To Kai, the world had lost its texture.
As he walked through the oily mud of the alleyway leading to the Copper-Wire Vipers' warehouse, he didn't see the grime on the walls or the flickering neon of the advertisements.
He saw the source code.
The brick wall was a mesh of Material: Red_Clay and Durability: 450. The puddle was Liquid: H2O + Toxic_Sludge. The air itself was a grid of coordinate points, buzzing with the data packets of the System's wireless network.
It was overwhelming. It was beautiful.
"Adjust your refresh rate, kid," Cipher's voice rasped in his mind. "You're processing too much junk data. Filter out the background noise. Focus on the threats."
Kai blinked. The wireframe vision receded, layering back underneath the normal visual spectrum. The world looked solid again, but the data remained in his peripheral vision—a constant, scrolling log of reality.
"Target ahead," Mei whispered over the comms.
She was perched on a rusted crane overlooking the warehouse district, her optical camouflage blending her perfectly with the oxidized metal.
"Three guards at the entrance," she reported. "Two humans, one low-tier cyborg. Standard kinetic weapons."
Kai adjusted the iron pipe in his hand. It felt different now. Before, it was just a piece of metal. Now, he could feel its atomic structure. He had mentally "flagged" it as an extension of his own code.
"I see them," Kai said.
He stepped out of the shadows.
The Vipers' warehouse was a converted hangar, the walls reinforced with scrap metal. The three guards were smoking synthetic tobacco, laughing. When they saw Kai—a lone, skinny Null walking down the center of the street—they stopped laughing.
"It's the Null!" one shouted. "The one who broke Goran's arm!"
They raised their weapons—automatic flechette rifles.
"Fire!"
Click.
Click. Click.
The guns didn't fire. The guards stared at their weapons in confusion, racking the slides.
"Jamming signal?" one muttered.
Kai kept walking. He didn't run. He didn't dodge.
"No signal," Kai said calmly. "I just corrupted your firing pins."
From fifty meters away, he hadn't touched them physically. But the Entropy Sutra didn't need physical contact for software. He had seen the code of their guns—cheap, mass-produced scripts—and introduced a simple logic error: IF trigger_pull THEN lock_mechanism.
"Kill him!" the cyborg guard roared, throwing his useless gun aside and drawing a machete. He charged.
Kai stopped. He waited.
Distance: 5 meters.Velocity: 8 m/s.
"Execute Command: Friction Delete," Cipher suggested.
Kai's eyes flashed with static. He focused on the ground beneath the cyborg's boots.
Variable: Friction_Coefficient. Value: 0.8 -> 0.0.
The cyborg planted his foot to swing. The ground suddenly became slicker than wet ice. There was absolutely no traction.
The cyborg's legs flew out from under him. He hit the concrete face-first with a sickening crunch of metal on stone.
Kai walked past the groaning man. He didn't look down.
"Mercy," the cyborg gasped, reaching out a trembling hand.
Kai paused. A text prompt appeared in his mind.
>> QUERY: MERCY?>> SEARCHING DATABASE...>> ERROR 404: FILE NOT FOUND.
"Compilation error," Kai stated coldly.
He brought the iron pipe down.
The inside of the warehouse was a chaotic mix of a chop-shop and a throne room. Piles of stolen cybernetics lay on tables. In the center, sitting on a chair made of welded exhaust pipes, was Goran.
His arm had been hastily repaired. The sleek hydraulic piston was gone, replaced by a bulky, ugly excavation drill. It was crude, but it looked deadly.
Twenty gang members stood around him.
"You came," Goran rumbled, standing up. The drill on his arm spun to life with a deafening shriek. "I thought you were smart, Null. I thought you'd run."
"Running is inefficient," Kai said, standing in the open doorway. "It wastes calories."
"Kill him!" Goran pointed the drill. "All of you! swarm him!"
The gang surged forward. Chains, knives, pipes.
High above, a skylight shattered.
CRACK.
Mei's sniper rifle thundered. A Viper dropped, his knee blown out.
"Cover fire initiated," Mei's voice crackled in Kai's ear. "I'll handle the ranged threats. You clean the floor."
Kai moved.
This time, he didn't use subtle hacks. He used violence.
He ducked a swinging chain, grabbed the attacker's wrist, and pushed his own chaotic Qi into the man's system.
Technique: System Lag.
The attacker froze. Literally. His brain was processing reality at 1 frame per second. To him, Kai was a blur. To Kai, the man was a statue.
Kai used the frozen man as a shield to block a knife thrust from another gangster. Then he kicked the attacker away, sending him flying into a stack of servers.
It was a massacre. Kai moved through the mob like a virus moving through a hard drive—corrupting, deleting, crashing. He touched a man's cybernetic eye, and it burst into sparks (Overload). He touched a woman's synthetic muscle, and it went limp (Power Cut).
Within two minutes, eighteen Vipers were on the ground, groaning or unconscious.
Only Goran remained.
The big cyborg backed up, fear replacing the rage in his eyes. He looked at his fallen crew. Their cybernetics were glitching, sparking, failing.
"What are you?" Goran whispered. "That's not Qi. That's... noise."
"I am the reboot," Kai said.
He walked toward Goran.
Goran roared, panic taking over. He charged, the massive drill arm aiming for Kai's chest.
Kai didn't dodge this time. He raised his left hand—the hand where the Shard had entered. The black circuit tattoos on his skin glowed with a violent purple light.
He caught the drill.
SCREEEE!
Sparks flew as the spinning metal bit into Kai's palm. But it didn't pierce. An invisible barrier of distorted space—a hitbox error—stopped the metal millimeters from his skin.
Kai looked at the spinning drill.
Object: Mining_Drill_v4. Integrity: 85%.
"Edit," Kai whispered.
He clenched his fingers.
>> COMMAND: BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.
A shockwave of blue light exploded from Kai's hand.
It wasn't an explosion of heat. It was a wave of pure data erasure.
The drill didn't break. It dissolved. The metal turned into gray pixels, then into dust. The effect traveled up Goran's arm. The steel plates, the wires, the synthetic flesh—it all unraveled.
"No! Stop! CANCEL!" Goran screamed as he watched his arm vanish.
The wave stopped at his shoulder. Goran fell to his knees, staring at the empty space where his arm used to be. The wound was cauterized, sealed by a perfectly flat, gray texture.
Kai stood over him. The hunger in his gut was screaming now. Using the Blue Screen had drained his reserves. He felt lightheaded.
"My debt," Kai said, his voice raspy. "Is it cleared?"
Goran looked up, tears streaming down his face. "Yes. Yes! Cleared! Take whatever you want! Just don't delete me!"
Kai looked at the terrified gang leader. He felt no satisfaction. Only the cold logic of the transaction.
"Cipher," Kai thought. "Scan him."
"Scanning..." Cipher replied. "He's hiding a sub-directory in his chest cavity. Encrypted storage."
Kai knelt and ripped the necklace off Goran's neck. Attached to it was a heavy, magnetic keycard.
[Item Obtained: Administrator Key (Sector 404 Access)]
"This controls the sector's waste disposal protocols," Kai realized. "And the backdoors to the smuggling routes."
He pocketed the key.
"Leave the city," Kai ordered Goran. "If I see you in Sector 404 again, I won't stop at the shoulder."
Kai turned and walked away.
Behind him, Goran wept in the ruins of his empire.
Kai walked out of the warehouse and into the rain. Mei was waiting for him at the corner, her rifle slung over her shoulder. She looked at him with a new expression. Not just respect. Fear.
"You erased his arm," Mei said quietly. "Physics doesn't do that."
"I don't follow physics anymore," Kai said. He stumbled slightly, and Mei caught his arm.
"You're running on empty," she noted.
"I need calories," Kai admitted. "And I need those suppressors for Rin."
"We can loot the warehouse," Mei said. "Goran has a stash of credits."
"Good," Kai said. "Get the medicine. I need to... recharge."
He looked up at the sky. The Celestial Motherboard was still there, perfect and golden. But for the first time, it didn't look like a god.
It looked like a target.