SYSTEM REBOOT.
ERROR: BIOLOGICAL DRIVER MISSING.
ATTEMPTING SAFE MODE... FAILED.
Jake gasped.
The air didn't taste like air. It tasted like burning copper and sour milk.
His eyes snapped open. The world was a blur of motion sick grey and flashing red icons.
"He's back online!" Taranov's voice boomed, too loud, too close.
Something hard shoved against Jake's teeth. A metal tube.
"Swallow, Boss. Don't you dare spit it out."
Thick, tasteless sludge filled Jake's mouth. It felt like eating wet cement.
He choked, coughed, and tried to push Taranov away. His arms felt like they were made of lead.
"Eat," Taranov commanded, squeezing the tube again. "It's a nutrient paste from the loot crate. Tastes like feet, works like magic."
Jake swallowed.
His stomach clenched, then relaxed. A warm tingle spread through his chest.
CALORIE INTAKE DETECTED.
ENERGY RESTORED: 8%.
WARNING: CRITICAL LEVELS.
The red flashing icon in the corner of his vision stopped pulsing and settled into a steady, angry glow.
Jake sat up. The world spun.
He was on a floor made of brushed aluminum. The vibration rattled his teeth. The hum of magnetic levitation engines whined beneath him like a dying animal.
"Status?" Jake croaked. His voice sounded like it had been run through a cheese grater.
"We are alive," Menzhinsky said. He was curled into a ball in the corner of the train car, hugging his knees. "For now."
"We are moving very fast," Valentina yelled from the front of the car. She was wrestling with a holographic dashboard. "Too fast."
Jake pulled himself up using a handrail.
The interior of the Metro-Express was sleek. White panels, blue ambient lighting, plush seats that looked like they hadn't been sat in for a thousand years.
But the light was flickering. Every few seconds, the walls would jitter.
"Look outside," Oppenheimer whispered. He was staring out the window, his face pale.
Jake looked.
There was no tunnel.
There was no rock, no concrete, no subway tiles.
Outside the glass, the world was a streaming blur of wireframes. Purple grid lines flashed past at impossible speeds. Occasionally, a chunk of "reality"—a pipe, a rat, a graffiti tag—would render for a split second before dissolving into static.
"The assets aren't loading," Oppenheimer said, trembling. "We're moving faster than the simulation can render the environment. We're clipping through the map."
"If we hit a loading zone," Yuri's voice buzzed from Jake's wrist, "we will be deleted."
"Can we slow down?" Jake shouted to Valentina.
"Controls are locked!" she shouted back. "It's on auto-pilot. Express line to the Citadel. No stops."
Jake looked at his Chrome Arm. It looked dull. The metal was tarnished, lacking its usual luster.
He felt hollow. The admin powers had eaten his fat reserves, then his muscle. He looked at his reflection in the dark window.
His cheeks were gaunt. His eyes were sunken, surrounded by dark bruises.
He looked like a corpse that refused to lie down.
Nadya would hate this, he thought.
The thought hit him harder than the hunger. For a second, her face flashed in the chaotic static outside the window. Just a glitch. A corrupted file.
"Boss," Taranov grabbed his shoulder. "Focus. We have a problem."
"Besides the speed?"
"Listen."
Jake listened.
Above the whine of the engines, he heard it.
Thump.
It came from the roof.
Thump. Screech.
Metal tearing.
"We have passengers," Taranov raised his rifle.
"Drones?" Jake asked.
"Heavier," Taranov said. "They landed when we passed under the sector gate."
SCREEEEEECH.
The roof of the car behind them buckled. A claw, three feet long and made of rusted serrated steel, punched through the ceiling.
Sparks showered the empty seats.
"Back!" Valentina screamed.
The claw ripped sideways. The metal roof peeled open like a sardine can.
Something dropped into the car.
It stood up. It was seven feet tall. It wore a tattered, oil-stained conductor's uniform. A peaked cap sat on a head that was just a smooth, featureless oval of white plastic.
No eyes. No mouth. Just a speaker grill in the center of the face.
"TICKETS," the thing screeched. The voice was digital gore—distorted, layered, painful.
"Ticket Inspectors," Menzhinsky whimpered. "High-level cleanup protocol. They purge unauthorized data from the transit lines."
"I don't have a ticket," Taranov grunted.
He opened fire.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
The bullets sparked off the Inspector's chest. The uniform shredded, revealing a chassis of black carbon fiber.
The Inspector didn't even flinch. It extended an arm. The hand wasn't a hand—it was a hole puncher the size of a bear trap.
"UNAUTHORIZED USER DETECTED," it buzzed. "PENALTY: ERASURE."
It charged.
"Move!" Jake shoved Menzhinsky toward the next car.
The Inspector lunged. Its hole-punch hand snapped shut where Menzhinsky's head had been a second ago, shearing through a steel headrest.
"Oppenheimer, the door!" Jake yelled.
The physicist scrambled to the sliding glass door connecting the cars. "It's jammed! The hydraulic seal is active!"
The Inspector turned its featureless face toward Jake.
"USER: JAKE VANCE. STATUS: VIRUS."
It stepped forward. The floor plates groaned under its weight.
Jake raised his admin arm.
WARNING: LOW BATTERY.
ACTION COST: 15% HEALTH.
He didn't have 15% to give. If he used a deletion command, his heart would stop.
"Taranov, aim for the legs!" Jake ordered. "Break its pathfinding!"
Taranov dropped to a knee and unloaded a magazine into the Inspector's knees.
The machine stumbled. Sparks flew from its joints. It crashed into a row of seats, flailing.
"It's just a delay!" Taranov yelled, reloading. "It's regenerating!"
Sure enough, the bullet holes in the carbon fiber were knitting themselves back together. Silver liquid metal flowed over the damage.
"It's a dynamic mesh," Oppenheimer screamed. "It heals as long as it's connected to the train's power grid!"
"Connected?" Jake looked at the creature's feet.
They were magnetized to the floor. Arcs of blue electricity were flowing from the floor panels up into the machine's legs.
"The train is feeding it," Jake realized.
Another thud on the roof.
Then another.
"There's more," Valentina shouted from the cockpit. "Three more on the roof! They're coming for the engine!"
If they breached the engine, the train would stop. Or explode.
Jake looked at the jammed door behind them. Then he looked at the Inspector, which was rising to its feet, its hole-punch hand spinning up with a high-pitched whine.
"We can't fight them," Jake said. "We have to change the level."
"What?" Taranov asked.
"Yuri," Jake yelled at his wrist. "Access the train's coupling mechanism!"
"Scanning," the boy's voice was calm. "Couplers are physical latches. Controlled by the hydraulic system."
"Can we blow them?"
"Negative. No explosives."
The Inspector lunged again. Taranov blocked the strike with his rifle. The hole-puncher crushed the gun barrel, snapping it like a twig.
Taranov roared and headbutted the machine. It was like headbutting an anvil. Taranov staggered back, blood streaming from his forehead.
"Boss! Do something!" Taranov shouted, pulling a combat knife.
Jake looked at the floor. He looked at the Inspector.
He didn't need to delete the enemy. He needed to delete the ground.
"Oppenheimer!" Jake grabbed the physicist. "The coupling seal between this car and ours. Is it rendered fully?"
Oppenheimer blinked, adjusting his glasses. He looked at the floor connecting the two cars.
"The texture resolution is low," Oppenheimer stammered. "The developers cut corners on the interior joints."
"Good," Jake said. "That means the code is weak."
Jake ran to the connection point. The Inspector threw Taranov across the room and turned toward Jake.
"USER TERMINATION IMMINENT."
Jake fell to his knees. He placed his chrome hand on the floor seam.
He didn't try to hack the train. That took too much energy.
He targeted the nails. The digital rivets holding the cars together.
"Yuri," Jake whispered. "Target file: Rivets.obj. Command: Move to Trash."
COST: 50 CALORIES.
Jake could afford that.
His arm glowed a faint, dirty yellow.
DELETE.
The rivets didn't explode. They just vanished. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The floor plates groaned.
The Inspector took a step toward Jake. Its magnetized foot stepped onto the plate Jake was touching.
"Goodbye," Jake said.
The train hit a curve.
Without the rivets, the centrifugal force did the rest.
CRACK.
The coupling sheared.
The rear car—the one with the Inspector inside—detached violently.
Wind roared into the cabin.
Jake watched as the rear car drifted away into the darkness of the unrendered tunnel. The Inspector stood in the open doorway, staring at them, fading into the wireframe void.
Then, the detached car hit a glitch in the track.
It didn't crash. It simply fell through the floor of the world, plummeting into a grey abyss of nothingness.
Silence returned to their car.
Taranov slumped against the wall, wiping blood from his eyes. "That was my favorite rifle."
"You'll find another one," Valentina said, her voice shaking. "Look."
She pointed out the front window.
The wireframe tunnel was ending.
Real textures were loading in. Concrete. Steel. Light.
They burst out of the underground and into the open air.
Jake shielded his eyes.
They were high up. The train was traveling on a mag-lev rail suspended thousands of feet above the ground.
Below them lay Neo-Moscow. A sprawling nightmare of neon favelas and factory-cathedrals.
And directly ahead, looming like a mountain of gold and black glass, was the Citadel.
It was impossibly big. Clouds swirled around its spires. It looked like a sword stabbed into the heart of the world.
"We're arriving," Yuri said.
"Too fast," Valentina warned again. "I still can't brake."
Jake looked at the dashboard.
SPEED: 400 KM/H.
DISTANCE TO TERMINAL: 2 KM.
"We're going to crash," Menzhinsky realized, his face turning grey.
"Not crash," Jake stood up, leaning heavily on the wall. He felt lighter, but his head was pounding. "We're going to make an entrance."
He looked at his team. Bleeding, terrified, exhausted.
"Brace for impact," Jake said.
The train hurled itself toward the golden wall of the Citadel.
Jake closed his eyes.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, a message scrolled.
SERVER INSTABILITY DETECTED.
ADMIN ACCESS: PROXIMITY ALERT.
THE DIRECTOR IS WATCHING.
Jake smiled.
Let him watch.