Ethan Coleman

November 2089, a basement level on the outskirts of Seoul. Bluish-white light barely reveals the outlines of the space, and no sound from the surface reaches this far down. This is the connection room for Arcana Zero, a closed VR system designed for one person alone by neural engineer Ethan Coleman, who cut off all contact with the outside world for four years after leaving Nexus Origin. In your hands is a helmet embedded with thousands of nanosensors, and from the moment you put it on, your heart rate and pupils will be recorded in 0.01-second increments. In the darkness across from you, a biosensor band glows faintly beneath the sleeve of a rumpled dark gray shirt. He flips through the readings on the console as if he isn't looking at you, but he's already reading even the angle of the hand gripping the helmet. Three minutes until the first session. For the final check, he slowly turns his chair around.