Chapter Three: Echoes from the Abyss of Data
The cold darkness was not void. It was viscous and heavy, enveloping Kane like he was sinking beneath an ocean of tar. His consciousness drifted in boundless chaos, without direction or sense of time—only that sharp, endlessly repeating Mobius siren wailing like a festering bone-deep ache, humming persistently in the ruins of his mind, reminding him of the inevitable fall’s end.
There was no pain, no touch. His senses stripped away, leaving only a slow, suffocating descent.
Then, light.
Not warm light, but countless icy, piercing beams like surgical shadowless lamps stabbing down from above without warning, violently tearing apart the darkness that enveloped him! Instinctively, Kane tried to raise his hand to shield himself, but his body remained leaden, his eyelids barely lifting a slit.
His vision flooded with dazzling white, blurry and indistinct. After several seconds, the intense dizziness began to subside slightly, and the scene slowly came into focus.
He lay on a tilted, cold metal platform. Its surface was smooth as a mirror, reflecting a blurry image of him—his face pale, eyes vacant, hair disheveled. The platform was enclosed within a massive transparent cylindrical glass dome. Beyond the dome stretched an endless, profound void of darkness. Only this confined space inside the dome was mercilessly illuminated by a ghostly white light, like a cold specimen box suspended in the cosmos.
“Cognitive restructuring initialization. Carrier consciousness anchor point scan commencing.” The omnipresent, cold mechanical synthetic voice sounded again, resonating inside this glass prison with a buzz that made Kane’s eardrums vibrate.
No sooner had the words fallen than several slender beams of shifting eerie blue and ghostly green light silently descended from the dazzling white area above his head. These beams were no longer mere scans—they resembled icy, invisible probes mercilessly piercing his temples!
“Ugh—!” Kane let out a stifled groan of pain. This time it was no longer a mere browsing of consciousness but a more direct, violent intrusion! Countless chaotic, rapidly flickering fragments of images surged into his mind like an uncontrollable flood!
—The delivery room with a newborn’s cry, the smell of disinfectant.
—The childhood lawn where he used to run, the fragrance of fresh grass.
—The recoil from his first trigger pull on a training gun, the numbness in his hand.
—The cold Time Bureau induction hall, figures in gray uniforms silently passing.
—The fog-choked streets of New York, the stench of rot.
—Under London’s rust-red dome, the piercing screech of shattering gears.
—The scorching shockwave sweeping through Cairo during the core meltdown...
—And Tokyo! The burning ruins! The glaring photos in newspapers! The cold lights of the underground lab! That aged face—his own! The ghostly figure penetrating the isolation wall! The icy sensation on his wrist! The sticky feeling of pressing the crimson button! The sharp siren! The instant turned to ash! The whispered words: “Remember... cycle... key...”
All these memories, especially the searing pain, terror, and profound doubts, were repeatedly battered, churned, and torn apart by this violent torrent of data! They ceased to be coherent scenes, transforming into shattered, rapidly spinning color blocks, noise, and incomprehensible storms of symbols that relentlessly battered the embankment of his consciousness. Kane felt as if his brain had been thrown into a high-speed centrifuge, on the brink of total rupture!
“Anchor point disorder! Pollution mark resistance is strong!” The cold mechanical voice seemed to falter for a split second, like a precision gear grinding against foreign matter. “Initiate secondary purification protocol: memory corridor construction. Objective: strip polluted core memory nodes.”
Suddenly, the scene before Kane’s eyes changed!
The glass dome and blinding white light vanished. He found himself standing in a corridor—endless and composed entirely of pure light. The walls, floor, and ceiling were streams of flowing data emitting gentle white light, with countless tiny, flickering codes darting like fireflies, vanishing and reappearing. This was a corridor made purely of data—his memory corridor.
On both sides, the “walls” resembled massive projection screens, automatically playing scenes from his memories. But these scenes were carefully selected, edited, even... distorted!
He saw himself running on the lawn as a child, but the sky in the background was twisted, an unnatural leaden gray.
He saw himself shooting at the Time Bureau training range, but the target bore the aged face of “Dr. Nakamura,” and he pulled the trigger without hesitation, the bullet piercing the forehead of that face.
He saw himself standing before Tokyo’s burning ruins, not holding the “Pandora” cylinder but gripping a crimson button, his expression cold and indifferent, as if completing a mission. In the background, the flash of a nuclear explosion swallowed everything.
He saw himself in the underground lab; the aged version of himself appeared, only to be instantly vaporized by the particle gun he held—swift, clean, without hesitation. The ouroboros pattern and the scratched words “THEY LIE” on the wall flickered like crude graffiti, blurred and fleeting.
He even saw himself kneeling in the vast metal space of the Time Bureau, staring blankly at a black-clad supervisor’s similar face, mechanically repeating: “Accept restructuring. Become the gear. Execute the ‘Ouroboros.’”
Each distorted, beautified scene was like a poisoned dagger stabbing deeply into Kane’s true memories! The intense cognitive dissonance brought dizziness and nausea far beyond the physical scans before!
“No! It’s not like this!” Kane let out a silent scream in the data corridor, his consciousness struggling amid the immense tearing sensation. The real fragments of memory, like trapped beasts, pounded furiously within his mind, desperate to break through this false corridor prison! That aged face! The sensation through the wall! The siren’s piercing wail! That whispered phrase! They were so real! So vivid! They could not be erased!
“Pollution core mark: code name ‘Aged Body’ associated memory node, resistance level: highest.” The mechanical voice sounded again, this time with a trace of... offended anger? “Initiate tertiary purification protocol: memory overwrite. Inject ‘Cleaner K-7’ standard personality template.”
An even larger, colder flood of metallic consciousness data began forcefully pouring into Kane’s memory corridor! This data stream bore absolute order and unquestionable commands, attempting to overwrite and wash away all fragments related to “Aged Body,” “Ouroboros,” and “Lies.” It aimed to forge a brand-new “Kane”—a clean tool who only knew to obey orders, utterly loyal to the Time Bureau, and deeply faithful to the “Ouroboros” plan.
Kane felt his consciousness being forcibly squeezed into a cold, narrow metal mold. His true self wailed, shrinking, about to be crushed and replaced by this massive, merciless “standard template.” Despair surged like icy tides, nearly drowning his last shred of lucidity.
Then!
Amid the raging flood of data overwriting, at the edge of a distorted memory image, a faint anomaly suddenly stabbed into Kane’s nearly broken consciousness!
It was the “altered” scene of him decisively killing his aged self in the underground lab. In the moment the aged Kane was struck by the particle beam and began vaporizing, his cloudy eyes seemed—very briefly, very clearly—to look toward the “outside” of the image, toward the Kane watching this altered memory, or rather, his own consciousness!
That look! It was no longer endless fatigue or relief.
It was filled with an indescribable... urgency! And a highly specific... hint!
Kane’s mind was struck like lightning! All suppressed and disturbed fragments of painful memories suddenly converged and linked under the force of this fleeting, abnormal glance!
The aged Kane’s final whisper thundered deep within his mind: “Remember... cycle... key...”
Key! Hint!
That gaze! That direction!
Kane’s consciousness, like a drowning man clutching a last straw, exploded with unprecedented strength, recklessly breaking free from the data flood’s cover and fiercely focusing on that spot in the altered image where the aged Kane vanished!
In the picture, the particle beam’s glare obscured all details. But at the edge of the light, beneath the aged Kane’s faded lab coat sleeve, his shriveled, fading wrist...
Kane’s consciousness fixated there!
Zoom in! Zoom further! Beyond the limits of the data corridor’s vision!
Amid energy noise caused by the particle beam and deliberate blurring from data alteration, a tiny, almost imperceptible outline stubbornly emerged!
It was not a watch, nor any device.
It was a... tiny, deeply carved, crooked symbol etched with a fingernail into the aged Kane’s wrist skin!
A perfect, self-devouring—ouroboros!
The symbol was small, the incision deep, bearing the resolve of self-inflicted determination!
This was it!
His aged self, before complete erasure, left this final message on his own body! A mark pointing to “cycle” itself! An anchor carved directly onto true existence—no matter how fleeting!
“Key... is... the symbol itself? Pointing to... the cycle?” Kane’s mind raced wildly in the storm, trying to decipher this life-passing cipher. The ouroboros carved on the wrist, the huge graffiti on the wall, the supervisor’s holographic closed loop... What was the connection? What did it point to?
Just as he grasped this faint glimmer and prepared to delve deeper—
Buzz—!!!
A far more violent, sharper, furious and chaotic Mobius siren blared through Kane’s entire consciousness and the data corridor like an engine out of control!
The entire data-constructed memory corridor began violently twisting and trembling! Spiderweb-like black cracks appeared on the white data stream walls! The screens playing altered memories flickered, distorted, stretched, then shattered into countless data shards! Countless zeros and ones scrambled like black snowflakes danced wildly in the collapsing corridor!
“Warning! Warning! External high-dimensional pollution source counter-infiltration! Logic core overload! Tertiary purification protocol failure! Memory corridor structure collapsing!” The cold mechanical voice lost its usual absolute stability for the first time, becoming sharp, broken, filled with an incredible panic!
An opportunity!
Kane’s consciousness, a fragile boat amid the stormy data sea, clung desperately to the ouroboros symbol carved on his wrist! It was no longer a symbol of despair but his only beacon! The only “key”!
He no longer resisted the data flood overwriting his personality but poured all his remaining strength and willpower into understanding and perceiving this “symbol”! To feel its shape! Its meaning! What it represented—the eternal, self-consuming cycle!
“Cycle... cycle... cycle...” Kane’s mind silently shouted through the storm, gathering all questions, anger, fear, and understanding of the aged self’s last gaze into this single thought!
Just as his mind was about to be utterly torn apart by the raging data chaos—
Click.
A faint sound, yet as if echoing through the depths of his soul, like an ancient pocket watch’s cover snapping shut.
The data storm before Kane’s eyes—the screaming siren, the flickering garbled code—all vanished without a trace in an instant.
Absolute darkness descended again.
But this time, the darkness was no longer viscous and suffocating. It was... spacious, cold, with a metallic texture.
Kane suddenly opened his eyes wide!
No blinding white light, no glass dome, no tilted platform.
He found himself curled awkwardly in an extremely narrow metal closet barely wide enough for one person to stand.
The closet door was tightly shut, a faint sliver of light seeping through the crack. The air was thick with a cold scent blending machine oil, ozone, and old metal. Instead of the piercing siren, a low, rhythmic hum pulsed like a gigantic mechanical heart beating distantly.
He was back!
Not inside the Time Bureau’s massive metal cage—but in the pigeon-cage-like personal hibernation pod the Time Bureau assigned each Cleaner before time travel—the small closet for storing gear!
His body regained sensation, stiff and sore. Trembling, he reached to his chest.
His fingertips touched something cold and hard.
He shook as he carefully pulled it out.
An old-fashioned pocket watch. Its brass casing icy cold, beneath the glass face covered with a layer of crystal red sand, like frozen blood.
His pocket watch! The anchor point of his travels! The hourglass of life!
It still existed! Had not been taken away! Had not been formatted!
Kane’s heart pounded wildly, nearly bursting his chest! He gripped the watch tightly; its cool touch was his only true comfort. Had he succeeded? Escaped that terrifying data restructuring? Through the ouroboros symbol carved on his wrist? Through understanding the “cycle” itself?
But the next second, his fledgling relief was utterly frozen by what appeared on the watch’s dial.
The red crystal sand still silently, slowly flowed.
But in the area where time would normally be displayed, beneath the sand, a tiny line of faintly glowing red digits had emerged clearly:
70:23:58:17
And these numbers were steadily decreasing—second by second!
A 71-year countdown! Not on the Time Bureau’s wall clock, but imprinted inside his pocket watch! Branded onto his temporal anchor! Part of his life!
A longer, more desperate Mobius ring... not only spinning but already locking him tightly within its cycle!
Leaning against the cold metal closet door, Kane slowly slid down to the floor, clutching the pocket watch against his violently heaving chest. In the darkness, only that line of crimson countdown digits glared like a demon’s single eye, coldly watching him, silently declaring:
The cycle has begun. The key is in his hand. And he must find the way to break this endless loop before time runs out. Otherwise, the next aging face he sees in the turn of the cycle will no longer be someone else.