Chapter Text
The old world didn’t end with an explosion, a war, or the fall of civilization — it ended with a coding error and a simple desire for more. A chain reaction of failure in the Central Network, originally designed for control and protection, turned into a catastrophe: cities lost power, drones went rogue, climate stabilizers fell silent. Everything became a threat.
The Echo of the Collapse, as the event was later called, wiped out more than half of the planet's population. The survivors split into three groups: those who submitted to the new form of control or sought to control others (the RCS — Reality Control Service), those who resisted the system (the Resistance), and those who vanished into the chaos, existing somewhere in between.
Cities became tombs of steel and glass. Electricity was a rarity, clean water – a luxury. People forgot what peace felt like and lived with a constant background fear. Even those, who strictly followed the law and submitted still feared nighttime visits from RCS patrols or surprise attacks from the Resistance, protesting the system's oppression. The atmosphere itself grew suffocating. The air was heavy with ash, and the sky was almost always a dull, ashen gray. Vegetation mutated. Some animals disappeared, while others evolved into something unrecognizable. In some regions, anomalous zones began to appear — areas, where gravity broke down, time lost its rules, and humans were nothing but dust in a chaotic wind. People didn’t go there. If they did, they never returned. These zones were used as prisons for severe offenders or lawbreakers. Still, crime didn’t vanish, in fact, it surged.
But besides these zones, there were also so-called neutral areas. Here, the Network’s signal couldn’t reach, and the RCS couldn’t directly intervene. In one such zone, among the ruins of an old industrial city, stood a building from the past century: once a technical university, now the University of Alternative Sciences. Ordinary people called it a rat’s nest, a nickname that hinted at its true nature.
The building was battered, but intact. Metal arches, concrete columns, glass domes over the labs. It was guarded not by regular security, but by RCS agents, who monitored and studied the unstable individuals housed within, regularly submitting reports and data. The neutral zone around the university was a mix of overgrown ruins and concrete hangars. Patrols checked the borders periodically, but access to the university remained sealed to outsiders. The territory was enclosed by a thin energy dome, an old pre-Collapse technology that blocked signals and filtered the air. "Students" here were not attending by choice. They were either rescued from purges or temporarily “placed under observation” by the RCS. Each one possessed some anomaly: psychoenergetics, unstable memory, bodily mutations, non-standard cognition, or influence over physical processes. The “teachers,” or rather curators, were no less unusual. Each had survived the catastrophe: some physically damaged, others mentally. But all still tried to live and helped others to do the same, preserving hope in the process.
One such curator was Dr. Ava Starr, who taught in the psychoenergetics sector. Formerly a fugitive and experiment known by the codename Ghost. Once, she was the daughter of two respected scientists, who worked on matter stabilization. Her parents died in a failed quantum generator experiment, when the equipment malfunctioned, both were torn apart by energy streams, leaving Ava an orphan at a young age. After their deaths, she was placed under the care of a government lab. Officially for protection, unofficially as a valuable subject for research and experimentation. She was still a child, when her body began showing signs of quantum instability. After one particularly failed test, Ava started to literally “phase”—disappearing, losing form, becoming translucent. She could walk through walls, vanish for seconds, and reappear suddenly. Her ability became both a curse and a weapon. The government used her for missions that officially didn’t exist. She killed by passing through walls, destroyed generators, disappeared before cameras could detect her. But with age came realization: to them, she was just a tool. And one day, she disappeared. Vanished without a trace, as if she had never existed. Her name was considered erased, until she reappeared at the university. Calm, tired, almost nonexistent. She wasn’t seeking salvation or usefulness. She only wanted peace and quiet. And they let her stay. Eventually, she became a lecturer. In her search for healing, she studied everything related to quantum instability, phasing, and anomalies post-Collapse. She wrote reports, conducted research, and… simply lived, as if her past had died with the previous world.
Every her day was almost the same. So much so that Ava, to her own surprise, began to live by routine.
06:00. The day began as usual. Flickering panels, the click of old tech, and the morning hum of the energy grid. Ava got up, washed her face with cold water, turned on the ancient coffee machine, and pulled carefully stacked reports from the wall cabinet — yesterday’s data.
07:00. First lecture. Today’s topic: quantum density fluctuations under emotional stress. The students listened silently, without interruptions. They feared her and respected her at the same time. She never raised her voice, but it felt like she was always nearby, even from across the room. As if she knew more about them than they knew about themselves.
10:00. Laboratory. Flickering projections. Analyzing quantum waves. Their influence on memory. Ava worked with precision, no delays. As if her past had been cut out, forgotten. But from time to time, she touched her left arm, where there had once been a phasing control implant. Now, just a scar.
13:00. Lunch. One of the rare moments when she allowed herself the luxury of reading old paper books. Today — something fictional. The only time Ava read anything other than research and dissertations.
16:00. Archive. A restricted zone. Not everyone was allowed in. Ava uploaded data from external drives, synchronized reports, edited statistics, and reviewed student information. All changes concerning arrivals and departures at the university ended up here, along with anything regarding their condition. Ava noticed a new message about incoming unstable individuals. It included a roster assigning them to curators.
List of new subjects: 6.
Subject for curator Ava Starr: 5038-A.
Codename: Taskmaster.
Name outside base: Antonia Dreykov
Status: unstable.
Threat level: red.
Subject type: RCS experiment for the creation of the perfect agent.
Temporary assignment: EP-3 sector
Warnings: memory lapses, emotional instability, and signs of emotion not typical for this type of subject.
Ava blinked, reread it several times. The name meant nothing to her. Yet the feeling of déjà vu wouldn’t go away. She closed the terminal and exhaled slowly. Tomorrow would either be just another day or everything would change.
Next morning. 08:38.
The sound of engines broke the university’s steady quiet. A closed armored vehicle bearing RCS colors rolled into the inner courtyard. From it, under the guard of two soldiers in grey-black armor, stepped a girl – tall, dressed in black, wearing special restraints usually reserved for the most dangerous offenders. Her movements were sharp, precise. Her posture rigid, as if everything around her was a battlefield or a mission site.
It was Antonia Dreykov. Once a weapon without will. Now something more. Her mere presence stirred tension, despite her silence. The university had already heard of her: former operative from Project “Taskmaster,” rumored to be capable of mimicking any opponent, down to their thoughts. A legend. A nightmare.
She didn’t smile or speak unless necessary. Her gaze was heavy, as though she had endured every form of torture and was never allowed to scream. Other curators exchanged wary glances. Students were both awestruck and terrified. Security was tense. Her arrival didn’t go unnoticed by anyone.
Antonia was accompanied by a nameless RCS curator in black. He handed Ava a sealed protocol folder and left without exchanging a word.
She was assigned a room near the psychophysics wing, where Ava held some of her practicals. Officially, she was here as a student, but her file said otherwise: enhanced access, constant monitoring, and a strange note in every document: “emotional instability – temporary emotion neutralization.” For the first time, Ava received a dossier like this.
Antonia attracted attention effortlessly. In hallways, she moved quickly, avoiding interaction. Some tried to speak with her; others avoided her completely. She showed no interest, no anger, no joy. Just observation, as if memorizing everything she saw. And yet, in her distant gaze was something more, something inside her was trying to break free. And that something was the reason she was here.
When Ava first saw Antonia up close, her first thought was: she had no idea what to do in this case. Antonia stood out precisely, despite she didn’t want to. In lecture, she sat in the far back, near the wall. No notebook, nothing to write with. She didn’t need it, she remembered everything just by looking and listening.
After the lecture, Ava decided to at least try and start a conversation, to understand where to begin.
– “Welcome,” – she said as Antonia passed by. “I hope your first day went well and you're ready for..."— Ava even didn’t finish. Antonia stopped right in front of her, looked directly into her eyes, as if staring through them. Not hostile. Not analytical. Just…too deep.
– “I’m ready. Always. That’s what I was made for. I’m here temporarily. I don’t have to attend these lectures.”
Ava didn’t answer right away. She nodded, watching her go, but still took a risk and continued.
– “Then I guess I won’t see you again. What a pity. The next lecture’s on emotional control and suppression, and think that’s right up your alley. So don’t be too quick to dismiss it.”
Ava didn’t even realize she said it. That wasn’t the real topic of the next lecture. And Antonia knew it.
But Antonia didn’t react, only turned slightly, nodded, and said something like “Посмотрим" or “Подумаю,” though Ava didn’t catch it, it was in a language she didn’t know.
Seconds later, Ava was alone with her thoughts. The first of which was: “And how the hell am I going to prepare a full lecture on emotional instability in under 24 hours, explain it to the other students, and justify why the topic changed? They’ll think I’m giving her special treatment. Great job, Ava. It would be better to keep your mouth shut.”
With that thought, Ava gathered her papers and headed to the library for a long night of preparation.