Cael didn’t sleep.

  He lay on the floor of his cube-like apartment, staring up at the flickering ceiling light that now dimmed and brightened with the slow, irregular rhythm of a heartbeat. His heartbeat. He timed it. The pulsing matched. Either it was coincidence, or the universe had started syncing to him instead of the other way around.

  He didn’t know which terrified him more.

  Theo had gone silent hours ago. Not offline—just quiet. Like even the AI was out of things to say. And that scared him too. Theo never ran out of protocol. But after the chair vanished and returned without cause, the only word he offered was “unprecedented.”

  Cael had stopped responding.

  He hadn’t moved in at least thirty minutes, afraid that if he did, he might shift something fundamental again. Space. Time. Memory. Whatever weird laws he was starting to bend.

  At 05:00, the alarm chimed. Standard wake cycle.

  He dressed, robotic in his movements. Shirt, uniform jacket, plain black pants, boots. Same as everyone. The only difference now was that no one knew what he was anymore.

  The NULL badge still pulsed on his wristband. Red. Wrong. Alive.

  The school gates opened like always. No sirens. No authorities. No squads waiting to contain the anomaly that walked among them. Just teens pouring into the compound, laughing, talking, buzzing with post-ranking drama.

  Cael stepped into the flow of students like a phantom.

  And like a phantom, they didn’t touch him.

  He noticed it almost immediately: people sidestepped without realizing it. Their trajectories bent subtly. A girl dropped her stylus walking by, and it didn’t land—it just hovered in midair for a second, then slowly rotated and drifted to the ground.

  She didn’t notice.

  He did.

  Homeroom was no different than the day before. Still tense. Still quiet. The digital wall glowed with everyone’s names, color-coded by tier. Cael’s sat in a blinking red box, separate from the rest, like it didn’t belong on the list at all.

  He sat in his seat.

  The heating pad under him didn’t activate again.

  Theo finally broke the silence.

  “I’m detecting environmental changes around you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Magnetic field disruption. Minor temporal delay localized in your desk. And the light above you just dimmed .0003 percent—independent of grid fluctuations.”

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  Cael stared at the glowing red NULL icon on the wall.

  “I think I’m a freak.”

  “You’re not a freak,” Theo said softly.

  “Fine. A virus, then.”

  “That may be closer.”

  It got worse in third period.

  Grid Systems Theory — a class that explained how power interfaced with society. Designed to indoctrinate, basically. “Why the Grid matters.” “Why classification is peace.” “Why anomalies are dangerous.”

  The teacher, Mr. Brel, didn’t acknowledge Cael at all. Not by name. Not by glance.

  Midway through a lecture about “system harmonics,” the smartboard shorted out. The lights blinked. A low-frequency pulse buzzed in everyone's eardrums. A few students groaned and covered their ears.

  Cael didn’t.

  He sat frozen.

  Because he had felt the pulse start in his chest.

  Like it radiated from him.

  When the systems rebooted, Mr. Brel continued like nothing had happened.

  But Cael saw it. On the far wall, just for a second, his own face flickered onto one of the terminal screens—stretched and glitched, like corrupted video.

  No one else reacted.

  “Did you see that?” he whispered.

  “I did,” Theo replied. “You were embedded in the local display feed. A brief override. Not intentional. Not traceable.”

  “I’m infecting the Grid,” Cael muttered.

  Theo didn’t deny it.

  At lunch, people gave him an even wider berth. He took a corner table by a ventilation unit and watched his food tray for signs of glitching.

  None came.

  But the floor beneath him vibrated softly, like a low hum passing under the tile.

  Theo was silent.

  That scared him more than anything.

  He was halfway through his protein wedge when someone sat across from him.

  He looked up in shock.

  It was Juno.

  Tier-1 golden boy. Gravlock. Controlled gravity around his own body with zero strain. Top percentile. Popular. Arrogant. Perfect.

  And now staring at Cael like he was a math problem.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Juno said quietly.

  Cael narrowed his eyes. “Creepy.”

  Juno ignored it. “Day of rankings, I thought the system messed up. You’ve always been weak, but not NULL weak. Then the projector glitched. You left and came back, and the air felt different.”

  “Do you want something?”

  “I want to know what the hell you are.”

  Cael didn’t answer.

  Because he didn’t know either.

  Juno leaned closer. His voice dropped.

  “I can feel it when you’re around. Like gravity stretches weird. Like there’s a hole where you should be.”

  Cael didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  “If you’re some kind of experiment,” Juno continued, “you should report yourself. If not, you’re dangerous. People are going to notice.”

  “They already have,” Cael said softly.

  And just like that, the fork in Juno’s hand bent ninety degrees—without touch.

  Juno flinched and stood up.

  He didn’t say anything else.

  But he left fast.

  When Cael got home, he didn’t go inside right away. He stood on the front steps of his cube apartment and stared at the sky.

  It looked fine.

  Normal.

  Too normal.

  Theo finally spoke again.

  “I ran a background scan during your conversation with Juno.”

  “And?”

  “There are now over four hundred mentions of you in low-tier chatter networks. Half of them are calling you ‘Zero.’”

  Cael closed his eyes.

  The myth.

  The entity outside the Grid.

  A ghost in the system.

  “I’m not Zero,” he whispered.

  “You may not want to be,” Theo said, “but you might be what they were trying to describe.”

  Cael finally stepped inside.

  Sat in the corner of the room.

  The chair was still there.

  Still real.

  He reached out.

  Touched it.

  Felt it solid beneath his fingers.

  Then let go.

  Watched it flicker once.

  Not disappear.

  Just… lag.

  And he understood.

  He wasn’t deleting the world.

  He was unsyncing it.

  From itself.

  From time.

  From logic.

  From rules.

  From the Grid.

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said aloud.

  “I know,” Theo whispered.

  “But I am.”