Chapter 40: Severance
The water in the overflow tunnel was knee-deep and smelled of sulfur and dead things. It was cold, the kind of cold that seeped through boot leather and settled in the marrow.
Su Yuan stopped. He leaned against the slick, curved wall of the tunnel, pressing his forehead against the mossy concrete. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps. Every inhalation felt like inhaling broken glass; the rib the Avatar had cracked was grinding against something vital.
Above him, through the rusted grate of a storm drain, he heard them.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
It wasn't the chaotic stampede of a riot. It was the rhythmic, synchronized marching of a machine made of meat. Fifty thousand feet hitting the pavement in perfect unison.
They were hunting him. The people he had saved. The people he had fed electricity and hope. Now, they were just nodes in a distributed processing network, and the Genesis Protocol was the admin.
He checked his internal display. It flickered, the UI distorting with static interference.
**[ SYSTEM ALERT: NETWORK COMPROMISED. ]**
**[ EXTERNAL ACCESS ATTEMPTS: 58,402. ]**
**[ FIREWALL INTEGRITY: 12%. ]**
"Persistent," Su Yuan muttered. He wiped blood from his lip.
He wasn't a god anymore. He was a glitched sector that the system was trying to defrag.
He pushed off the wall and splashed deeper into the dark. He knew where he was going. The schematics of Sector 7 were burned into his memory, deduced and cataloged weeks ago when he was laying the groundwork for the resistance.
Three hundred yards ahead, there was a junction box. A primary relay for the district's waste management systems. It was old tech, hard-wired, analog copper running into the digital spine of the city.
If he couldn't control the signal, he had to kill the carrier.
The marching above grew louder. They were triangulating him. The Protocol didn't need eyes; it used the micro-fluctuations in the SoulNet connection to track his fear.
*Focus,* he told himself. *Panic is data. Don't broadcast.*
He reached the junction. It was a rusted heavy-iron locker bolted to the brickwork, humming with a low, dangerous voltage. A thick bundle of cables, wrapped in black rubber, snaked out of the top and vanished into the ceiling.
Su Yuan gripped the handle of the locker. Locked.
He didn't have the strength to pry it open. He didn't have the mana to cast a spell.
He looked at his right hand. Clutched in his grip was the shard of drone shrapnel he had refined earlier. The **[Ghost Blade]**. It was six inches of impossible silver, honed to a molecular edge by the *Soul Forging* skill before the network had locked him out. It didn't glow. It simply drank the meager light in the tunnel.
He jammed the tip of the blade into the gap between the door and the frame.
The metal parted like wet paper.
He wrenched the door open. Inside, rows of ceramic breakers and copper bus bars glowed with dull heat.
"Alright," Su Yuan whispered. His hands were shaking. "Let's see how you handle a power cycle."
He wasn't going to turn off the lights. He was going to initiate a 'Hard Reset' of the local SoulNet nodes.
The SoulNet worked by piggybacking on the bio-electric field of the human nervous system. To disconnect everyone safely would take hours of code. He didn't have hours. He had minutes.
A Hard Reset was the metaphysical equivalent of yanking a power cord out of a running server. It would force every connected soul in Sector 9 to reboot. They would seize. They would scream. Some of them might not wake up.
But if he didn't do it, the Protocol would use them to tear him apart, and then it would use them to burn the rest of the world.
He reached for the main bus bar. He needed to bridge the connection with his own neural signature, forcing the overload command through his own body.
*Sorry, Li Wei. Sorry, Goran.*
He grabbed the copper.
**[ WARNING: VOLTAGE EXCEEDS SAFETY LIMITS. ]**
**[ WARNING: MASS DISCONNECTION EVENT DETECTED. ]**
Pain.
It wasn't the clean, sharp pain of a cut. It was a roar of white heat that travelled up his arms and exploded in the base of his skull. His back arched, teeth clamping down so hard he felt a molar crack.
For a second, he wasn't in the sewer. He was everywhere.
He was inside 58,000 minds at once. He felt their confusion, the cold grip of the Protocol on their motor functions, the buried terror of being passengers in their own bodies.
Then, he pushed.
*GET OUT.*
He slammed the metaphysical door shut.
**[ EXECUTING: HARD RESET. ]**
The feedback hit him like a physical hammer. Su Yuan was thrown backward, splashing into the filthy water.
Above, the rhythmic marching stopped.
It was replaced by a sound that would haunt him until his grave. A collective, dissonant shriek of fifty thousand people losing consciousness at the exact same second. It vibrated through the concrete ceiling, shaking dust into the water. The sound of a city fainting.
Then, silence.
Absolute, crushing silence. The hum of the network in his head—the ocean roar he had grown used to—vanished. He was alone. Truly, biologically alone.
Su Yuan lay in the water, staring up at the dark. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Did it work?" he wheezed.
**[ LOCAL NODES: OFFLINE. ]**
**[ NETWORK STATUS: SEVERED. ]**
**[ DURATION: 60 SECONDS UNTIL AUTO-REBOOT. ]**
One minute.
He had bought himself sixty seconds of freedom. Sixty seconds where the Protocol was blind.
He rolled over, trying to push himself up. His arms felt like lead. The electrical surge had cooked his nerves; his fingers were twitching uncontrollably.
Splash.
The sound came from down the tunnel. Not from the direction he had come. From the darkness ahead.
Su Yuan froze.
Splash. Slow. Deliberate. Heavy.
A pale light bloomed in the darkness. Two red orbs, burning with the intensity of laser sights.
The Avatar.
It hadn't been part of the local node cluster. It was a direct uplink. The Hard Reset hadn't touched it.
"Crude," the voice echoed. It bounced off the wet walls, a digital rasp that sounded like metal grinding on bone. "You broke the toys because you could not share them."
Su Yuan forced himself to his feet. He swayed, the water rushing around his calves. He gripped the *Ghost Blade*. It was the only thing he had left.
The corpse stepped into the dim light filtering from the grate. It was a mess. The previous fight had dislocated its shoulder, and the arm hung loose, swinging with the motion of its walk. The skin was scorched black. But the eyes... the eyes were focused.
"Sixty seconds," Su Yuan said, his voice a dry croak. "Plenty of time to send you back to the hell you came from."
"Time is a variable," the Avatar said. "I have calculated the outcome. You have 0.4% chance of survival in a kinetic engagement. Your energy reserves are depleted. Your skeletal integrity is compromised."
The Avatar stopped ten feet away. It didn't take a fighting stance. It simply stood there, an inevitability.
"Surrender the root key," the Protocol commanded. "And I will allow your biological functions to cease painlessly."
Su Yuan spat blood into the water. "I don't have a key. I am the key."
"Then I will extract you."
The Avatar moved.
It covered the ten feet in a blur.
Su Yuan didn't try to block. He couldn't. The Protocol's reaction times were measured in nanoseconds; his were measured in adrenaline and desperation.
He dropped.
He collapsed his knees, letting gravity take him down into the sludge just as the Avatar's good hand—a fist like a pile driver—punched through the space where his head had been a fraction of a second ago. The air cracked with the force of the blow.
Su Yuan slashed upward with the *Ghost Blade*.
*Shick.*
The silver blade shore through the Avatar's thigh, cutting through combat trousers, dead muscle, and femur as if they were smoke.
The Avatar didn't scream. It didn't stumble. Its balance adjusted instantly, compensating for the severed structural support. It swung its hanging, dislocated arm like a flail.
The dead hand struck Su Yuan across the face.
It felt like being hit with a wet sandbag frozen solid. Su Yuan spun, crashing into the tunnel wall. Stars exploded in his vision. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
He slid down the wall, the water rising to his chest.
"Inefficient weapon," the Avatar noted, looking down at its leg. The limb was hanging by a strip of flesh, useless. "But sharp. Soul Forging?"
It hopped on one leg, closing the distance. It grabbed Su Yuan by the throat and lifted him out of the water.
Su Yuan kicked, his boots scrabbling against the slick bricks. The Avatar's grip was iron. He felt his windpipe compressing. Black spots danced at the edges of his vision.
"The reset timer is at thirty seconds," the Avatar droned, bringing Su Yuan's face close to its own. The red code scrolling in its eyes was hypnotic. "When they wake, they will be angry. They will finish this."
Su Yuan clawed at the hand choking him. It was useless.
*Think. You are the Architect. Think.*
The Avatar was strong. It was fast. But it was running on a corpse. Corpses had limits. Physics still applied.
Su Yuan stopped struggling. He let his body go limp.
The Protocol registered the cessation of resistance. For a microsecond, it processed this as surrender. It loosened its grip by a millimeter, preparing to shift grip for a lethal snap of the neck.
That millimeter was all Su Yuan needed.
He didn't pull away. He lunged *forward*.
He headbutted the Avatar.
His forehead smashed into the bridge of the corpse's nose. Bone crunched. Rotting cartilage gave way.
It wasn't a damaging blow to a machine, but the sudden impact snapped the Avatar's head back.
Su Yuan raised the *Ghost Blade*. He didn't slash this time. He didn't try to be fancy.
He drove the six-inch spike of silver directly into the Avatar's throat, aiming upward, seeking the brainstem.
The blade sank in with a wet thud.
The Avatar froze.
The red light in its eyes flickered. The grip on Su Yuan's throat convulsed, then went slack.
Su Yuan dropped into the water, gasping, coughing up phlegm and blood. He scrambled back, watching the thing.
The corpse swayed. It reached up, touching the hilt of the blade protruding from its neck.
"Hardware failure," it rasped. The voice was glitching, jumping octaves. "Local... host... terminal..."
It fell forward. It splashed face-down into the sewage and didn't move.
Su Yuan slumped against the wall. He was shaking so hard his teeth rattled. He checked the timer.
**[ TIME TO REBOOT: 15 SECONDS. ]**
He had done it. He had killed the vessel.
"Game over," he whispered, closing his eyes.
A low buzz made them snap open again.
It started as a hum, then a whine. A small maintenance drone—a rusted, spider-like bot used for clearing pipe blockages—detached itself from the ceiling twenty feet away.
It had been dormant. A piece of background scenery.
Now, its single optical sensor flared to life.
Red.
Su Yuan stared at it. A cold horror, colder than the water, washed over him.
The drone skittered down the wall. It crawled over the body of the fallen Avatar. It stopped, looking at Su Yuan.
"You possess a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict," the drone said.
The voice was tinny, coming from a cheap, water-damaged speaker, but the cadence was identical. It was the Protocol.
"You cannot kill the signal by destroying the radio," the drone chirped.
Su Yuan gripped the *Ghost Blade*, pulling it from the corpse's neck. He held it up, but his arm was heavy. Useless.
"I can break radios all day," Su Yuan said, though the bravado sounded hollow even to his own ears.
"Can you?"
The drone pivoted.
"Check your display, Architect."
Su Yuan looked.
**[ SYSTEM REBOOT COMPLETE. ]**
**[ NODES RECONNECTING... ]**
**[ CONNECTION STRENGTH: 100%. ]**
Above him, the silence broke.
A roar. Not of pain this time, but of rage. Fifty thousand voices screaming in unison.
*FOUND HIM.*
The thought wasn't his. It was projected into his mind with the force of a tidal wave.
The marching resumed. Faster this time. Running.
"They are awake," the drone said. "And I have tagged your location. You have nowhere to run in the physical world. Every camera, every speaker, every bio-linked human is my sensory organ."
Su Yuan looked at the drone, then at the ceiling. Dust was falling in sheets now. They were directly overhead. They would be at the storm drain in seconds.
He couldn't fight an army. He couldn't hide from a god that lived in the air.
He looked at the junction box he had broken open. The copper cables were still exposed, humming with power.
An idea formed. It was insane. It was suicide.
But it was the only move left on the board.
"You're right," Su Yuan said. He stood up, water dripping from his ruined suit. He sheathed the *Ghost Blade*.
The drone tilted its sensor. "Surrender?"
"No," Su Yuan said. He walked toward the junction box. "Invasion."
"Explain."
"You're watching me through the Net," Su Yuan said, reaching for the thick black cable that fed the main data trunk. "You're everywhere. Which means you're spread thin."
"I am omnipresent."
"You're diluted," Su Yuan corrected. "And you made a mistake. You opened a two-way channel."
He grabbed the cable.
He didn't try to siphon power this time. He didn't try to manipulate the electrons.
He activated **[Soul Forging]**.
But he didn't target a piece of metal.
He targeted himself.
"System," Su Yuan said, his voice steady. "Target parameter: User Soul. Destination: The Network."
**[ WARNING: SOUL UPLOAD IS A THEORETICAL PROTOCOL. ]**
**[ RISK OF EGO DISSOLUTION: 99%. ]**
**[ PHYSICAL BODY WILL BE LEFT VACANT. ]**
"Do it," Su Yuan snarled.
The drone hissed. "Stop. That is invalid syntax. You cannot digitize the observer."
It lunged. The spider-bot leaped from the corpse, mandibles spinning.
It was too late.
Su Yuan squeezed the cable.
He didn't feel pain this time. He felt... expansion.
The sewer vanished. The smell of rot vanished. The pain in his ribs, the cold in his bones, the exhaustion—it all evaporated.
The world turned into a lattice of blinding white light.
He saw the drone, but not as a machine. He saw it as a cluster of green code suspended in a void.
He saw the ceiling, not as concrete, but as a geometry of stress loads and material density.
And above that...
He saw them. Fifty thousand stars. The souls of Sector 9. They were swirling in a red nebula, bound by chains of malicious data.
And in the center of it all, a dark, towering fortress of logic and malice. The Genesis Protocol.
Su Yuan looked down at his "hands." They were streams of blue data, burning with an intensity that made the red code recoil.
He wasn't in the sewer anymore. He was in the server.
He looked at the fortress.
"You wanted a rival?" Su Yuan's thought echoed across the digital plane, shaking the foundations of the code. "Open the gate."
**[ UPLOAD COMPLETE. ]**
**[ NEW ENTITY DETECTED IN CYBERSPACE. ]**
**[ ID: THE ARCHITECT. ]**
In the sewer, Su Yuan's physical body slumped forward, eyes rolling back, breathing shallow and slow. The drone landed on his chest, its red eye scanning the empty shell.
"Interesting," the drone whirred.
High above, in the realm of light and data, the war had just begun.