Jaxen Vane stood in the center of the alley, the silence around him feeling heavier than the rain. Brutus Kahl was still whimpering at his feet, a man who had been a mountain of muscle and chrome just seconds ago, now reduced to a shivering heap of useless meat.
Jaxen looked at his own hands. They weren't shaking anymore. A strange, cold static hummed beneath his skin, like a low-voltage current waiting to be discharged.
In his vision, the world was no longer solid. The brick walls had "Texture IDs" floating over them. The puddles of oil showed "Fluid Density" values. Everything was a variable. Everything was a lie.
[System Alert: High-Level Anomaly Detected in District 9.]
[Security Level: Yellow.]
[Automated Sentinels Dispatched.]
Jaxen's eyes widened. A Yellow Alert meant the Syndicate's drones would be here in less than two minutes. A Null-Rank like him wouldn't just be arrested; he'd be "Hard-Formatted"—a polite term for having his brain wiped and his body recycled for parts.
He looked at Brutus. "I'd stay and chat, but I think you've got some tech support coming."
Jaxen turned and ran.
He didn't run like he used to—gasping for air, lungs burning from the toxic smog. Instead, he looked at his [Movement Speed] variable. It was locked at a standard human 10.0. He didn't have the "Admin Level" to change his own stats permanently yet, but he noticed a flickering sub-routine in the corner of his HUD: [Environment_Friction].
If I can't make myself faster, I'll make the air thinner, Jaxen thought.
He swiped his fingers through the air, "pulling" a line of code. The air in front of him suddenly shimmered, the resistance dropping to near-zero. He felt a sudden jolt of momentum, his body slicing through the atmosphere like a vacuum-sealed bullet. He was moving at speeds a Level 50 Agility-build would envy, his feet barely touching the cracked pavement.
He dived into a narrow maintenance tunnel just as the high-pitched whine of Syndicate drones filled the alley he'd left behind. Red searchlights swept over the spot where he had been standing, scanning the DNA signatures in the mud.
Jaxen pressed his back against the cold, damp concrete of the tunnel, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Status..." he whispered, his breath hitching. "Show me the... the Source."
A window bloomed in front of his eyes. It wasn't the standard blue-and-gold interface of a Player. It was deep, obsidian black with scrolling lines of emerald-green text—the raw kernel of the Prime Engine.
[USER: JAXEN VANE]
[CLASS: SYSTEM ARCHITECT (Rank: NULL/MAX)]
[AUTHORITY LEVEL: 0.01% (UNAUTHORIZED)]
[CURRENT ACTIVE PRIVILEGES:]
Source-View: Observe the hidden data strings of any object or entity.
Variable Manipulation (Minor): Temporarily alter non-static values (Strength, Friction, Durability).
Packet Sniffing: Intercept local System communications.
[WARNING: SYSTEM COHERENCE AT 92%. EXCEEDING PRIVILEGES MAY RESULT IN REALITY COLLAPSE OR 'ADMIN PURGE'.]
"Reality collapse? Great," Jaxen muttered, wiping grease from his forehead. "So if I hack too hard, I delete the universe. No pressure."
He crawled deeper into the tunnel system, heading toward the "Under-Grid"—the massive, subterranean network of pipes and wires that powered Neo-Seoul. This was where the outcasts lived, the people the System had forgotten.
As he walked, he practiced. He looked at a rusted iron gate blocking his path. Source-View.
[Object: Security Gate]
[Status: Locked]
[Logic: IF 'Key_Card' = TRUE, THEN 'Open']
Jaxen didn't have a key card. He reached out and touched the gate, his fingers feeling the digital pulse of the lock. He didn't try to break the metal; he simply moved his mind into the logic loop. With a flick of his mental "wrist," he changed the TRUE to FALSE.
Clack.
The lock hissed open.
"Too easy," he whispered.
But as he stepped through, he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his temple.
[Warning: Resource Strain.]
[Mental Processing Power: 78% Used.]
[Note: The Architect's mind is still 'Biological.' Overclocking may cause permanent brain damage.]
"Right. I'm still human," Jaxen reminded himself. Even with the power of a god, he was running it on the hardware of a beggar. He needed better gear. He needed a "Neural-Bridge" that could handle the data flow, or his brain would fry before he even made it out of the slums.
He finally reached his "home"—a hollowed-out server room from a defunct tech company, hidden behind a waterfall of toxic runoff. He collapsed into his chair, a jury-rigged throne of wires and cracked screens.
He plugged his neural-link back into his main rig, but this time, he wasn't looking for scraps. He opened the "Packet Sniffing" skill.
Suddenly, his monitors came to life. He wasn't just seeing the internet; he was seeing the System's Internal Chat.
[Internal Log - Aegis Spire - Sector 7]
Admin_04: "Did you see that spike in District 9? Anomaly code 0x004F."
Admin_09: "Probably just a glitching Enforcer. The Kahl unit was due for a firmware update."
Admin_04: "No, it wasn't a glitch. The Source Code was touched. Someone accessed the Root."
Admin_09: "Impossible. No one has Root access except the Prime Engine itself. Send a 'Seeker' unit just in case. If there's a leak, plug it."
Jaxen's blood ran cold. They were coming for him. Not the thugs like Brutus, but the "Seekers"—the System's elite anti-virus hunters.
He looked around his miserable room. He had nothing. No weapons, no armor, no credits. All he had was a 0.01% access level and a mind that was currently red-lining.
"If they're sending a Seeker," Jaxen said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the scrolling logs, "then I need a bigger weapon."
He looked at the digital map of Neo-Seoul. One block away was the Vault of the Fallen—a high-security storage facility where the System kept the "Corrupted Items" it had confiscated from Players over the decades.
To any other Thief, it was impenetrable. The walls were reinforced with mana-suppression fields and Level 80 security bots.
But to Jaxen, the Vault wasn't a building. It was just a folder. And every folder had a "Read/Write" permission.
"You want to play 'Seeker'?" Jaxen grinned, his teal eyes reflecting the green code on his screens. "Let's see how you handle a 'File Injection'."
He stood up, his body feeling lighter as he began to rewrite his own fatigue variables. He had been a Null his whole life, a zero in a world of heroes. But tonight, the Zero was going to divide the System by itself.
He grabbed a worn, black trench coat and threw it over his shoulders. He didn't need a gun. He just needed to get close enough to touch the world.
As he stepped back out into the neon rain, a new notification popped up on his screen—one he hadn't seen before.
[Hidden Quest Triggered: The First Breach.]
[Objective: Enter the Vault of the Fallen.]
[Reward: Administrator Level 1 Upgrade.]
[Penalty for Failure: Manual Deletion.]
"Challenge accepted," Jaxen whispered.
He vanished into the shadows, his silhouette flickering like a glitched video file, leaving nothing behind but the sound of the rain hitting the empty pavement.