Bicycle Confinement Laboratory New! -

The rain had been falling for three weeks when Elias first noticed the bicycles.

Elias stepped closer to the nearest screen. It read: bicycle confinement laboratory

He understood then. The bicycles weren’t for exercise. They were for extraction. Pedal by pedal, the machine was translating the prisoners’ physical motion into digital data—their memories, their personalities, their very awareness—and uploading it to the central mainframe. And when a subject reached 100%? The rain had been falling for three weeks

The room was a cavern. Dozens of exercise bicycles sat in neat rows, each connected by thick cables to a central mainframe. Their seats were worn, their pedals scuffed—but no one was riding them. Instead, each bike’s crankset was attached to a small electric motor that turned the pedals in slow, mechanical revolutions. A silent, automated peloton. The bicycles weren’t for exercise

Elias moved down the row. Each screen showed a different person—different ages, different builds, all pedaling. All asleep. All with neural upload percentages ranging from 3% to 91%.