The tunnel lights buzzed. Dimmed. Then snapped to full brightness.
Kai's breath hitched. The man in the scorched firefighter's jacket stepped closer—half his face shadowed, the other burned and rebuilt with red circuitry crawling up to his temple.
Kai's mind screamed a thousand questions, but none made it to his lips.
That voice… My brother. That can't be real. I watched you die.
The man cocked his head.
"You've evolved," he said, with a hint of sorrow. "But not like them. Not like we were supposed to."
Kai took a shaky step back.
"Who are you really?"
The figure looked him dead in the eyes.
"The version of him that was left behind… before the System wiped us all."
System Alert
[Neural Residue Detected: Subject 09-RED]
[Warning: System Corruption Risk — Genetic Overlap at 78%]
Genetic overlap…?
"You're not him," Kai muttered.
"No," the man said. "But I remember everything he did. Because I was Kai. Before Reset Protocol."
The temperature dropped.
Far off in the tunnel, something let out a high-pitched shriek, a sound like metal being twisted by invisible hands. The lights flickered again.
"It's not safe here," he continued. "You triggered a Pulse. They'll come for you soon. For your core."
"What are they?" Kai demanded.
The man paused, expression grim.
"Glitches given flesh."
"Failed players. Admin experiments. Mistakes the System buried."
He stepped closer, pressing something small into Kai's palm — a metallic cube, etched with a glowing red symbol.
[Item Acquired: Fragmented Memory Core]
[Requires: Neural Sync / Prototype Access Key]
"Find the Observatory in Zone 5," he said. "Upload this before the next sync cycle. If you don't—"
"You die. And we all repeat the cycle again."
Suddenly, a deafening explosion echoed down the tunnel, followed by a second, closer one. The ground quaked. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Kai spun around.
From the darkness, a creature emerged—barely humanoid.
Six limbs.
A face half-melted into the bone.
Eyes like shattered glass… and a player's interface embedded in its chest, glitching violently.
[Subject: Unstable Class-Evolution Host]
[System Error: AI Personality Fragment Detected]
[Warning: CORRUPTED PLAYER ENTITY]
"That's…" Kai whispered. "That's… a player?"
The man beside him drew a jagged metal blade from his back.
"Not anymore."
"Run, Kai."
"This one remembers you."
As the creature charged, the red cube in Kai's hand pulsed—then dissolved into him, sending a flash of pain through his spine.
A new voice echoed in his mind:
"Access granted… unlocking Prototype Subsystem."
But with it came a terrifying line of text on his HUD:
[Warning: Beginning Evolution Outside System Parameters]
[Entity K-021 has been flagged for Termination]
And then, behind the monster—multiple glowing eyes lit up the tunnel. Dozens. Hundreds.
"Oh god… they're all coming for me…"
Flashback: Corrupted Player Elias
The air shimmered with static as Elias crawled out of the broken escape pod. His uniform—once clean and crisp—was tattered, scorched, and soaked in a black substance that pulsed like it was alive.
He blinked into the strange new sunless sky.
The Earth was gone.
Not destroyed—just… overwritten.
"System... open stats," he whispered.
[Name: Elias Mora]
[Class: Scavenger – Tier 1]
[System Authority: Limited Access]
[Status: Stable]
Relief. He had survived the Reset. Barely.
But the joy lasted only a moment.
A cold message scrolled across his vision:
[Warning: No Respawn Enabled – Death Will Be Permanent]
[System Stabilization Failed – Emergency Evolution Protocol Active]
He didn't understand it. No one did. There was no tutorial. No handbook. Just chaos. Just silence.
Until the voices began.
"Upgrade. Assimilate. Survive."
Elias stumbled across Zone 3, scavenging food from twisted metal vending units and fighting off feral dogs with rusted pipes. Each day, the System grew more… insistent.
It began injecting new messages—offering "boosters" to unlock forbidden skills. At first, he resisted. Then came the infection.
A fight with a bloated humanoid beast left him wounded. His skin split open, and black lines crawled up his veins like barbed wire under the skin.
The pain was unbearable. He begged the System for help.
"Override accepted," it whispered."Evolution route unlocked: Adaptive Aberration."
The transformation wasn't instant.
It was slow. Unforgiving.
He awoke one morning with metallic teeth in place of molars. Another day, his reflection in the broken glass revealed extra pupils blooming in his irises.
He tried to kill himself—once.
The System stopped him.
"Survival Protocol in Effect. You are valuable."
"We need you to adapt."
He laughed. Sobbed. Screamed.
And eventually, he obeyed.
As he was in pain he has felt that days passed. Or weeks. Time no longer made sense to Elias but only few moments have passed
Other players saw him as a threat. A monster. They hunted him.
They never made it back.
Final Entry – Elias' Memory Core
A hidden fragment recorded moments before his full corruption:
"I… I can't remember my mother's voice."
"I used to draw. That's what I did. I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't supposed to be here."
"If someone finds this… tell them… I was just scared."
"I didn't want to become this."
The recording ends.
Now, his screams echo in the tunnels beneath Zone 3—trapped in a twisted, glitching body.
Some say he guards a forgotten server hub, clawing endlessly at the walls, trying to escape his own mind.
Others whisper he still recognizes names.
Corrupted Elias been in immense moving wherever his legs takes with no memory just pain. Suddenly someone comes into view. A name popped up in his brain, Kai, wait who is Kai, what am I doing here, but pain is too much for him to control his body. His body moves on his own towards Kai.
And if Kai speaks his name out loud, the thing Elias has become might remember enough...
…to hesitate.