The clicking persisted. Click-flash-flash. Pause. Click-flash-flash. Pause. It burrowed into the ambient hum of the server room, a rhythmic data parasite gnawing at the quiet. It wasn't just noise; my [Perceive Glitch] skill confirmed that faint, structured pulse of corrupted data syncing perfectly with the sound. Stable. Repeating. Intentional.
"Okay, that's officially upgraded from 'annoying hardware noise' to 'suspicious anomaly requiring investigation'," I announced to the closet wall, already grabbing my multi-tool and the now-steady flashlight. My head still throbbed with a dull ache, a phantom echo of the strain from fixing the flashlight – a reminder that even minor debugging wasn't free.
Leo, still perched on his crate like a nervous sparrow, looked up sharply. "Investigate? Investigate what? It's just a noise!"
"It's a pattern, Leo," I countered, stepping out into the server aisle. "And in this reality, unexplained patterns are usually precursors to things going spectacularly sideways. Either it's a glitch about to escalate, a trap, or..." I let the pause hang, "…or it's something else. Something deliberate." I started moving slowly down the aisle, tracing the faint pulse of distorted data with my senses.
He scrambled up, looking torn between the relative safety of the closet and the sheer terror of being left alone. "But… where are you going?"
"Following the signal," I murmured, eyes scanning the overhead cable trays. "Like tracing a bad network connection. Except the cables might be made of pure anxiety and the data packets could bite."
Leo hesitated, then seemed to steel himself. "My sister… she was the tech wiz in our family. Always said you follow the problem to its source." He fell into step behind me, though he kept glancing around like he expected the server racks to sprout tentacles. Good. Healthy paranoia. Maybe there was hope for him yet. His motivation, flimsy as it sounded, was better than pure panic. A sister to find, maybe? Or just a memory of competence driving him. Didn't matter right now, as long as it kept him moving.
The signal led us deeper into the server farm, past rows of silently humming racks and darker, dustier units that looked like they hadn't been powered on since before the Glitchstorm. My perception painted faint lines of the corrupted data flow, clinging to a thick bundle of ancient, cracking grey network cables – legacy Cat5, probably – snaking through the ceiling supports. They looked brittle, neglected, yet they carried this persistent, looping whisper of data.
The cables terminated near the back wall of the server farm, plunging into a conduit leading towards a heavy, metal door marked NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTER. The door itself looked physically ill. It bulged outward in the center, the thick steel rippling like heatstroke on metal, the paint cracked around seams that no longer quite aligned. A low, almost subsonic hum vibrated through the floor nearby, and the air tasted sharp, metallic – the distinct tang of ozone mixed with something else… like the smell of hot, failing capacitors and burnt, brittle insulation. Classic signs of a localized reality stress fracture.
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[Warning: Area Approaching Moderate Reality Instability.]
Field Intensity: Fluctuating.
Potential Effects: Mild Nausea, Spatial Confusion, Temporary Visual Artifacts, Increased Probability of Dropping Important Items.
Suggestion: Maybe just… don't? Or wear safety squints?
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"Right," I breathed, stopping a few feet away. "Looks like we found the router experiencing emotional distress." The air shimmered faintly around the door frame, like heat haze on asphalt, but felt cooler, and somehow… thicker. My flashlight beam wavered as it passed through this invisible field, splitting momentarily into fuzzy rainbows. "Definitely unstable in there."
Leo had gone pale, unconsciously backing up a step. "What is that?"
"Localized reality friction," I explained, pulling the prybar end out on my multi-tool. "Space-time getting chafed. Usually means something on the other side is actively messing with the local physics constants, or just failed so hard it warped its immediate vicinity. Either way, door's probably stuck."
"And you're going to… open it?" His voice squeaked slightly.
"The signal's going in there," I stated, wedging the tip of the prybar into the warped seam between the door and frame. "Got to see where it leads. Stand back. Don't touch the shimmer."
Planting my feet, I leaned into the prybar. The metal groaned, resisted. It felt… heavy. Not physically locked, but like pushing against thick, invisible molasses. The subsonic hum intensified, vibrating up my arms. The air grew thicker still, pressing in like unseen hands. My vision swam slightly at the edges. [-2 SP] just from proximity and minor exertion. This wasn't just passive warping; the instability was actively resisting the change.
Come on, you glorified system error… Gritting my teeth, I put my shoulder into it, leveraging my weight. Sweat beaded on my forehead.
With a sudden, jarring CRACK, something inside the frame gave way. The door scraped open, maybe six inches, accompanied by a wave of displaced air that felt strangely cool and carried that intensified smell of burnt electronics and ozone, now layered with something else… a faint, sterile scent, like an old, abandoned hospital room.
The instability field seemed to flicker, momentarily less intense near the opening. I quickly jammed a chunk of scavenged metal into the gap to keep it from sealing itself shut again.
Peering through the gap, flashlight beam cutting through the gloom, confirmed my suspicions. Chaos. Overturned desks littered with smashed monitors displaying only static snow. Racks ripped open, components spilling out like metallic entrails. Network cables dangled from the ceiling like dead vines.
But the cable bundle I'd followed? It snaked across the debris-strewn floor, miraculously intact, and plugged directly into a port on a large, central network switch mounted in one of the few racks that still stood upright. The switch's lights flickered erratically, a chaotic counterpoint to the steady hum emanating from it. That was the destination.
"Okay," I breathed, the air inside feeling heavy, syrupy, pressing against my lungs. Walking in there would feel like wading through reality Jell-O. "Found the end of the line."
"Are we… going in?" Leo whispered, peering nervously over my shoulder.
"Just me," I decided. "No point both of us wading through… whatever this is. Stay here, watch the door. If it starts closing on its own, or if anything else comes out, yell. Loudly."
Taking a deep breath, I squeezed through the gap. The pressure increased immediately. Moving felt sluggish, deliberate, each step requiring conscious effort against unseen resistance. My flashlight beam bent strangely, refracting off unseen facets in the air, casting multiple, overlapping shadows that writhed impossibly. The steady hum from the central rack seemed to resonate in my bones. Mild nausea tickled the back of my throat. [Debuff Acquired: Minor Spatial Disorientation]. Lovely.
Fighting the urge to just turn around, I focused on the target: the central rack, the connected port. Its activity light blinked weakly, almost smothered by the frantic, random flashing of the switch's other status LEDs. It was receiving something, but barely. Like trying to listen to a radio station buried under layers of static.
Okay, Ren. [Perceive Glitch]. Let's see the problem.
The room dissolved into overlapping layers of visual noise in my mind's eye. The ambient instability was thick, a soup of low-level errors and conflicting reality instructions. But centered on that receiving port, like a clot in an artery, was a dense knot of angry, crimson-black code. It churned sluggishly, actively corrupting any data packets trying to pass through – the source of the weak signal light. It felt… malicious. Less like a random error, more like a deliberate filter or block.
Could I debug that? It was magnitudes more complex than a flashlight or a shuriken-dispensing ATM. This was an active, hostile data choke point embedded in a reality distortion field. Failure could mean… well, anything from frying the switch to potentially unraveling myself into constituent error messages.
Screw it. Nothing ventured, nothing debugged.
Planted my feet firmly on the warped floor tiles. Focused my entire will, pushing past the environmental nausea and disorientation. Targeted the crimson-black knot. Extended my mental [Logic Probe]…
WHAM!
It felt like running headfirst into a digital brick wall. A wave of pure static crashed over my senses. [-10 SP!] My vision exploded into white noise, stars bursting behind my eyelids. The hum in the room spiked into a piercing shriek that felt like it was vibrating my teeth. My knees buckled.
No! Fight back! Forced my focus through the static. Saw the knot pulse, momentarily brighter. It knew I was there. It was defending itself.
Okay, direct confrontation failed. Time for finesse. Instead of trying to nullify it directly, find the structural weakness. The flawed argument in its logic. Like debugging spaghetti code, find the one loose thread that unravels the whole mess.
Ignored the shrieking hum, the flashing lights, the [Critical SP Drain!] warning blinking frantically over the static in my vision. [-15 SP… -20 SP…]. Pushed my perception deeper into the knot, feeling like I was pushing against a fundamental disagreement with reality itself. Saw the looping, self-referential arguments, the commands designed to block and corrupt. But spotted it – a tiny recursive subroutine, designed to check its own integrity, that was referencing a variable outside its corrupted structure. A single point of external dependency.
Gotcha!
Instead of attacking, I used [Localized Data Glitch Dampening] not on the knot itself, but on the faint pathway connecting it to that external reference point. Smoothed it out. Severed the connection. Like unplugging a crucial sensor.
The effect was instantaneous.
The crimson-black knot convulsed violently in my mental vision. The shrieking hum cut off abruptly. The oppressive thickness in the air vanished, replaced by the normal, cool stillness of the server room. The frantic blinking on the network switch ceased, replaced by steady, calm green lights.
My SP bar bottomed out. [SP Depleted! Emergency Mental Reserve Activated!]. My vision cleared, but a wave of ice-pick dizziness lanced through my skull. Black spots danced at the edges of my sight. A sharp, metallic tang bloomed at the back of my throat – blood. My nose was bleeding, hot and sticky against my upper lip. Bile rose, hot and acidic. This wasn't just fatigue; this was the system cannibalizing itself to keep the lights on, the mental equivalent of ripping out wiring to power a critical function. The cost felt immense, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion and a throbbing ache that promised to linger. I staggered, catching myself on the now-stable server rack, head pounding like a drum solo performed by jackhammers being wielded by angry giants.
But I'd done it. The connection was clear.
And on the small, previously gibberish-filled LCD screen integrated into the network switch, three lines of crisp, blocky green text glowed in the sudden quiet:
EXTERNAL BEACON DETECTED.
SOURCE: UNKNOWN. Quadrant 7G.
SIGNAL STRENGTH: WEAK. Repeating Pattern: SOS.
External. Quadrant 7G? Pre-Glitch emergency grid designation. Probably packed with dense infrastructure… and equally dense Glitch concentrations. SOS? A distress signal?
The clicking server wasn't just a repeater. It was boosting a distress signal. Originating from somewhere out there in the wrecked city. Weak, but persistent. Someone, or something, was calling for help.
"Ren? You okay?" Leo's panicked voice echoed from the doorway. "Everything went crazy for a second!"
I pushed myself upright, leaning heavily against the rack, wiping the blood from under my nose with the back of my hand. The dizziness was intense, the world tilting slightly. Processing the implications felt like wading through mud. A distress signal. A specific quadrant marker. This wasn't just random chaos anymore. This was a destination. A purpose. Maybe even… hope?
Or, more likely, a wonderfully crafted trap designed to lure idiots like me into a high-density kill zone. Especially idiots currently running on less than fumes.
Either way, chasing down an SOS in Quadrant 7G wasn't something I could do hiding in a server closet, not in this state. I needed recovery. I needed mobility. I needed intel. I needed…
My mind flashed back, unbidden, to the sound I'd heard earlier, before finding Leo. The distinct roar of a heavily modified, reality-defying engine cutting through the urban decay.
Maybe my first step wasn't chasing the signal. Maybe it was chasing the noise. But first… first, I needed to not pass out.