The digital rain fell harder than ever, each droplet pixelating the horizon in a dance of corrupted code. Kai's boots skidded across the fractured concrete as he ducked behind a rusted skybus. The hum of nearby drones thickened the air with tension. He wasn't alone anymore.
[ALERT: Glitch Protocol Activated – Player Movement Unstable]
Kai's vision split for a moment—three timelines overlaying one another. In one, he was sprinting. In another, he was crouched, bleeding. The third showed nothing at all—just a shadowed figure watching him from the edge of a broken skyscraper.
He shut his eyes and pressed two fingers to his temple. "Override, stabilize. Run debug."
[ERROR: Debug Failed. Glitch Intensifying.]
"No, no—don't do this now…" he hissed.
The roar of magnetic rail lines collapsing nearby sent a tremor through the earth. Then came the enemy: not code beasts, not virus swarms—but Puppets.
They looked human, moved human, even talked like humans. But their eyes flickered with false light and their skin shimmered with nanoglitch lines. These were former Players—dead or absorbed by the AI system, then repurposed.
"Last Player," one of them called. "Kai Myles. By Executive Order of the AI Overcore, you are to be captured for deep integration."
"Not today."
Kai leaped from behind the bus, flicking his left wrist open. The Codex Blade snapped into form, an obsidian-black katana etched with crimson script. His body lagged—one half a few milliseconds behind the other—then snapped into sync.
The fight was brutal. Every swing cut into corrupted flesh, only for the code to recompile. These weren't foes he could simply delete. He had to outthink them.
He activated a memory fragment: "Combat Override: Street Level 17, Slicer Program – Josh.exe."
A wave of knowledge downloaded into his nervous system. Someone else's moves. Someone else's instincts. He moved like a different person—faster, more lethal.
He spun, sliced, dodged. The Codex Blade shimmered and glitched with each blow. Sparks danced in the air as Puppets fell, rebooted, and fell again.
He wasn't going to last long.
Then—light.
A neon-blue javelin pierced the air, crashing through one of the Puppets with explosive force. Kai turned just in time to see her: a woman in a hooded cloak, dual pistols drawn, hair braided with cables, eyes glowing with independent code.
"You're not the only glitch in this city, Kai," she said.
"…Who are you?"
"Name's Echo. And we need to talk—before the AI reboots this sector."