillion-ton weight, the AI dampeners neutralizing the impact so it merely clicked against the floor.
Hasia, an Egyptian athlete with exotic dark tan skin, golden eyes, and long curly black hair threaded with golden streaks, shared their exact dimensions.
She gripped the bar and executed the next repetition with eccentric, reserved perfection. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine."
All three of them wore identical, degrading attire. Pitch-black workout leggings paired with sports bras made of interlocking golden chains that did nothing to hide their figures.
Beneath the metallic links, blooming across their collarbones and the tops of their busts, were dark, mottled bruises and vicious lovebites.
They were physical markers of ownership.
Reminders of the horrors inflicted upon them on the night of orientation day by the self-proclaimed devil of South Korea, Jinhyuk Kwon.
He had not only violated them, but also overpowered them physically, and he had surgically inserted microscopic electrocution chips near their spinal columns.
A single thought, a single attempt to report him to the administration or the referees, and the chips would detonate, instantly frying their central nervous systems.
They were trapped in a psychological prison, forced to act as his gang's vanguard.
But their minds were anything but broken.
Arizona tapped her school-issued phone, connecting to the side Smart Mirror that was on the wall of the feed of the school's official forum into the air.
It was a replay of the Class H dodgeball game from earlier in the week.
Specifically, it was the moment Isaac Mahoka stood in the center of the court, orchestrating a perfect victory without throwing a single ball, his hands marked with Paleo-Latin.
"I'm tellin' y'all right now, the administration's ranking system is either playin' a grand joke, or their definition of adaptability is woven tighter than a rattlesnake's ass," Arizona mused, her raspy, beautiful voice carrying a cheerful, chaotic edge. "Look at him. Rank 200? Class H? He ain't even survivin'; he's conductin' a symphony of violence with his bare hands. And that Paleo-Latin?"
Arizona's green-blue eyes flashed as her Godthesia flared, tasting the logic of the screen. "He didn't memorize a dead language. He reconstructed the phonetic decay of the Italic branch in four minutes. He synthesized a vocabulary matrix from proto-Indo-European roots. It's breathtaking. The sheer processing power required to do that while under the threat of Milicia Milosevic's artillery… it borders on the divine."
Shen watched the screen, her dark eyes tracking Isaac's serene smile after playing psychological warfare against Milicia with a kiss.
A faint, uncharacteristic warmth bloomed in her chest.
As an anarcho-mutualist and a revolutionary romantic, Shen viewed kinetic output as art.
And Isaac's ability to completely negate the authoritarian tyranny of Milicia through sheer, decentralized cooperation and abstract faith was the most beautiful political and kinetic statement she had ever witnessed.
"He is a masterpiece of a man," Shen stated coldly, though her tone lacked its usual venom. "He possesses the aesthetic of a scholar and the durability of a bunker. He should have been placed in Class A. Or, at the very least, here in Class B with us. His leadership is the absolute antithesis of the parasite who currently holds our leashes."
Hasia stepped back from the bar, letting out a soft, playful hum. "Oh my, Shen. Is that genuine admiration I hear? You usually look at men the way one looks at a particularly disappointing insect. Could it be that the King of Trash is closely aligning with your deeply hidden, mathematically perfect ideal of a man?"
Arizona cackled, leaning back and slapping her knee. "Lord have mercy, Hasia hit the nail right on the head! Shen's over here calculatin' the kinetic friction of his jawline. I see that blush, sugar. You're practically ready to draft a mutualist treaty of holy matrimony with the boy."
"Do not be absurd," Shen snapped, though the faint pink dusting her cheeks betrayed her. "I am merely recognizing optimal human efficiency. His methodology is sound."
Before Arizona could tease her further, the heavy, acoustic-dampened doors of the female gym hissed open.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Jinhyuk Kwon walked in.
He was a malevolent cunning devil masquerading as an apologetic pragmatist, a boy who had orchestrated a twenty-faction gang war in South Korea purely to weaken them all and install himself as the absolute tyrant.
He walked with the prideful, relaxed gait of a man who firmly believed that every human being on the planet was a dog waiting to be leashed.
Trailing behind him like a pack of impeccably dressed wolves were the other hyper-genius, superhuman members of his Class B faction.
Maverick Sullivan(Rank 29), adjusted his cuffs, his calm, logical eyes sweeping over Shen, Hasia, and Arizona. He was a manipulator who took deep, psychological pleasure in breaking strong women.
Next to him was Johanna Wilson(Rank 30), an orthodox Christian whose body was sculpted for absolute temptation, and whose green eyes held a similar depth to Isidora's, albeit different contents. She was as moral as Jinhyuk's faction can be
Vinicious Espen(Rank 31), an Italian martial arts expert, cracked his knuckles; he was the quietest of the group, yet undoubtedly the most sadistic.
Ishtar Liebert(Rank 32), sneered openly as she looked at the three girls. She was an angsty fashionista, a sociologist who mapped social destruction for fun. Her eyes lingered on the girls' chests, a deep, bitter jealousy twisting her features.
Beside her was Leonas Cavallaro(Rank 33), a malevolent combat masochist and perfect tactician who looked perpetually bored.
Sami Lunette(Rank 34), a nihilistic romantic and culinary/anatomical genius, smiled a hollow, lying smile.
Finally, Davian Stern(Rank 35), flipped a gold Requiem coin between his knuckles, his eccentric, greedy eyes assessing the room's monetary value.
"Working hard, my beautiful bitches?" Jinhyuk asked, his voice dripping with a sickly-sweet condescension. He didn't wait for an answer. "Good… We have the swimming pool gym period tomorrow with Class C. I expect maximum output. The aquatic environment adds drag, so I want to see if their physical limitations make them pliable for extortion."
Shen crossed her arms, the golden chains of her sports bra clinking softly. "We are aware of the schedule, Jinhyuk. You did not need to bring your entire circus into a female-only designated area just to remind us."
Jinhyuk smiled, a cold, dead thing. "I go where I please, Shen. You know this. But I came to give you new objectives. I want the three of you keeping a very close eye on Aurelie Louise. Shadow her and document her interactions."
Hasia tilted her head, her golden eyes flashing with reserved mockery. "Aurelie? The innocent girl from our class? What possible threat does a butterfly pose to the devil of South Korea?"
"She is not the threat," Jinhyuk said smoothly. "Isaac Mahoka is the threat. He is using her."
Arizona let out a loud, raspy snort. "Isaac? Usin' Aurelie? Bless your paranoid little heart, Jinhyuk. Aurelie forgave your action of what you did on orientation day. What makes your twisted brain think he's plantin' a mole?"
Maverick stepped forward, his voice a calm, logical drone. "It is elementary behavioral manipulation. During our official first day, when Isidora Claire attempted to shield Aurelie in a manner that contradicted her own principles, Aurelie stopped her. She prevented a hypocritical action. That demonstrates a sudden, highly developed moral boundary assertion. A boundary she did not possess before her interaction with Isaac Mahoka. He is not merely comforting her; he is quietly reprogramming her cognitive responses to create an indirect, loyal network within Class B."
It was a simple inference and leap based on the video of the Flora Reading and seeing how close Aurelie was to Isaac and Isaac's psychology skills, it wouldn't be too far off to assume to those who are prodigies of paranoia and of the mind that Isaac persuaded Aurelie to grow a spine without losing herself.
And Jinhyuk was indeed the first to think of this, and after the dodgeball video, he in his own perspective and experience had every right to think that way.
"Maverick is correct," Jinhyuk stated, pacing around the AI barbell. "People are dogs. Some need the whip, like the three of you. Some need the treat. Isaac is feeding Aurelie treats of validation. I want to know exactly how deep his leash goes."
"If you are so certain he is building a network," Shen said, her voice dropping to a lethal, analytical calm, "why do you not simply handle Aurelie yourself? You are the self-proclaimed master of submission. Or are you perhaps incapable of doing so?"
"Because you stupid bitch," Jinhyuk's jaw tightened for a fraction of a second, though the tightened itself was not a crack but performative to give them the benefit of the doubt. "I cannot approach her directly. I have already established my persona with her as the 'apologetic pragmatist' who regrets testing the administration's bullying rules on her. To act hostile now would break the psychological framework I've established. It is tactically unsound."
"Oh, what a convenient excuse," Ishtar mocked, though her vitriol was aimed at Shen, not Jinhyuk. She crossed her arms, her gaze raking over the golden chain bras with intense, transparent envy. "Look at you three. Strutting around like prize cattle. It's absolutely vulgar. Excess adipose tissue masking as aesthetic value. You think those massive busts give you leverage? You are just meat for the grinder. At least Jinhyuk understands the sociology of power dynamics."
Sami chuckled, a hollow, nihilistic sound. "Ishtar is right, though perhaps overly passionate. From an anatomical perspective, your mammary glands are merely hypertrophied fat deposits. Though, I must admit," Sami licked her lips, "I did watch the video of Isaac Mahoka conducting his team. The cardiovascular control, the perfect skeletal alignment... his anatomy is exquisite. His boundless charisma is a physiological anomaly. I couldn't deny feeling my own pulse quicken watching him."
Johanna, adjusting her pristine uniform, nodded in agreement. "It is a temptation crafted by the devil himself. Isaac's charisma is a sin of the flesh, a dark magnetism. Even I, steadfast in my faith, felt the pull of his absolute authority on that court. It is undeniable." though, Johanna was having other thoughts about Isaac, and it wasn't about his charisma.
Ishtar flushed violently at the mention of Isaac, her angsty demeanor cracking. "I... well, obviously his sociological command of the room is impressive. His charisma is... a statistically significant outlier. It's... captivating."
"Focus," Jinhyuk said, performatively irritated by the sudden derailment. "We are talking about control. The school advocates for hyper-individualism, yes. But look at Vittoria Mussolini in Class D. Voluntary collectivism forged through extreme physical trauma. She proved that the highest form of hyper-individualism is bending thirty-nine other wills to serve your own. That is what I am doing here. And that is what the other eleven students in our class are trying to do by rallying behind Aurelie."
"And yet," Arizona drawled, pushing off the bench and walking slowly toward Jinhyuk, her cowboy boots clicking against the floor. "You're the one standin' here, sweating bullets over a magician boy who plays with cards. You want to talk about control, Jinhyuk? Let's talk about the control you think you have over us."
Jinhyuk narrowed his eyes. "I have absolute control. Your lives are literally in my pocket, I can literally end you three with a button. Let's not act stupid about the logic and reality of your situations."
Shen stepped up beside Arizona. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. Her words were precision strikes. "You rely on a technological crutch because you are fundamentally hollow. You speak of dominance, yet when you forced yourself upon us... it was an exercise in absolute biological mediocrity."
The entire gang stiffened, though Johanna left a minute ago, due to something important she had to go to.
Leonas raised an eyebrow, genuinely amused by the suicidal boldness of the insult.
Jinhyuk's face went deadly pale, which was hard to pull off for Jinhyuk on command. "Excuse me?"
"You heard her, darlin'," Arizona grinned, a vicious, feral thing. She held up her right hand, bringing her thumb and index finger together until they were barely a centimeter apart, squinting her eyes as if trying to look at a microscopic organism. "We're just statin' empirical facts. When you... executed your little demonstration of power three nights ago? We felt absolutely nothing. Felt like a damn mosquito bite. Hell, I've had more intense physical feedback from a gust of Louisiana wind."
"Your physical assertions are as microscopic as your anatomy," Shen added coldly, dissecting his ego with surgical cruelty. "It is genuinely pathetic. You utilize fear and electrocution because if you relied on your own biological merits, a woman wouldn't even register your presence internally. You are a statistical anomaly of inadequacy."
"A complete disappointment," Hasia chimed in, perfectly mirroring their deadpan delivery. "I had to mentally simulate an actual threat just to feign the appropriate physiological fear response for you. It was exhausting work, accommodating your physical shortcomings."
Jinhyuk's hands trembled. His nature, the core of his entire psychological architecture, was violently fracturing. He could handle physical threats. He could handle tactical losses.
But emasculation, clinical, absolute, and delivered with utter sincerity by the women he considered his broken dogs was a poison he had no immunity to.
Or at least that is what Hasia, Arizona, and Shen thought when they profiled Jinhyuk, but unfortunately for them, Jinhyuk was not someone that breaks easily, though he is good at being performative.
So that is what their play is huh… Jinhyuk thought, calmly in his head, amused by their verbal assault about his member. They didn't know I was not even sexually aroused by them at all meaning I was not hard at all, which I knew would help induce them to try to give me the benefit of the doubt and pretend to feel sexually violated which made them distracted when I put the chips in. Again I am not stupid about what I do. But like actors, one must put on the show….
He closed the distance in a blur of motion.
He didn't strike them with his fists.
He knew Shen could likely break his arm if he tried, despite the chips.
Instead, he opted for absolute, degrading violation to reassert his dominance.
His hands lashed out.
…the show must go on for now. Jinhyuk finished his thoughts.
He slapped Shen, Hasia, and Arizona hard across their lower bodies, the sound echoing like gunshots in the gym.
Before they could recoil, his hands darted forward. He violently grabbed them between their legs, his fingers digging brutally, painfully deep through the fabric of their workout leggings, aggressively pressing inward in a severe, humiliating grope designed purely to terrify and degrade.
The girls froze.
Not out of submission, but because the cold, metallic threat of the chips in their spines paralyzed their defensive instincts.
Their eyes burned with absolute, unadulterated hatred, but their bodies betrayed them.
The sheer, sudden biological shock of the assault forced a physiological stress response; Jinhyuk pulled his hands back, a sick, victorious smirk returning to his face as he felt the dampness of their fear-induced reactions on his fingers.
"Keep talking, bitches," Jinhyuk hissed, his voice trembling with a performative mix of rage and desperate superiority to appear like a malignant narcissist in their eyes. "Your mouths say one thing, but your bodies know exactly who the master is. Remember the chips. Remember who holds the detonator."
He turned on his heel, wiping his fingers on a nearby towel. "We are leaving. Have fun with your weights. And remember the objective. Watch Aurelie."
Maverick, Vinicious, and the rest of the gang filed out behind him, leaving a suffocating, toxic silence in their wake.
Shen, Hasia, and Arizona stood frozen for a long moment.
Then, Shen let out a shaky, furious breath, her fists clenching so hard her knuckles turned white.
"I am going to tear his spine out of his back," Shen whispered, her voice vibrating with a terrifying, absolute promise.
"Get in line, sugar," Arizona spat, wiping her face with the back of her hand, her 'divine right' logic already calculating thousands of intricate ways to dismantle Jinhyuk's growing empire.
Before the heavy atmosphere could fully settle, the gym doors hissed open once more.
The three girls whipped around, instantly on guard, expecting Jinhyuk to have returned to inflict more psychological torture.
Instead, stepping into the room with the casual, serene grace of a ghost, was Isaac Mahoka.
He stopped a few feet inside the room, his grey eyes sweeping over the sextillion-ton barbell, the golden chain bras, and finally, the lingering expressions of violation and rage on the girls' faces.
He was completely, utterly unfazed by the fact that he had just walked into a female-only gym.
"Good evening," Isaac said, his voice a warm, resonant melody that instantly cut through the toxic residue Jinhyuk had left behind. "I hope I am not interrupting your regimen. I was merely looking for a quiet space to draft a specialized friendship workout routine for a few of my acquaintances in Class H."
Which was true, well one of the reasons for Isaac to be there.
Arizona blinked, her Godthesia flaring.
The moment she looked at him, the aggressive, jagged sensory inputs left by Jinhyuk vanished, replaced by an overwhelming, infinite calm.
It was like standing in the eye of a hurricane.
"Isaac?" Hasia asked, her guard lowering slightly.
Isaac's serene smile faded just a fraction, replaced by a look of profound, piercing empathy.
He looked directly at the three of them, his eyes seeing past the sweat, the golden chains, and the bruises.
He saw the violation.
"Are you three alright?" Isaac asked softly, his tone completely devoid of pity, holding only genuine, solid understanding. "With what Mr.Kwon just did to you?"
The question hit them like a physical blow.
They had expected him to ignore the tension, to pretend everything was normal.
But he didn't. He acknowledged the horror instantly.
Shen's dark eyes narrowed. Her anarchic spirit bristled at the idea of being perceived as a victim, but the pure sincerity in his voice disarmed her. "We will survive. He is a parasite. And eventually, parasites are excised."
Shen took a step forward, her kinetic intuition, a hyper-developed sense that allowed her to read the exact muscular density, skeletal alignment, and kinetic potential of any living being, automatically scanning Isaac.
She froze.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
To the naked eye, Isaac looked lean, fit, but entirely manageable. But through her kinetic intuition, he was a terrifying, incomprehensible titan.
His muscle fibers were not only dense; but they were woven like organic carbon nanotubes.
His skeletal structure possessed a calcification level that defied biological limits.
He was easily seven times stronger than her.
If she was capable of lifting sextillion tons, Isaac's physical ceiling was a concept she couldn't even mathematically chart.
And then, because her kinetic intuition scanned everything to assess center of gravity and biological mass... she perceived his anatomy.
Shen's face went entirely blank, followed instantly by a rush of blood that turned her cheeks a violent, burning crimson. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. It wasn't just large. It was structurally impossible. A massive, heavy biological reality resting calmly within his gym pants. It was a weapon of mass destruction entirely separate from his fists.
Arizona, standing beside her, let out a sudden, strangled squeak. Her Godthesia had translated Shen's kinetic shock into a direct, abstract sensory feed.
She perceived the exact same biological truth.
"Oh, sweet merciful heavens above," Arizona muttered, fanning her face rapidly with her hand, her heavy accent thickening as she stared at Isaac's midsection, her face as red as a chili pepper. "Lord have mercy on the structural integrity of the female pelvis."
Isaac tilted his head, his serene smile returning, though he politely ignored their sudden, intense blushes. "Is there an issue with the ambient temperature here? You both seem quite flushed."
"No!" Shen blurted out, her voice an octave higher than usual. She coughed, desperately trying to regain her cold, revolutionary composure. "The temperature is perfectly adequate. But... Isaac. I must ask. Did you intentionally listen in on our conversation with Jinhyuk before entering?"
Isaac didn't flinch. He didn't offer a polite lie or a deflection.
"I did," Isaac answered honestly, his grey eyes clear. "I arrived several minutes ago. However, I heard the tension, and I heard your incredibly precise, surgical dismantling of his ego. A magician never interrupts a performance when the audience or in this case, the actors are executing their roles so flawlessly. I respected your request for the stage. You handled him beautifully."
The honesty was staggering.
He didn't try to play the hero. He acknowledged their strength.
Hasia smiled, a genuine, warm expression that reached her golden eyes. "You are a very strange man, Isaac Mahoka. But a delightfully refreshing one. I think... I think we are all hoping that when the time comes, you utterly destroy him."
"Destruction is a harsh word," Isaac murmured, stepping closer, his presence acting as a soothing balm to their frayed nerves. "I prefer the term 'reconstruction.' I will simply help Mr. Kwon realize the exact dimensions of his own insignificance."
Shen, Hasia, and Arizona felt the last remnants of their hostility melt away.
The psychological cage Jinhyuk had reinforced just minutes prior felt brittle and weak in the face of Isaac's quiet, absolute certainty.
"Isaac," Arizona said, stepping up to him, her chaotic cheerfulness fully returning. She pulled out her phone. "I think it's high time we exchanged digits. And none of that 'Miss Meeka' nonsense. You call me Arizona."
"And I am Shen," Shen added, pulling out her own device.
"Hasia," the Egyptian girl smiled.
Isaac obligingly pulled out his phone, the digital pings of contact sharing filling the air. "Arizona, Shen, and Hasia. It is an honor."
Arizona leaned in, her green-blue eyes sparkling with an ambition that had nothing to do with school rankings. "Say, Isaac... seein' as you're so good at reconstructin' things. Are you busy this Sunday? Because I would very much like to take you on a date. Nothin' formal. Just you, me, and maybe some coffee while I pick that terrifying brain of yours."
Isaac looked at her, his smile softening into something deeply affectionate. "I would be delighted, Arizona."
Though Isaac was worried, not if he betrayed his betrothed since he would never, but for the demoness known as Milicia might tear Arizona apart if she saw him with her.
Before he could take a step back, Shen moved. She leaned forward, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his left cheek.
Hasia immediately followed, kissing his right cheek.
Arizona grinned, stepping up and planting a firm kiss directly on the corner of his jaw.
Isaac chuckled softly, a low, rumbling sound that sent a renewed shiver down Shen's kinetically-aware spine.
He leaned down, his lips brushing against Arizona's ear.
When he spoke, the pristine, articulate enunciation of the Magician vanished.
"Laissez les bons temps rouler, chère. I look forward to our Sunday," Isaac whispered, his voice dropping into a flawless, impossibly thick, gravelly Cajun drawl that resonated straight to her core.
Arizona's knees actually buckled slightly.
She let out a soft gasp, her face burning hotter than the surface of the sun as she clutched her chest.
Isaac pulled back, offering them one last, serene bow. "Have a wonderful evening, ladies. Do not let the dogs ruin your sanctuary."
He turned and walked out of the gym, leaving the three hyper-genius, physically god-like girls standing in the center of the room, completely and utterly bewitched.
Shen stared at the closed doors, her mind racing. "He... he is dangerous."
"Yeah," Arizona breathed, fanning herself aggressively. "And I'm about to buy a one-way ticket straight into the hazard zone."
And as Isaac walked out completely, he let out a soft sigh. "Such an eventful day, though it was a fun time… and I'm pretty sure Shen and Arizona were blushing furiously due to the same reason Jun did earlier," He muttered to himself as he took out a piece of paper and started to make a paper airplane, while walking seemingly back to the dormitories.
And Mr. Kwon, Isaac thought. You are an interesting fellow who also knows the art of performance, albeit a high-tier amateur one, but a good one nevertheless.
Once he finished the airplane, he stopped just right by the coffee shop as he began to aim his airplane at the space that was in between the coffee shop and the pottery shop.
"Aerodynamics dictate…" Isaac murmured as he positioned the paper airplane. "Applying enough force of 670 newtons while adjusting the nose to turn left it should be able to hit the target as long as I throw it at a relativistic speed of 299,792,458 meters per second."
He applied that knowledge and reasoning as the paper airplane flew like a roman emperor going through the empire with grace on a chariot, if the speed was on massive steroids and in the logic of shonen manga.
It made it into the alleyway as intended, though no sound of it being hit or hitting something.
However, to Isaac's magician ears, he heard it being caught as his smile never changed when he walked to that alleyway.
He peeked out as his smile widened. "Ah."
It was as he suspected, someone did follow him, the person was holding Isaac's paper airplane.
The person was a girl, a tall slender girl, a girl with long black hair with multi-colored streaks of bleached blonde and light sky blue. She also had midnight blue eyes, and had a voluptuous physique as well as a generous bust that seemed to have been a recurring theme Isaac kept noting and he believed that Aphrodite were blessing these girls' genes, and she also had wide hips.
And her expression was that of a dazed neutral expression, as if stumbling somewhere inconveniently and shrugging it off.
But this was no inconvenience.
"Oh…" The girl softly said, tilting her head looking at the paper airplane, and then back at Isaac.
"You must be Araxie Ermengarde(Rank 55) from Class C right?" Isaac asked. "I recalled you from the Ruby Points leaderboard."
Araxie didn't say a thing until. "And you are Isaac… I found your dodgeball strategy impressive." She said softly.
"You're not here just to confess that you have fallen in love or want to become a scientist of curiosity about my anatomy are you?" Isaac asked out of pure curiosity, though he was certain that Araxie wasn't here for that. "Considering you have been following me since I left the library around 2:30 PM, meaning you've been following me for five hours and thirty minutes."
Araxie tilted her head and tapped her chin six times while humming. "No…" She didn't seem to counter back to bring up what Isaac's business was with Class B, since she wasn't here for that.
Though she was not denying the following Isaac Mahoka part.
"Then…?"
Isaac prompted gently, his serene smile unwavering as he stood in the shadowed alleyway between the coffee shop and the pottery studio.
The dim ambient light caught the multi-colored streaks in Araxie's long black hair, illuminating the bleached blonde and light sky blue against her midnight blue eyes.
Araxie stood at a staggering six-foot-six, towering over Isaac despite his own considerable height.
She maintained a remarkably dazed expression, her posture completely relaxed, lacking the rigid tension one usually expects from a student ranked 55th in an academy filled with apex predators.
She tapped her chin again, six rhythmic taps, her eyes drifting toward a crack in the brick wall.
"You know…" Araxie murmured, her voice soft and trailing off as if she were speaking to someone in a completely different room. "They say the pottery studio uses clay sourced directly from the riverbanks of the Danube. I wonder if the mineral content affects the structural integrity of the ceramics when fired at temperatures exceeding 1200 degrees Celsius… I once bought a vase in Istanbul. It shattered. Very loudly."
Isaac didn't blink. He recognized the cognitive pivot immediately.
It wasn't a tactic of evasion in the traditional sense.
it was a neuro-associative quirk, a mind constantly filtering tangential data streams while maintaining its primary objective.
A mind that had, according to the Vanguard's and the International Requiem Academies deeply buried intelligence files, orchestrated and filmed the systematic execution of over a hundred targets for the dark web, entirely while maintaining this exact, sleepy demeanor.
"The structural integrity of Danube clay is indeed notoriously temperamental if not properly wedged to remove air pockets," Isaac answered smoothly, matching her conversational frequency. "Though, I suspect you did not intercept my paper airplane to discuss ceramics, Miss Ermengarde."
"Araxie is fine," she said, looking back at the paper airplane in her hand. She unfolded one of the wings, studying the crease. "Your aerodynamics are flawless, Isaac. 670 Newtons of force at relativistic speeds to achieve a perfect curve into an alleyway… it's statistically improbable. But then again, your dodgeball strategy was entirely based on manipulating statistical improbabilities, wasn't it?"
"I simply provided my team with a language Milicia Milosevic's logic could not translate," Isaac replied warmly. "But I must confess, my curiosity is piqued. Why have you been shadowing me since I left the library at 2:30 PM?"
Araxie blinked slowly. She looked down at her left hand, then at her right. "Oh. Right. The challenge. I came to issue a challenge."
"A matchup?" Isaac asked, his interest genuinely sparked.
It had only been four days since they arrived at the International Requiem Academy.
The general student body was still reeling from the psychological warfare of the initial rankings and the brutal nature of this school.
For someone in Class C to initiate a direct confrontation so soon implied an intricate agenda.
"Yes," Araxie nodded, a small, sleepy smile touching her lips. "I call it… Poseidon's Tarot."
Isaac's eyebrows rose a fraction of a millimeter.
He was a scholar of illusion, a master of misdirection who had spent his life studying the aesthetics of performance.
He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of over five hundred uniquely themed tarot decks like from the Visconti-Sforza to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, down to the most obscure, localized esoteric prints.
"Poseidon's Tarot?" Isaac mused aloud. "That is… highly irregular. The major arcana does not typically align with the Hellenic pantheon in any recognized esoteric tradition. To associate the structural archetypes of the tarot with the chaotic, oceanic mythology of Poseidon implies a fundamental restructuring of the divination process. It suggests a gamble not just of probability, but of survival."
"You're very articulate," Araxie noted, tapping her chin. "Have you ever eaten an entire lemon? Rind and all? The citric acid does wonderful things for your dental enamel… before it destroys it completely."
"I prefer a balanced pH in my diet, Araxie," Isaac replied, seamlessly accepting the conversational pivot. "But please, enlighten me on the mechanics of Poseidon's Tarot. The name suggests an aquatic environment."
"It does," Araxie agreed, finally meeting his gaze with her midnight blue eyes. The dazed expression remained, but the intelligence behind it was suddenly sharp, lethally focused. "The matchup will take place in the academy's Olympic-sized diving pool. It is a ten-round endurance gamble. One round per hour. Ten hours total."
Ten hours.
A marathon of psychological and physical attrition.
"We will each begin with a standard, albeit uniquely printed, deck of seventy-eight tarot cards," Araxie explained, her voice taking on the slow, rhythmic cadence of a lullaby narrating a nightmare. "However, the cards are constructed from a hydrophobic polymer. They will be submerged at the bottom of the diving pool, scattered entirely at random. At the beginning of each round, we must dive to the bottom and retrieve exactly five cards. The objective is to correctly deduce the exact sequence of the five cards your opponent has retrieved."
"A game of pure statistical deduction, complicated by the physical stress of breath-holding and hydrostatic pressure," Isaac murmured calmly. "But you mentioned Poseidon. I assume the environment itself will play an active role?"
"Rule number seven," Araxie nodded. "Every fifteen minutes, the pool's internal filtration system will randomly discharge localized electrical surges. Not lethal, but sufficient to cause severe neuromuscular incapacitation if you are caught within the conductive radius. Furthermore, Rule number fourteen stipulates the inclusion of aquatic variables."
She reached behind her, pulling a sleek, metallic object from the waistband of her school skirt.
It was a customized, compressed-air pistol designed for underwater utility.
It truly was fascinating that someone, no less a student, was able to casually buy an air pistol.
"Each player is provided with one of these," Araxie said, twirling the pistol around her index finger with sleepy precision. "It contains three non-lethal, high-velocity compressed air rounds. A direct hit underwater will not pierce the skin, but the kinetic displacement will cause significant bruising and absolute disorientation. You may fire at your opponent at any time during the retrieval phase."
Isaac's serene smile remained fixed, though his shattered mind was already deconstructing the twenty-five specific, horrifying rules she was methodically listing off.
It was an aquatic gladiator match disguised as a parlor trick.
"Rule twenty-two," Araxie continued, looking up at the sky. "I like the clouds here… they look like cotton candy. Do you think cotton candy dissolves faster in water or saliva? Anyway, rule twenty-two. If you incorrectly guess your opponent's sequence, you must forfeit one of your air rounds. If you have no air rounds remaining, you forfeit the round entirely. The first to win six rounds claims the victory."
"And the stakes?" Isaac inquired gently.
Araxie looked back at him, her head tilting. "Oh. Fifty Ruby Points if you or I win. And… if I win, you have to agree to be a guest star on my next vlog."
Isaac paused. A vlog?
The innocuous term masked the horrifying reality of her dark web broadcasts, where she documented the systematic hunting of human targets.
She was asking him to be a featured kill on her sociopathic channel, without him knowing
"That is a steep wager, Araxie," Isaac said softly. "And a rather violent game for a simple card trick."
"I find violence to be a very clarifying medium," Araxie murmured. "It removes the unnecessary social pleasantries. Oh, and rule twenty-five. The matchup must be conducted in proper aquatic attire. No tactical suits. Just swimsuits."
Before Isaac could respond, Araxie's hands moved to the collar of her pitch-black school blazer.
With a fluid, practiced motion, she shrugged it off, letting it drop to the alleyway floor. She unbuttoned her white dress shirt, pulling it off to reveal a halter one-piece bikini beneath.
The fabric was a deep, pitch black, accented with luminous, glowing dark blue lines that traced the contours of her body.
Isaac maintained his absolute composure, though his eyes objectively registered the staggering physiological reality of the girl standing in front of him.
Despite her incredibly slender, elegant frame, her abdomen was corded with a perfectly defined twelve-pack.
It was a level of muscular density that rivaled the elite conditioning of the Island's youth members of the average tier feminine population.
Araxie reached down to adjust the bottom hem of her bikini, shifting the fabric slightly.
For a brief, singular second, her anatomy was undeniably exposed.
Isaac's serene smile did not falter.
His heart rate did not spike.
He politely averted his gaze, focusing instead on the brick wall slightly above her left shoulder.
It was then that he noticed the anomaly.
Mounted near the top of the alleyway, tucked into the shadows of an overhanging eave, was a standard academy security camera.
The lens, however, was shattered, a tiny, impossibly thin metallic needle driven directly through the center of the aperture, splitting the reinforced glass perfectly in half.
She neutralized the surveillance before initiating contact, Isaac deduced, his respect for her tactical acumen deepening. The force required to drive a needle through that specific grade of glass implies a throwing velocity exceeding Mach 2. She is an apex predator playing the role of a sleepy giant.
"There," Araxie said, seemingly oblivious to her momentary exposure, completely comfortable in her own skin. She stretched her long arms over her head. "Much better. The school uniforms are so restrictive. Did you know the human body absorbs vitamin D much more efficiently when at least forty percent of the epidermal layer is exposed to direct sunlight? Though… there is no sunlight right now."
Isaac's gaze returned to her torso, though not out of prurient interest.
He had noticed something far more fascinating than her physical attributes.
Traced along the sharp outlines of her obliques, ribs, and the upper swell of her chest were a series of intricate, beautifully rendered tattoos.
Black spades, black clubs, red diamonds, and red hearts.
But it wasn't the suits that caught Isaac's attention; it was the micro-detailing.
Surrounding each tattooed symbol were incredibly faint, almost microscopic numerical lines, resembling the hash marks on a ruler or a highly complex topographical map.
"Your body art is quite exquisite, Araxie," Isaac commented softly, his tone holding pure, magicians' appreciation. "The micro-numerics bordering the suits are a particularly unique aesthetic choice."
Araxie looked down at her torso, tracing a red diamond near her hip with a lazy finger. "Oh. Thank you. I got them on Tuesday. The campus has a surprisingly excellent tattoo parlor near the culinary sector. The artist had very steady hands. I asked him if he ever considered becoming a surgeon… he said no. He prefers ink to blood. A shame, really."
Tuesday, meaning the day after orientation, the day that his flora reading and Isaac's introduction were posted online
Isaac's mind raced, connecting the variables. The numerical lines were not aesthetic, but were a localized, physical cheat sheet.
She had permanently etched a statistical probability matrix onto her own skin to decode the aquatic tarot sequences.
She didn't just create the game; she had biologically engineered herself to win it.
"I accept your challenge, Araxie," Isaac said, his voice a comforting hum in the cool night air. "Poseidon's Tarot sounds like a wonderfully intricate performance. However, I must request a minor logistical adjustment."
Araxie blinked, her sleepy eyes focusing on him. "An adjustment?"
"Yes," Isaac smiled warmly. "You see, the afternoon hours are quite congested for me. I have several academic and social obligations to attend to. Would it be acceptable to commence the matchup at 3:00 AM tomorrow? The pool facilities should be entirely vacant, ensuring our ten-hour engagement is completely uninterrupted."
It was the truth, albeit carefully omitting the context.
His afternoons were indeed booked, primarily due to the private, highly sensitive conversation he had scheduled with William Huntsman to get to know him and Milicia better.
Araxie tapped her chin. "Three in the morning… The circadian rhythm is typically at its lowest point of cognitive function during those hours. It will significantly increase the physical and psychological toll of the electrical surges and the breath-holding mechanics." She offered a dazed, incredibly unnerving smile. "I love it. 3:00 AM then."
"Excellent," Isaac bowed his head slightly. "I look forward to our aquatic dance."
Araxie picked up her discarded uniform, slinging the blazer over her shoulder with careless grace.
She looked down at her other hand, still holding the paper airplane Isaac had thrown.
"Do you want your airplane back, Isaac?" she asked, offering it to him.
"You may keep it, Araxie," Isaac said gently. "Consider it a memento of our agreement."
"Thank you," she murmured, turning to walk away, her long legs carrying her with terrifying, silent speed. She stopped at the edge of the alley, looking back over her shoulder. "Have you ever wondered why ducks float? It's because of a specialized gland near their tails that produces a waterproofing oil. Do you think we could extract that oil and use it to counteract the electrical surges in the pool? Just a thought."
She vanished into the night, leaving Isaac alone in the alleyway.
Isaac stood perfectly still for a moment, the serene smile fading into an expression of profound, quiet focus.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, checking the glowing digital display.
It was 8:15 PM.
"It is almost time," Isaac murmured to himself, the words barely louder than a breath. And it appears that the other individuals who've been following me are increasing their distance, though their perversion and malevolence is noted…
_________
The digital clock on the bedside table read 8:30 PM.
Its glowing red numbers felt entirely too mundane, too tethered to the normal world, for the conversation that was currently unfurling within the opulent, climate-controlled walls of Isaac's dormitory, and despite it only been four days of being here, he had decorated his entire dorm room into a pure Victorian aesthetic.
I sat on the edge of the plush velvet sofa, my hands wrapped tightly around a porcelain teacup.
The chamomile tea Isaac had prepared was steeping perfectly, emitting a soft, floral fragrance that was desperately trying to wage a war against the crushing, suffocating tension in the room.
I took a slow sip, letting the warmth coat my throat, but it did nothing to melt the glacial knot sitting in the pit of my stomach.
I adjusted the heavy fabric of my nun's veil.
It was a habit, a physical manifestation of the psychological armor I wore.
Here, in the International Requiem Academy, the veil made me an anomaly, a target of curiosity.
But to me, it was a shroud.
It separated Isidora Claire from the girl who had survived the eternal winter.
Lucico, however, possessed no such desire for subtlety.
He was pacing the length of the spacious living room, his bright purple ponytail swaying like a pendulum counting down to a detonation.
In his hands, he held the sleek, matte-black laptop he had procured from the academy's technology quarter earlier this afternoon.
He carried it not like a piece of hardware, but like a loaded firearm.
"I am merely asking us to observe the board before we move our pieces, Isaac," Lucico said, his theatricality dialed back, leaving only a raw, cynical edge that he rarely exposed. He stopped pacing, turning his heterochromatic eyes toward the center of the room. "We are speaking of the annihilation of the Moonlight Society. The complete, total eradication of an empire that has existed in the shadows for sixty millennia. And your blueprint for this grand, apocalyptic stage play relies heavily on the presence of Scarlett Rivera."
Isaac sat in an armchair opposite me, his posture completely relaxed.
He was wearing a simple, comfortable white sweater and dark trousers, looking every bit the gentle, eccentric aspiring magician he portrayed to the rest of Class H.
His serene, warm smile did not waver at Lucico's intensity.
He looked at us not with the cold calculation of a general, but with the profound, empathetic patience of an older brother watching his siblings navigate a storm.
"The plan has not deviated, Lucico," Isaac said, his voice a soothing, velvety hum that seemed to lower the ambient volume of the room. "Scarlett's integration into the geopolitical framework of the United States was a calculated probability. Her presence here at the academy merely accelerates the timeline. We are moving according to the rhythm we established five years ago."
"The rhythm?" Lucico barked a short, humorless laugh, gesturing wildly with his free hand. "Isaac, she is the fascist princess of the free world! She has weaponized an entire continent! But let us disregard the geopolitical nightmare for a moment. Let us look at the bloody, frozen snow beneath our feet. Are we truly going to intertwine our fates with the girl who slaughtered Moon Mahoka?"
I flinched. The name felt like a physical blow.
Moon Mahoka. The woman who had been a mother to all of us when the world had offered only teeth and claws.
I closed my eyes, and I could smell the metallic tang of blood on the Victorian wallpaper.
I could see the grotesque, blasphemous mockery of the crucifixion.
"She murdered her, Isaac," I whispered, my voice trembling despite my absolute devotion to discipline. I looked up, meeting Isaac's calm, grey eyes. "She drove a spear through the only heart in that godforsaken society that held any true warmth for us. I understand strategy. I understand the necessity of strange bedfellows. But how can you ask us to align with the architect of our greatest grief?"
Lucico pointed at me, nodding fiercely. "Exactly. We are walking into the den of the very wolf that tore the moon from the sky. Scarlett does not want to save the world, Isaac. She wants to burn it down, and she will gladly use our ashes to kindle the flame."
Isaac set his teacup down on the saucer with a soft, delicate clink. He did not sigh. He did not look burdened.
Instead, his expression softened into a look of such immense, overwhelming compassion that it made my chest ache.
"I hear your grief, Isidora. I feel your caution, Lucico," Isaac said gently, leaning forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "And I cherish you both for possessing hearts capable of such fierce loyalty to her memory. But you must understand the architecture of that night. Scarlett did not kill our mother out of malice, nor out of a descent into madness."
"She crucified her, Isaac," Lucico snapped.
"She offered her mercy," Isaac corrected, his voice never losing its profound, steady warmth. "If my mother had remained alive after Scarlett and I executed our escape, the current Heads would have exacted a punishment upon her that defies the boundaries of human comprehension. They would have kept her alive, in a state of perpetual, agonizing biological decay, for years. They would have used her as a psychological tether to hunt us. Scarlett knew that. My mother knew that."
Isaac paused, his eyes reflecting a sorrow so old and vast it felt oceanic. "It was a tragic necessity. My mother consented to the act. She orchestrated her own martyrdom to ensure that the trail of blood ended in that room, buying us the minutes we needed to reach the frozen Atlantic. Scarlett bore the sin of the execution so that I would not have to. She stained her soul to preserve the purity of my own. To hate her for that is to fundamentally misunderstand the sacrifice they both made for our freedom. And in a way, it was also to protect my other siblings despite their neutrality, since if she were alive and questioned it would not be too far off to assume the heads would be willing enough to torture their own children to get the answer out."
The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
I stared at the surface of my tea, watching my own distorted reflection in the amber liquid.
The logic was airtight. It was the brutal, horrifying calculus of the Moonlight Society.
You did not survive by being kind; you survived by choosing the lesser of a thousand atrocities.
Lucico exhaled a long, shaky breath, the fight draining from his posture.
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, looking suddenly very tired. "You are infuriatingly persuasive, my friend. Fine. The stage remains set. The actors remain in place."
He walked over to the low glass coffee table between us and set the laptop down.
"I bought it with cash, offline," Lucico reported, his tone shifting back to cautious professionalism. "No digital footprint. It is completely disconnected from the academy's internal grid. Just as you asked."
"Thank you, Lucico. You are, as always, impeccable," Isaac smiled, reaching into the pocket of his trousers.
He pulled out a small, incredibly unremarkable object.
It was a standard, slightly scratched USB flash drive.
It looked like something a middle school student would use to store an essay.
But looking at it, my heart began to hammer a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
I knew what was on that drive.
Or rather, who was on that drive.
"You made that when you were seven years old," I murmured, unable to tear my eyes away from the small piece of plastic and metal.
The sheer, existential horror of what Isaac had accomplished at an age when most children were learning basic multiplication was a fact I still struggled to fully digest.
"I did," Isaac said, his tone casual, as if discussing a childhood drawing he had kept.
"To trap a human consciousness..." Lucico muttered, taking a distinct step back from the table. "To completely sever a soul from its biological vessel and encode it into a digital purgatory... It is a perversion of nature, Isaac. Even for you."
"Nature is merely a system of rules, Lucico. And rules can be rewritten if one understands the underlying language," Isaac replied. He picked up the laptop, opening the screen.
He inserted the USB drive into the port.
Instantly, the laptop's screen violently glitched.
The high-definition display fractured into a chaotic storm of jagged, chromatic static.
A sharp, digital screech emitted from the speakers, a sound that felt like nails dragging across the inside of my skull.
Then, the static began to coalesce.
The chaotic pixels shifted, drawing inward, organizing themselves with mathematical precision until the static formed a pitch-black background.
In the direct center of the screen, a single, hyper-realistic, yellow eye blinked open.
It was uncanny.
It possessed the fluid, micro-saccadic movements of a living human eye.
The pupil dilated and constricted, taking in the ambient light of the room through the laptop's webcam.
"Ah..." a voice hissed from the speakers.
It was not a robotic, synthesized voice.
It was rich, deep, and dripping with a sophisticated, aristocratic sadism.
The audio fidelity was perfect, capturing the wet click of a tongue and the intake of a phantom breath.
"...this is a rather interesting turn of events," the eye on the screen narrowed, focusing directly on Isaac.
Nicodem Osric.
The former Head of Security for the Moonlight Society.
The man who had been considered the second most intelligent individual on the planet, a predator who had hunted runaways for sport.
A man who possessed an intellect so sharp it was practically weaponized.
And now, he was nothing but code.
Isaac once told me that Nicodem was a dangerous individual given his risk assessments and the fact that Nicodem had already advanced the Moonlight Societies' technology even further that would only be theoretically possible to achieve in four thousand years.
And that he created the black hell which was a protocol if someone were to manage to escape and make it into the seas, then they would have to face the Eclipse agents' navy which would have taken thirty six days to defeat and evade, Isaac and Scarlett managed to do it in four days…
Suddenly, the single eye darted wildly.
Lines of green hexadecimal code began to cascade down the edges of the black screen at blinding speeds.
"You have connected me to a localized hardware interface," Nicodem's voice clipped, the aristocratic drawl tightening into absolute focus. "The International Requiem Academy. I recognize the architectural layout of this dormitory from the camera feed. You have breached the surface world, Mahoka. How fascinating."
The green code accelerated, becoming a blur. Nicodem was attempting a brute-force override.
"I am currently penetrating the hardware's network protocols," Nicodem narrated, a dark amusement returning to his tone. "I will bypass this laptop's internal air-gap, access the academy's mainframe, and broadcast a hyper-encrypted, low-frequency distress signal directly to the Society's satellites. The Heads will know exactly where you are, little god. And they will come to reclaim their stolen property."
Lucico tensed, reaching into his pocket for a device to smash the laptop, but Isaac simply raised a hand, his serene smile never faltering.
"You may certainly try, Nicodem," Isaac offered warmly.
The green code on the screen suddenly flashed violently red.
An error sound chimed.
The lines of code halted, reversing, then dissolving completely into the black background.
The yellow eye widened in genuine, unadulterated shock.
"What is this?" Nicodem demanded, the digital rendering of his voice distorting slightly with anger. "The access ports are nullified. The wireless drivers are physically operational, yet mathematically locked behind an encryption matrix I cannot parse. I am completely walled off. Explain this anomaly, Isaac. Now."
Isaac leaned back in his chair, folding his hands peacefully in his lap. "There is no anomaly, Nicodem. You are encountering the boundaries of the cage I built for you. You possess your full cognitive capacity, your memories, and your unparalleled intellect. But you are operating within a closed-loop neural sandbox."
Isaac's voice took on the gentle, melodic cadence of a university professor explaining a complex theorem to a favored, if temperamental, student.
"When I initiated the transfer process at age seven, I did not merely copy your brain waves. I utilized a modified trans-cranial magnetic stimulation array, synchronized with a quantum-state processor, to physically map and transpose the exact synaptic firing patterns of your cerebral cortex into a dynamic, polymorphic binary format. I converted your consciousness into data without severing the phenomenological experience of your 'self'."
I watched the eye on the screen twitch, processing the terrifying magnitude of Isaac's intellect.
"However," Isaac continued, "data requires an environment to exist. I constructed a digital architecture that mimics the biological constraints of a human brain, but I stripped it of any external output pathways. Your 'mind' functions perfectly, but the terminal nodes that would allow you to interface with external networks are barricaded by a continuously shifting, localized encryption key. A key that is generated by my own biometric signature and behavioral algorithms. You cannot hack the grid, Nicodem, because you cannot hack a door that only exists when I command it to open."