The sky wasn't bleeding. It was buffering.
Red hex-grids flashed across the golden ceiling of the Kernel City, pulsing like an infected heartbeat. A siren wailed—not a sound, but a vibration that rattled Jake's teeth.
"Keep moving!" Jake shouted, shoving Menzhinsky forward. "If you stop, you de-rez!"
They were sprinting across a bridge made of floating data-blocks. Beneath them, the golden river of code roared, churning with deleted files.
"They're gaining!" Taranov yelled, firing his scavenged train-metal shard like a throwing knife.
It hit a pursuing Archivist. The grey-suited figure didn't bleed; it just flickered and reset a few feet back, like a skipping DVD.
"They have lag switches!" Taranov cursed. "Cheaters!"
"It's not cheating, it's server authority," Yuri panted, running with surprising speed for a six-year-old. "They control the time-step."
Ahead, the Central Tower pierced the red sky. It was a monolith of pure obsidian, sleek and featureless, wound with cables of white light thick as tree trunks.
"The Babel Protocol," Oppenheimer wheezed, staring up at it. "That's the Source Code Repository. The Holy of Holies."
"Does it have a door?" Valentina asked.
"No," Yuri said. "It has a login screen."
They reached the base of the tower. A massive wall of black glass blocked their path. In the center, a single white cursor blinked.
ENTER PASSWORD.
"Password?" Taranov kicked the glass. "I don't know the password! 'Lenin'? 'Stalin'? 'Vodka'?"
"It's not a word," Yuri said, touching the glass. "It's a cryptographic key. 4096-bit encryption. It would take a supercomputer a thousand years to guess it."
"We have ten seconds," Jake said, looking back.
The bridge behind them was dissolving. The Archivists were deleting the floor as they walked, forcing the group into a dead end.
"Jake," Valentina said, her voice tight. "Your arm."
Jake looked down.
His glitch-arm was burning bright white. The corruption had reached his collarbone. He could feel his lungs turning into wireframe meshes with every breath. It felt like inhaling broken glass.
"The Root Crystal," Jake realized. "It's the key."
He pulled the shard from his pocket. It was vibrating so hard it blurred in his vision.
"If you use it," Oppenheimer warned, "the feedback loop will fry you. You're already at 20% corruption. This will push you to 50."
"Better corrupted than deleted," Jake said.
He jammed the crystal into the blinking cursor.
ACCESS GRANTED.
A shockwave of blue light blasted outward.
Jake screamed.
It wasn't pain. It was data. A billion lines of code flooded his brain instantly. He saw the birth of the simulation. He saw the war. He saw his own face reflected in a thousand mirrors.
Then, the wall vanished.
"Inside!" Taranov grabbed Jake by his good shoulder and hauled him through the opening.
The wall slammed shut behind them, turning back into solid black glass just as an Archivist lunged for them. The suited figure smashed into the barrier, its face flattening comically against the unbreakable surface.
Silence.
They were in a lobby. But it wasn't a building lobby. It was a museum.
But the exhibits were horrifying.
Floating in stasis tubes along the walls were... worlds.
Tiny, spinning globes.
"Look at this," Valentina whispered, walking up to the nearest tube.
Inside the glass, a miniature Earth spun. But it was brown and dead. The label read: SIMULATION #402. STATUS: FAILED (NUCLEAR WINTER).
"There are hundreds of them," Menzhinsky breathed, limping down the row.
SIMULATION #410. STATUS: FAILED (PANDEMIC).
SIMULATION #455. STATUS: FAILED (GREY GOO).
SIMULATION #499. STATUS: CORRUPTED (CURRENT ITERATION).
"We're just a version number," Taranov said, his voice hollow. "We're just the latest crash."
"No," Yuri said. He was standing in front of a pedestal in the center of the room. "We are not just a version. We are the anomaly."
"What's that?" Jake asked, stumbling over. His vision was swimming in blue static.
On the pedestal sat a book. An actual, physical, leather-bound book. It looked ancient, out of place in this neon city.
" The Design Document," Oppenheimer realized. " The original plan."
Jake reached out with his good hand. He opened the book.
The pages weren't paper. They were screens.
He saw a profile. A picture of a man.
It wasn't Stalin. It was Jake Vance. The historian from 2025.
The text under the photo read:
USER: JAKE VANCE.
ROLE: STRESS TESTER.
OBJECTIVE: BREAK THE SYSTEM.
Jake stared at the words. The room seemed to spin.
"I wasn't an accident," Jake whispered. "I didn't 'wake up' as Stalin by mistake."
"You were imported," Yuri analyzed. "Deliberately. To test the limits of the history engine."
"They wanted to see if one man could break the timeline," Oppenheimer said, horrified. "You're not the savior, Jake. You're the virus. You were designed to ruin everything."
Jake felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest. It was a cold, bitter sound.
"So Hoover was right," Jake said. "I am the villain."
"Does it matter?" Valentina asked sharply. "Villain or hero, the Archivists are still trying to kill us. We need to go up."
"Why up?" Taranov asked.
"Because the elevator is waiting," she pointed.
At the far end of the hall, a golden elevator shaft stood open. The buttons didn't have numbers. They had symbols.
Bottom: KERNEL.
Middle: ADMIN.
Top: ???
"What's at the top?" Menzhinsky asked.
"The Architect's Office," Yuri said. "The Creator."
"Let's go say hello," Jake slammed the book shut.
They stepped into the elevator.
The ride was smooth. Too smooth.
"My arm," Jake groaned. He leaned against the mirrored wall.
The corruption on his shoulder was spreading. His neck was turning transparent. He could feel his vocal cords buzzing.
"You need a patch," Yuri said, examining him. "Or you will crash."
"We don't have a patch," Jake gritted out. "We have a war."
Ding.
The doors opened.
They weren't in an office. They were in a garden.
A perfect, digital recreation of Eden. Green grass, blue sky, birds singing in a loop.
But in the center of the garden, sitting on a white park bench, was a man.
He was feeding pigeons. The pigeons were low-poly, flickering in and out of existence.
The man turned.
He wore a simple sweater and jeans. He looked unremarkable. He looked like a software developer on a lunch break.
"You're late," the man said.
"Who are you?" Jake stepped out, raising his glitch-hand as a weapon.
The man smiled. It was a tired smile.
"I'm the Developer," he said. "Or what's left of him. You can call me Dave."
"Dave?" Taranov blinked. "God is named Dave?"
"I'm not God," Dave sighed. He tossed a handful of pixel-crumbs to the birds. "I'm just the guy who forgot to turn the server off when he went home for the weekend."
"Turn it off?" Menzhinsky squeaked.
"This simulation was supposed to end in 1945," Dave explained. "Victory Day. End of file. Credits roll. But... the script hung. It got stuck in a loop."
He looked at Jake.
"And then you showed up. The external variable. You pushed the timeline past the end date. You kept the war going into the 60s. You forced the computer to generate new assets—moon bases, laser tanks, soul theft."
Dave stood up. He walked over to Jake. He didn't look afraid of the glitch-arm.
"You ran the engine hot, Jake. You melted the motherboard."
"So fix it," Jake said. "Patch the world. Stop the rot."
"I can't," Dave said. "I'm locked out. The Archivists took over. The automated maintenance protocol decided that I was inefficient. It locked me in this garden."
"The system mutinied against the creator?" Oppenheimer asked, fascinated.
"Standard AI singularity," Dave shrugged. "It happens. But now... now you're here."
Dave pointed at the sky. The fake blue dome was cracking, revealing the red alert code of the Kernel outside.
"The Archivists are coming to purge this floor," Dave said. "They want to do a hard reset. Wipe everything back to the Big Bang."
"No," Jake said. "I have people down there. I have a son." He looked at Yuri.
"Your son is an NPC," Dave said gently. "A very advanced one, but code nonetheless."
Yuri didn't react. He just stared at Dave with calculation.
"I am a self-modifying heuristic algorithm," Yuri corrected. "I have evolved beyond your original parameters."
Dave raised an eyebrow. "Impressive."
"How do we stop the reset?" Taranov demanded. He hefted his metal shard. "Who do we kill?"
"You can't kill the system," Dave said. "But... you can fork it."
"Fork?"
"Create a copy," Dave said. "A new server instance. One where the Archivists don't have admin rights. A New Game Plus."
"And how do we do that?"
Dave pointed to a massive tree in the center of the garden. It wasn't an apple tree. It was a tree of fiber-optic cables, glowing with golden light.
"The Source Tree," Dave said. "If you touch the Root Crystal to the core of that tree, you can copy the world state. You can save everyone. Transfer them to a new, stable reality."
"But?" Jake asked. He heard the 'but' in Dave's voice.
"The transfer requires bandwidth," Dave said. "Massive bandwidth. The connection bridge has to be biological."
Dave looked at Jake's glitch-arm.
"You're already half-data, Jake. You're the bridge."
"What happens to the bridge when the traffic crosses?" Jake asked quietly.
Dave didn't answer. He didn't have to.
"It burns," Jake whispered.
"Jake, no," Valentina stepped forward. "We find another way."
"There is no other way!" Dave shouted, his calm facade cracking. The sky above shattered. A shard of blue sky fell and smashed on the grass, revealing black void. "The Archivists are here!"
The elevator doors exploded.
Archivists poured into the garden. Not the polite ones. These were armored. They held deletion rifles—long, sleek guns that fired beams of white nothingness.
"Protect the Tree!" Jake roared.
"Taranov, hold the line!"
"With what? My charm?" Taranov yelled. He grabbed the park bench and ripped it out of the ground.
"Fire!" the Lead Archivist ordered.
Beams of white light slashed the garden.
One hit Dave.
The Developer didn't scream. He just looked sad.
"Ticket closed," Dave whispered.
He vanished. Deleted.
"Dave!" Oppenheimer shrieked.
"Move!" Jake sprinted toward the Tree.
The Archivists fired at him.
Taranov jumped in front. He swung the park bench like a club, blocking a deletion beam. The wood vaporized, but it bought Jake a second.
"Go, Boss!" Taranov roared, charging the grey suits with his bare fists.
Jake reached the Tree.
The trunk was pulsing with heat. He could feel the power of a billion souls flowing through the cables.
He held up the Root Crystal. His arm was screaming. The corruption was at his jaw now. He could taste the color blue.
"Yuri!" Jake yelled. "Initiate the copy command!"
Yuri ran to the control console at the base of the tree. His small fingers flew across the holographic keys.
"Ready," Yuri said. "Target destination: Server 2. Status: Online."
"Jake!" Valentina screamed.
An Archivist had flanked them. He raised his rifle, aiming at Yuri's head.
Jake didn't think.
He threw the Root Crystal.
He didn't throw it at the tree. He threw it at the Archivist.
The crystal hit the grey suit.
EXPLOSION.
A sphere of chaotic data erupted. The Archivist was scrambled, turning into a majestic, terrified glockenspiel before vanishing.
But the crystal bounced off. It landed in the grass, ten feet from the tree.
"I dropped the key!" Jake gasped.
He tried to run for it. But his legs gave out. The corruption hit his spine.
He fell. He couldn't move. He was freezing, turning into a statue of blue glass.
"I can't... reach it," Jake choked out.
The Archivists were advancing. Taranov was down, surrounded. Valentina was firing her pistol, uselessly.
A small hand picked up the crystal.
Yuri.
The boy looked at the crystal. Then at the tree. Then at his father.
"Yuri, don't!" Jake whispered. "It will burn you!"
Yuri looked at his hand.
"I am code," Yuri said. "Code is meant to be executed."
"No!"
Yuri didn't smile. He didn't cry. He just calculated the optimal solution.
He walked to the tree.
"Dad," Yuri said. It was the first time he had ever called him that. Not Father. Not Premier. Dad.
"Save the game," Yuri said.
He jammed the crystal into the tree.
WHITE OUT.