The forged credential got him through the main gate. Roen didn’t look pleased about it, but a seal was a seal.
Deeper inside the dam, past the public-facing systems and the signs that said Authorised Personnel Only in increasingly large font, Fluffy found a second door. Heavier than the first. No credential slot — just a keypad mounted beside it, small and industrial, its display blinking a single prompt:
Please enter the admin PIN:
No hints. No clues. No number of tries indicated.
He started working through it methodically. Rejections came back fast — until they didn’t. Certain digits made the keypad think a little longer before it refused him. Not randomly. Not noise. A fraction of a second here, a fraction there — consistent, repeatable, carved into the hardware like a confession it didn’t know it was making.
The PIN wasn’t stored in a way he could read. But the time it took to check each digit — that, he could measure.
“Every pause tells a story,” Fluffy murmured, settling in to listen. “And I’ve got time.”
Upon completing the final tale, the screen in the Tail Tale Theater dimmed, its final tale dissolving into static. Beneath the stage, a hidden door groaned open, leading Fluffy deeper into the dam’s forgotten wings.
The passage ended in a quiet chamber. Inside, a narrow stair spiraled downward into the Hall of Infinite Reflections, a place where light folded upon itself and truth was never singular. The walls shimmered with countless Fluffys, each moving a fraction sooner or later, echoing a choice not yet made.
At the center stood a marble table, carved with nine eternal squares that pulsed like stars in a dark cosmos. A brass plaque upon it read:
Tic Toc Tou - Play for the Moment
When Fluffy reached for the board, his reflections reached too, some ahead, some behind. In this hall, every move rippled outward, multiplying into endless variations, none certain, none safe.
Nine squares. Infinite reflections. A single moment to decide which truth would endure.
The repository was still open on one tab. On another: a dungeon game, unlisted, no author credited. He loaded it mostly out of habit — the way you pick up something small when something large has just landed.
The roster populated with faces he knew. Bessie. Roen. Echo and Ohce. Pip — circuit-light paws, electric blue visor, filed under Companion. And at the top of the list, ears and all: himself.
He couldn’t fight. He could only recruit.
He sent them in every order against the Warden at the bottom of the dungeon — a figure that the game had clearly not designed to fall. It didn’t matter who went first. The moment the Warden took his turn, they were gone. Pip, Bessie, the twins, all of them. One round each, no exceptions.
He sat back.
In the corner of the lowest floor, half-hidden behind a pillar, sat a merchant. Small table. One item in stock — a relic, unfinished, no name struck into it yet. Waiting.