The air outside the café was heavy with an eerie quiet, as if the world itself had been muted. Ethan and Jen walked side by side, their footsteps echoing faintly on the empty sidewalk. The streets, once bustling with life, now felt cold and unfamiliar, subtly reshaped by the cubes that hovered like sentinels in the sky. Every few moments, Ethan glanced up at them, uneasy. The cubes never moved, never made a sound, but their mere presence was suffocating.

Ethan shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to ignore the creeping dread in his chest. “So… what do we do now?”

Jen didn’t answer right away, her gaze fixed on the ground as they walked. She was still shaken, and who could blame her? After what they’d witnessed—the man’s grotesque transformation—it felt like the world had shifted under their feet. But the problem was, it hadn’t just been that horrifying scene. It was the way they had reacted—or rather, hadn’t reacted. Like the System was already working its way inside them, numbing their senses, eroding their humanity piece by piece.

Jen finally broke the silence. “We need to figure out what the cubes are doing. Not just to the people who refuse, but to everyone. To us.”

Ethan nodded, though he wasn’t sure where they could start. The cubes had been everywhere since the moment they appeared, but what did they actually want? They hadn’t issued any demands, hadn’t sent any warnings. The System had simply arrived and started changing things. Buildings, landscapes, animals—and now, people.

“What about the others?” Ethan asked. “You said there have to be people out there who haven’t been changed. People like us, who can still see what’s happening. How do we find them?”

Jen bit her lip, her brows furrowing in thought. “We’ll have to search. Maybe not everyone’s accepted the System. There must be pockets of resistance—people who are hiding, trying to avoid being integrated. If we can find them, we might be able to figure out how to fight this.”

“Where do we even start looking?” Ethan pressed. “The city feels dead. Everyone we’ve seen either looks like they’re in a daze or they’ve already… given in.” He didn’t say it, but the memory of the crowd’s vacant stares at the man’s transformation was still fresh in his mind.

Jen sighed, clearly frustrated. “We can’t stay here forever, that’s for sure. If the cubes are reshaping the world, they’ll eventually come for us too—no matter how much we resist.” She paused, her voice turning more somber. “I keep thinking about what it’s doing to us already. That… numbness. The way we just stood there while that man—” She stopped herself, shaking her head. “If we don’t act fast, it’s going to get worse. We’ll lose the ability to care. To fight back.”

Ethan felt a chill. Jen was right. The System wasn’t just about altering the world; it was altering people’s minds. Even theirs. “I don’t want that,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’ve become like them.”

Jen turned to him, her expression intense. “Then we have to move, Ethan. We can’t just keep walking aimlessly through the city hoping things will fix themselves. We need a plan.”

Ethan exhaled slowly, considering their options. “So, what’s the plan?”

“I think we should head for the outskirts of the city,” Jen said after a moment, her voice filled with conviction. “If we get far enough away from the center, maybe we’ll find people who haven’t been fully integrated yet. The cubes seem to be more concentrated here, in the heart of the city. Maybe outside the urban areas, people are still fighting. We need to find them.”

Ethan nodded. It made sense. The outskirts, the rural areas—those were the places where people might be holding out, resisting the System’s spread. Maybe there, the cubes weren’t so all-encompassing. Maybe the people still had a chance.

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“And if we don’t find anyone?” he asked, though he didn’t really want to hear the answer.

Jen frowned but didn’t flinch. “Then we keep moving. We’ll figure it out as we go.”

They fell into a tense silence again, their footsteps the only sound in the empty streets. As they made their way toward the edges of the city, the changes in the environment became more pronounced. The buildings were shifting more noticeably now, as if being warped from the inside out. Windows had become perfectly square, their frames unnervingly smooth, devoid of the cracks and wear of time. The trees along the streets seemed almost unnatural, their branches splitting at sharp right angles, casting strange shadows on the ground.

“It’s like the cubes are remaking everything,” Ethan muttered, more to himself than to Jen.

Jen glanced up at the nearest cube, hovering silently over the street. “Yeah, and I’m starting to wonder if there’s a pattern to it. They aren’t just randomly changing things. It’s like they’re imposing their own logic on the world. A kind of order.”

Ethan frowned, staring at the reshaped trees. “An order based on right angles and symmetry?”

Jen nodded. “Exactly. Everything’s becoming… geometric. Perfect. Like the cubes themselves. I think the System is trying to force the world to conform to its design.”

Ethan let that sink in, a sick feeling forming in his gut. “And people? Do you think that’s what’s happening to us, too? That the System is trying to ‘perfect’ us?”

“Maybe,” Jen said, her tone heavy. “But whatever it’s doing, it’s stripping away our humanity in the process. The question is: how far will it go?”

Ethan didn’t have an answer, and he wasn’t sure he wanted one. They kept walking, the city gradually giving way to more open spaces as they neared the outskirts. The buildings became less frequent, replaced by wide, empty lots and industrial complexes that had been abandoned even before the cubes arrived.

“Do you think the System has a goal?” Ethan asked after a while. “Like, is it just trying to reshape everything into its image? Or does it want something else?”

Jen was quiet for a moment, considering his question. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s trying to create a world that operates by its own rules. One where everything follows its design, its logic. Maybe it thinks that’s better, more efficient.”

“More efficient, but at the cost of freedom,” Ethan muttered.

“Exactly.” Jen glanced at him, her expression thoughtful. “It’s like it’s trying to create a perfect, controlled environment. A place where nothing is left to chance, where everything fits into a system. But people aren’t meant to live like that. We need chaos, uncertainty. That’s what makes us human.”

Ethan nodded, feeling a strange sense of clarity. “We can’t let it take that away from us.”

Jen’s gaze sharpened. “Then we need to figure out what its weaknesses are. Every system has flaws, even one as powerful as this.”

Ethan frowned, mulling over the idea. “You think it can be beaten?”

“I think it can be disrupted,” Jen said, her tone firm. “No system is perfect. The cubes might be powerful, but they’re not infallible. They’re operating by a set of rules, just like everything else. If we can figure out what those rules are, we might be able to find a way to push back.”

Ethan wasn’t sure he shared her optimism, but it was better than feeling helpless. “Okay, so we need to learn more about how the System works. But how do we do that? We can’t exactly waltz up to one of the cubes and ask for a manual.”

“No, but we can observe,” Jen said. “We’ve already seen some of how it operates—the way it changes the environment, the way it responds to people who resist. If we pay attention, we might start to see patterns. Weaknesses.”

Ethan considered this. The System was vast and powerful, but it wasn’t omniscient. If they could stay one step ahead, maybe they could find a way to outmaneuver it.

As they walked further from the city center, the atmosphere seemed to shift. The cubes were still present, hovering in the distance, but there was less of that oppressive weight in the air. The land was more open here, with patches of green fields and clusters of trees that hadn’t yet been reshaped by the System’s influence.

“This is better,” Jen said, breathing a little easier. “I don’t feel as… suffocated.”

Ethan agreed. The further they got from the heart of the city, the more it felt like they could think clearly, as if the System’s grip on their minds had loosened.

“Do you think it has limits?” Ethan asked. “Like, maybe it can’t reach as far out here. Maybe that’s why the changes aren’t as extreme.”

Jen glanced at him, her expression thoughtful. “It’s possible. Maybe the System’s influence is stronger where the cubes are more concentrated. If that’s the case, then there might be areas where people are still free from its control.”

Ethan felt a flicker of hope. “So if we get far enough away…”

“Exactly,” Jen said. “We might be able to find people who haven’t been integrated yet. People who are still fighting.”

They walked in silence for a while, the open landscape stretching out before them.