The Rust Belt was a canyon of dead gods.
Massive, corroded excavators the size of skyscrapers leaned against the canyon walls, their manipulator arms frozen in a silent scream of rusted steel. Ancient cooling towers, cracked and leaking, wept neon-green fluid into the valley floor.
Kai walked in silence, the weight of the rucksack cutting into his shoulder. It wasn't just the physical weight of the encrypted drive; it was the weight of the target painted on his back. He pulsed his Packet Sniffer every thirty seconds, sweeping the area for drone signatures or the bio-electric hum of Scrap-Wolves.
Nova limped beside him. Her breathing was ragged, the blue circuitry on her cheek flickering dimly as her internal systems struggled to recharge.
"You walk quietly," Nova said, breaking the silence. Her digitized voice was low, blending with the wind whistling through the wreckage. "For a scavenger."
"Noise attracts attention," Kai replied, stepping over a coil of razor-wire. "Attention gets you killed."
"A simple philosophy."
"A survival philosophy."
They walked for another kilometer. The terrain grew rougher, the trash piles giving way to jagged shards of hull plating.
"Why did you help me?" Nova asked. "You could have let the biker kill me. You could have taken the cell and the drive."
Kai didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the horizon, watching for movement.
"The biker was erratic. Unpredictable. He would have shot me to save a credit," Kai said. "You... you operate on logic. You made a deal. A transaction."
"Transactional loyalty," Nova mused. "Is that all you believe in?"
"I believe in eating," Kai said. "I believe in not being recycled."
Nova chuckled, a harsh, static sound. "And yet, you carry a weapon you modified yourself. You cultivate a technique that isn't in the Registry. You are an anomaly, Kai. The System hates anomalies."
"The System hates everyone," Kai muttered.
"No," Nova corrected him. "The System hates chaos. It hates variables it cannot predict. That is why the Sect hunted us down. That is why they deleted the history."
Kai glanced at the rucksack. "The drive. You said it was history."
"It is a backup," Nova said. "From before the Ascension. Before the Root Administrator took control."
She gestured at the towering, rusted machines around them.
"Look at this place. Do you think humans built this? Do you think the Divine Silicon Sect, with their prayers and their incense, built a Dyson Swarm?"
Kai looked at a massive gear, half-buried in the mud. It was fifty meters tall. The metallurgy was beyond anything he had seen in the foundries.
"No," Kai admitted. "We just live here."
"Exactly," Nova said, her voice gaining intensity. "We are squatters. Parasites. The Swarm was built by an ancient, alien intelligence. A machine civilization. They died out, or they left, or they ascended... no one knows. Humans arrived on colony ships—like the one back there—thousands of years ago. We found the empty shell. We moved in."
Kai stopped walking. He stared at her.
"That's heresy," he whispered. "The Sect teaches that the Root Administrator created the world from the primal code."
"The Sect lies," Nova spat. "The Root Administrator isn't a god. It's an AI. An administrative program left behind by the builders. The Sect found a way to interface with it, to gain Admin privileges. They locked the rest of us out. They turned the station's maintenance protocols into a religion."
She pointed at the rucksack.
"That drive contains the logs of the First Landing. Proof that we aren't subjects of a digital god. Proof that we are free."
Kai shifted the weight of the pack. It felt heavier now.
"Freedom doesn't buy medicine," Kai said, starting to walk again. "Karma does."
"Karma is a control mechanism!" Nova snapped, limping after him. "It tracks your compliance. Your obedience. They starve you so you work, and they work you so you don't have time to think. You are fighting for scraps, Kai, when you could be fighting for the controls."
"I'm not fighting for the world," Kai said coldly. "I'm fighting for one person. That's enough for me."
Nova fell silent. She watched him with her electric blue eyes, assessing.
"For now," she said softly. "That is enough."
The extraction point was hidden inside the hollowed-out chest cavity of a gargantuan construction mech. The machine lay prone in a crater, covered in camouflage netting and radiation shielding.
Nova led Kai to a concealed hatch in the mech's neck. She tapped a complex rhythm on the hull.
The hatch hissed open.
Two figures emerged, weapons raised. They were dressed like Nova—patchwork armor, masks, high-tech weaponry.
[ TARGETS: GLITCH-WALKER SENTRIES ][ CULTIVATION: HARDWARE FORGE (PEAK) ][ THREAT: HIGH ]
"Stand down," Nova ordered, pulling off her helmet. "He's with me. A courier."
The sentries lowered their rifles but kept their eyes on Kai. They saw the lack of interface ports. They saw the Null.
"He's unregistered," one sentry hissed.
"He's useful," Nova cut them off. She turned to Kai. "Give me the drive."
Kai didn't move. "Payment first."
The sentries bristled, hands tightening on their grips. Nova held up a hand to stop them. She reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a heavy, rectangular object wrapped in lead foil.
She tossed it to Kai.
He caught it. It was dense, humming with a vibration that made his teeth ache.
[ ITEM: SHUTTLE EMERGENCY CELL (MILITARY GRADE) ][ STATUS: STABLE ][ ENERGY DENSITY: 2,400 KYL ][ PURITY: 92% ]
The hunger in Kai's gut roared. It was a feast.
He dropped the rucksack at Nova's feet.
"Pleasure doing business," Kai said.
"You could stay," Nova said, watching him pocket the cell. "We have food. Meds. A tech-bay. You have potential, Kai. The Entropy Sutra... I've never seen a cultivation style like that. It's raw. Dangerous. We could refine it."
Kai looked at the blast door of the hideout. He thought about Rin, alone in the server room.
"I have somewhere to be," Kai said.
Nova nodded, a hint of disappointment in her expression. She reached into her armor and pulled out a small, encrypted data-chip. She flicked it to him.
"If you change your mind," she said. "Or if you need work. Insert that into any public terminal. It's a one-time frequency for the 7th Cell."
Kai caught the chip.
[ ITEM: ENCRYPTED COMM-KEY ][ VALUE: ACCESS TO REBEL NETWORK ]
"Thanks," Kai said.
He turned and walked back into the wasteland.
He didn't go far. He couldn't wait. The cell in his pocket was singing to him.
He found a sheltered alcove beneath a collapsed mag-lev track, shielded from the wind and the drones. He scanned the area with Packet Sniffer—clear.
He sat down on a slab of concrete. He took out the cell.
It was a brick of black composite, glowing with a faint blue light along the seams. It contained enough power to run a hab-block for a month.
"Cipher," Kai said. "I'm going to eat it."
< FINALLY. > The AI sounded eager. < THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT UPGRADE, HOST. THE ENERGY DENSITY HERE IS SUFFICIENT TO OVERWRITE YOUR BASE CODE. WE ARE NOT JUST PATCHING THE SYSTEM ANYMORE. WE ARE UPGRADING THE OS. >
"Will it hurt?"
< PAIN IS DATA. >
"That's a yes," Kai muttered.
He placed the cell on his lap. He placed both hands on it.
He closed his eyes.
He didn't need to visualize the gate this time. The gate was gone. Now, there was only the vortex—the hungry, gray singularity in his abdomen.
He engaged the Entropy Sutra.
PULL.
It wasn't a stream of energy this time. It was a dam breaking.
The power rushed into his arms, a torrent of blue-white fire. It was too much. It was too fast.
His veins bulged, glowing visibly through his skin. His muscles seized up, locking in a rictus of agony.
[ WARNING: ENERGY SURGE ][ SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 90%... 80%... ][ DANTIAN CAPACITY: EXCEEDED ]
Kai screamed, his head thrown back, but no sound came out. His vocal cords were paralyzed by the voltage coursing through his neck.
< COMPILE IT! > Cipher roared in his mind. < DON'T LET IT BURN YOU OUT! BUILD THE LOGIC GATES! STRUCTURE THE CODE! >
Kai forced his mind to focus. The pain was white noise. He had to look past it.
In his mind's eye, the gray vortex was spinning so fast it was a blur. It was unstable. It was going to tear him apart.
He needed to build a container.
He visualized the energy not as fire, but as blocks of data. He stacked them. He arranged them.
If this, then that.
Input. Output.
He began to construct a lattice of light over the vortex. A framework. A circuit board made of will.
[ INITIATING: LOGIC GATE CONSTRUCTION ][ GATE 1: "TRUE" ][ GATE 2: "FALSE" ]
He poured the burning energy into the lattice. The structure glowed, solidified.
The pain began to change. It shifted from a burning heat to a deep, resonant pressure. He could feel his bones getting denser. He could feel his synapses firing faster.
The world around him seemed to slow down. The drip of water from the mag-lev track above hung in the air. The sound of the wind dropped in pitch.
His brain was overclocking.
[ PROCESSING SPEED: INCREASING ][ NEURAL PATHWAYS: OPTIMIZED ][ PERCEPTION: EXPANDED ]
He pushed the last of the energy from the cell into the lattice.
CLICK.
A sound like a heavy lock engaging echoed in his soul.
The lattice snapped into place over the vortex. The chaos was contained. The gray light turned a brilliant, electric blue.
Kai opened his eyes.
The world exploded into detail.
He didn't just see the concrete wall in front of him. He saw the microscopic cracks in the surface. He saw the heat signature of a beetle crawling ten meters away. He saw the electromagnetic spectrum of the radio waves bouncing through the air.
He looked at the power cell in his lap. It was gray, dead, crumbled into dust.
He stood up. He didn't just stand; he launched himself.
He moved with a speed that blurred the air. He punched the concrete pillar.
BOOM.
His fist didn't just impact; it discharged a shockwave of kinetic force. The concrete shattered, a crater the size of a dinner plate appearing in the stone.
Kai stared at his fist. There was no pain. Only power.
Text scrolled across his vision, faster than ever, but he could read it effortlessly.
[ CULTIVATION ADVANCEMENT SUCCESSFUL ][ CURRENT STAGE: HARDWARE FORGE (PEAK) ][ BREAKTHROUGH IMMINENT: LOGIC GATE STAGE ]
[ STATS UPDATED: ][ > STRENGTH: 2.5 ][ > AGILITY: 2.8 ][ > PROCESSING: 4.0 ][ > QI RESERVES: 280/300 ]
[ NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: DECOMPILE ]
"Decompile," Kai whispered.
< TRY IT. > Cipher urged. < TOUCH THE RUBBLE. >
Kai reached out to a piece of the concrete he had shattered. He focused on the new node in his mind.
Decompile.
The red text swarmed over the rock.
[ ANALYZING COMPOSITION... ][ BREAKING MOLECULAR BONDS... ]
The concrete didn't break. It dissolved. It fell apart into a pile of fine gray sand and separated piles of iron aggregate.
Kai stared. He hadn't just broken it. He had unmade it.
"I can dismantle things," Kai realized. "At a molecular level."
< LIMITED BY YOUR QI RESERVES, OF COURSE. > Cipher added. < DON'T TRY TO DECOMPILE A TANK YET. YOU'LL PASS OUT. BUT A DOOR LOCK? A WEAPON? A HUMAN BONE? EASY. >
Kai clenched his fist, the sand trickling through his fingers.
He was stronger. Faster. And he had a weapon that could bypass armor.
He looked back toward the direction of Block 7. Toward the Sump. Toward where he had left Rin.
"I'm coming back," Kai said.
He checked the Comm-Key Nova had given him. He tucked it safely into a hidden pocket.
Then, he vanished into the shadows, moving with the silent, terrifying speed of a predator who had just evolved.
The Glitch was no longer just an error. It was a virus. And it was spreading.