Limbus RE:CODE

Unranked Anomaly (1)

Being erased is a physical sensation—part ache, part weightless fear.

Swan's stomach gnaws at itself.

It's been thirty-six hours since the erasure, and hunger has become a philosophical problem. He tried buying food from the campus cafeteria this morning—scanned his student ID at the register and watched the machine reject it three times before the cashier looked at him with that particular blend of confusion and irritation reserved for people who are wasting everyone's time.

"No valid payment method," she said, even though Swan could see his meal plan balance on the screen. Three hundred dollars. Untouched. Inaccessible.

He walked away with his tray still empty.

Now he sits in the Combat Simulation Laboratory—Blackwood Institute's pride and joy, a massive space where holographic arenas materialize and students duke it out with code-assisted martial arts for grades and glory. The air smells like ozone and competitive sweat. Around him, students in tactical gear calibrate their neural interfaces, running pre-combat diagnostics with the focused intensity of gamers about to enter ranked matches.

Swan isn't here by choice.

"Unregistered participant detected," the system announced when he wandered too close to the lab entrance, looking for Elara. "Processing... Error. Unable to verify credentials. Assigning to sparring pool as auxiliary combatant."

Before he could protest, a security drone herded him inside, and now he's trapped in a system logic loop: he can't leave the lab because the exit requires valid student credentials, but he doesn't have valid credentials, so the system defaults to its secondary protocol—put the unidentified entity somewhere it can be monitored.

In this case: the sparring dummy rotation.

"Next match," the arena's AI announces, its voice crisp and gender-neutral. "Kaito Nakamura versus auxiliary combatant. Standard ruleset. Non-lethal force authorized. Begin initialization."

Swan's heart rate kicks up as the holographic arena materializes around him—a circular platform suspended in a void of shifting colors, boundaries marked by hard-light barriers that hum with barely contained energy. Across from him, his opponent resolves into clarity.

Kaito Nakamura is everything Swan isn't. Tall, athletic, moving with the fluid confidence of someone who's never questioned their right to occupy space. His combat gear is top-tier—custom neural interface gleaming at his temple, haptic feedback suit that probably costs more than Swan's entire deleted scholarship. Dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, eyes sharp with competitive focus.

Swan has seen him around campus. Everyone has. Kaito is ranked third in the Institute's combat simulation league, a celebrity in the ecosystem of students who treat these matches like professional sports.

"You're not on the roster," Kaito says, frowning. His neural interface flickers as he tries to pull Swan's combat profile. "Who are you?"

"Nobody," Swan answers honestly.

Kaito's frown deepens. He's about to say something else when the system interrupts.

"Initialization complete. Match begins in three. Two. One."

The holographic timer vanishes.

Kaito moves.

He's fast—not superhuman, but enhanced by his neural interface's predictive algorithms, his body responding to threats before his conscious mind finishes processing them. His first strike is a textbook opener: close distance, feint high, strike low, exploit the opponent's defensive reflex.

Swan barely dodges. His body moves on pure panic, no technique, just the desperate flailing of someone who's never trained for this. Kaito's fist passes close enough that Swan feels the displaced air against his cheek.

"Come on," Kaito says, frustration bleeding into his tone. "At least try to fight back. This is embarrassing."

Swan doesn't respond. He's too busy trying not to die.

The second strike comes faster. A leg sweep that Swan doesn't see until it's too late. His feet leave the platform. Time stretches—that horrible moment of knowing you're falling and being unable to stop it.

Swan's vision fractures.

The code-sight activates involuntarily, adrenaline and fear forcing the perception shift. The arena peels back into layers of light and logic. He sees the holographic platform as a gravity simulation, sees Kaito's movements as physics calculations playing out in real-time, sees the trajectory of his own fall rendered as a predictable arc.

And he sees time itself—not as a steady flow but as a sequence of discrete moments, frame-by-frame updates ticking forward at regular intervals.

Swan reaches out—not with his hands, but with whatever part of him interfaces with the code-layer—and he touches the update cycle.

Slows it down.

The world stutters. Kaito's follow-up strike—a punch aimed at Swan's exposed ribs—extends in slow motion, each microsecond stretched into observable duration. Swan can count the individual frames of movement. Can see the exact angle of Kaito's trajectory. Can move while time crawls.

He twists mid-fall. Plants his hand on the platform. Pushes himself back upright while Kaito's fist is still completing its arc through space Swan no longer occupies.

Then time snaps back to normal speed.

Kaito stumbles, his momentum carrying him forward into empty air. His neural interface sparks—visible malfunction, brief but unmistakable—and his weapon (a practice blade materialized by the arena system) flickers and vanishes from his hand.

"What the—" Kaito spins, staring at Swan with an expression somewhere between confusion and awe. "How did you—"

The words die in his throat. His eyes lose focus. Swan watches in real-time as Kaito's face cycles through emotions: confusion, certainty, then confusion again. Like his brain is trying to reconcile contradictory inputs and failing.

"I had you," Kaito says slowly. "I know I had you. But you—you were—"

He shakes his head. The memory won't solidify. Swan can see it happening—the system's cleanup protocols activating, smoothing over the paradox, rewriting Kaito's certainty into doubt.

Around the arena, spectators murmur. Students who were watching the match with casual interest now wear expressions of uncertainty. They saw something impossible, but the memory is already degrading, becoming dream-like, unreliable.

"Technical malfunction," the arena AI announces. "Match suspended. Data corruption detected. Logging anomaly for review."

The holographic platform dissolves. Swan drops the last six inches to solid floor, his legs nearly giving out from the adrenaline crash.

Kaito stares at him. His neural interface is still sparking intermittently, small arcs of corrupted data dancing across the hardware.

"Who are you?" Kaito asks again, but this time there's no confusion in his voice. Only determination. Only the certainty of someone who's found a puzzle they're going to solve.

Swan doesn't answer. Just walks toward the exit, which—blessedly—now accepts his presence. The system has categorized him as a technical problem, and technical problems get removed from the combat lab.

Behind him, Kaito pulls out his personal tablet. Starts typing. Logging. Recording.

Swan feels the weight of new attention settling on him like a target painted on his back.

Swan knows that look. He's seen it before in the eyes of people who've stumbled onto something they can't explain but refuse to let go. Kaito Nakamura isn't just curious—he's committed. And in Swan's current state, being the subject of someone's committed investigation is the last thing he needs.

But the damage is done. All Swan can do now is try to minimize the fallout—and hope that whatever Kaito discovers leads him to questions rather than answers.