The dressing room smelled of hairspray, old makeup, and the accumulated sweat of decades of performances. Kein closed the door behind him, cutting off the noise of the audience still filing out of the theater.

  Silence.

  He stood still for a moment, his hand still on the knob.

  'Strange.'

  He didn't feel tired. Well, he was, but it was as if his body hadn't realized it yet. That persistent tingling—the unknown energy flowing into him—had kept him strangely alert throughout the entire play. Like intravenous caffeine but without the racing heart.

  Now that the theater was empty and the lights were being dimmed, the tingling was fading. And with it, something else began to seep in.

  He removed the Claudius costume with mechanical movements. He hung it carefully on the rack, smoothing the wrinkles in the velvet. A habit of decades: always leave the equipment in order. You never knew when you would have to come back for it.

  *Knock knock.*

  "Kein? Are you there?"

  Marcus's voice. Kein recognized the tone: restrained enthusiasm trying to sound casual.

  "Come in."

  The door opened and Marcus walked in with that nervous energy of someone who wants to say something important but doesn't know how to start. He carried a folder under his arm and an expression between admiration and perplexity.

  "Hey, I... I wanted to..." Marcus stopped, laughing at himself. "Dammit, I don't even know what to say. That performance..."

  Kein put on his hoodie, the same one he had arrived in. He turned toward Marcus with a neutral expression.

  "Again. Thank you for the opportunity."

  "Thank you? No, no, wait." Marcus raised a hand. "You did me a favor. Hell, you did a favor for the whole theater. There are already people outside asking who played Claudius. And that never happens in this place!"

  Kein nodded slightly. He didn't know what else to do. Was he supposed to feign modesty? Emotion? With his experience, he would have known exactly which mask to put on. Now, with the fatigue starting to press behind his eyes, he didn't have the energy to calculate.

  Marcus seemed to notice.

  "Ah, shit, sorry. You must be exhausted. I—" He searched through his folder and pulled out a business card. It was simple: name, number, email. "Take this. Look, I know this sounds weird coming from me, but... I'd like to stay in touch. I don't know what plans you have, but if you ever need a reference, or if there's a project where I can help..."

  He left the sentence hanging, aware that he was offering something actors usually asked of him.

  Kein took the card. He looked at it for a second before tucking it into his hoodie pocket.

  "I appreciate it."

  "Great. Yeah. Great." Marcus ran a hand through his hair, clearly not knowing how to end the conversation. "Well, I won't hold you up any longer. Just... take care, okay? And think about it. You have something special, Kein. Don't waste it."

  Kein didn't respond immediately. Something in Marcus's tone—genuine, with no visible agenda—felt... uncomfortable. Not threatening. Just strange.

  "I won't," he finally said.

  Marcus smiled, gave a small two-finger salute, and left the dressing room, closing the door behind him.

  Kein was alone again.

  He took his backpack, checked that he had everything (books, keys, phone), and exited through the theater's back door.

  ———//—————//———

  The night in Los Angeles was warm. Not the oppressive heat of NEXARA, where industrial air conditioning roared 24/7 because stopping meant the city would cook in its own residual heat. This was... refreshing, both literally and figuratively.

  He walked toward the bus stop. According to his phone, it was 9:17 PM. The play had ended a little over half an hour ago. With night traffic, he would reach his apartment around 10 PM.

  The bus arrived six minutes later. Almost empty. Kein sat in the back, by the window, and leaned his head against the cold glass.

  He closed his eyes.

  'Forty-nine hours.'

  He finally had a breather; he hadn't realized he had been so tense and focused for so long. Before, it was less than 5 minutes of acting for his first time... This time he wondered how much he would obtain.

  No, wait. He had acted for... how long? 45 minutes in total adding up all his scenes?

  More than enough.

  For the first time since he arrived in this world, he wasn't on an immediate countdown.

  He should feel relieved.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Yesterday he felt excitement, a fleeting and momentary spark of life in his very long life. He thought he had found a new challenge. But it wasn't even the same board.

  Instead, he felt... nothing. A strange void where emotion should be. Like pulling a trigger and discovering the gun is unloaded.

  'I'm tired,' he reminded himself. 'That's all.'

  The bus moved through increasingly quiet streets. Kein watched the lights pass: streetlamps, traffic lights, lit windows of apartments where families had dinner or watched television.

  Normal lives.

  Something he never had.

  Something he might never have.

  //------------//------//------------//

  He reached his apartment at 10:04 PM.

  The door opened with the familiar click of the cheap lock. He turned on the light. Everything was exactly as he had left it: unmade bed, closed laptop on the desk, a cup of cold coffee by the sink.

  Kein dropped his backpack on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and went straight to the bathroom.

  He washed his face with cold water. The reflection in the mirror stared back: a 24-year-old young man with slight dark circles and a neutral expression.

  'Kein Adler,' he thought, testing the name mentally as if it were new clothes.

  He dried his face and turned off the light.

  He didn't even have the energy to change. He flopped onto the bed fully clothed, hoodie on and socks still on his feet.

  The mattress was hard. Nothing compared to the ergonomic resting surfaces of NEXARA, but right now it was enough.

  He closed his eyes.

  Sleep came fast, like a black wave swallowing him whole.

  —————

  The dream didn't start as a dream.

  It started as a memory.

  Kein—no, Kael—was standing on a rooftop in the chrome suburbs of NEXARA. The night sky was a mass of holographic advertisements and air traffic. Drones patrolled in predictable patterns. The air smelled of ozone and acid rain that never fell.

  In front of him, a mid-rise building. Corporate apartments. Upper-middle class. People who worked sixty hours a week for corporations that considered them replaceable.

  His target was on the twelfth floor.

  Name: Hiroshi Tanaka.

  Profile: Businessman. 42 years old. Married. No children. Supposedly involved in illegal implant trafficking, corporate money laundering, bribing security officials.

  The contractor was someone trustworthy. Someone Kael had worked with before. Verified information. Payment in advance. Everything clean.

  Kael had researched for two weeks. Checked financial transactions. Tracked movements. Identified patterns.

  Everything pointed to guilt.

  'Another corrupt one,' he had thought. 'One less.'

  Now, standing on that rooftop, with the wind hitting his coat, Kael checked his gear one last time.

  Ceramic-coated metal knife. No thermal signature. No electromagnetic footprint.

  Ready.

  He crossed to the building using a maintenance bridge. No guards. No cameras at that specific angle. He had timed the drone patrols: he had a 40-second window.

  He entered through a service window. The hallway was empty. Flickering fluorescent light. Smell of synthetic food and cheap disinfectant.

  Apartment 1247.

  The door wasn't locked.

  'Error,' Kael registered. 'Too confident.'

  He entered.

  The apartment was... normal. Too normal. Photos on the walls. A jacket hanging by the entrance. Sneakers by the door.

  It didn't look like a criminal's lair.

  Kael moved toward the main room.

  Hiroshi Tanaka was sitting in front of a holographic terminal, reviewing what looked like a financial report. No bodyguards. No visible weapons. Just a middle-aged man with old-fashioned glasses and the hunched posture of an office worker.

  He didn't hear him enter.

  Kael approached from behind. Three steps. Two steps. One.

  The knife left its sheath without a sound.

  Hiroshi turned his head just as the blade touched his neck.

  Their eyes met.

  There was no fear in them. Only... confusion.

  "Why?"

  The question came out soft. Genuine.

  Kael drove the knife in.

  Warm blood on cold metal.

  The body slumped.

  Kein looked at the body feeling a sense of déjà vu.

  And then—

  —Something changed.

  The scene froze. Kael felt his mind clear, as if a layer of fog were lifting. He was still in the dream, but now he was "conscious" that he was dreaming.

  He looked down.

  Hiroshi Tanaka was still there, eyes open, looking at him.

  "Why?"

  The question repeated.

  But this time, the voice didn't come only from Hiroshi.

  It came from everywhere.

  Kael took a step back.

  The apartment darkened. The walls dissolved into shadows. The floor beneath his feet became viscous, like tar.

  Hands sprouted from the floor.

  Dozens.

  Hundreds.

  Pale, cold fingers clung to his ankles, his calves, his knees. They pulled down with implacable force.

  Kael tried to move, but the floor sucked him in like quicksand.

  The voices grew.

  "Why?!"

  "Why me?!"

  "What did I do?!"

  Faces emerged from the darkness. Faces he recognized. Past targets. Some guilty. Others... not so much.

  "Why?!" "Why?!" "Why?!"

  "Why?!" "Why?!"

  Blood began to rise from the floor. Warm. Thick. It smelled of copper and ozone.

  Kael felt them sinking him.

  To his knees.

  To his waist.

  To his chest.

  The hands kept pulling.

  And all those voices, all those faces, repeated the same question he had never answered:

  "Why?"

  //------------//------//------------//

  Kein woke up.

  It wasn't a violent awakening. He didn't scream. He didn't sit up abruptly.

  He simply opened his eyes.

  The apartment ceiling stared back. Gray. With that small crack in the corner he had noticed on the first day.

  His breathing was slow. Controlled.

  But his body betrayed him.

  He felt moisture on his back. His hoodie clung to his skin. He moved his fingers experimentally. They were trembling. Not much. Just a slight tremor anyone could attribute to the cold.

  But it wasn't cold.

  He lay there for a full minute, waiting for the trembling to pass.

  Finally, he sat on the edge of the bed.

  'I haven't had a nightmare like that in years.'

  How many years? Fifty? Sixty?

  He had learned to suppress dreams the same way he had suppressed everything else. Military meditation techniques. Mental hygiene protocols. Optimized sleep cycles.

  But tonight, after having opened all those emotional floodgates to act...

  'Of course it would come back.'

  He ran a hand over his face. He still felt the weight of those hands pulling him, sinking him.

  Hiroshi Tanaka.

  That had been his name.

  Kael found out three days after the murder: the contractor had lied to him. Planted false information. Hiroshi was clean. Just an honest businessman who was about to expose a massive corporate corruption scheme.

  And Kael had killed him without asking questions.

  Because he trusted the information.

  Because he assumed his process was infallible.

  Because he never asked [Why?].

  He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. He turned on the tap and drank water directly with his hands. It felt cold.

  He looked at his reflection again.

  'Who are you?' he asked himself. 'Kael or Kein?'

  The reflection didn't answer.

  He turned off the tap and went back to the bed. He sat up, this time without lying down.

  'Prisma.'

  He hoped the AI would respond, but there was nothing.

  Of course. He could only communicate with Prisma in the white space. And to get there...

  'Will', he remembered. 'Will governs that place.'

  He had woken up there the first time because he subconsciously desired it. He had left because he thought about returning.

  So why this time did he have a nightmare instead of going to the white space?

  'Because he didn't desire it. He just wanted to rest.'

  He lay down again, this time with intention.

  He closed his eyes.

  'Take me to the white space.'

  He waited for sleep to come.

  But before the darkness claimed him completely, one last thought crossed his mind:

  'Maybe there are things I deserve not to forget.'

  And then, he slept.