Nova-Veridia's energy shield was like a purple, electrically charged waterfall descending from the sky to the ground. It vitrified the ground it touched, filling the air with the smell of ozone. This wall was the definitive boundary between civilization and nothingness.
Kaelen Vance cautiously peered out from behind the rock he was sheltering behind. His eyes were narrowed, and the wind-blown ashes clung to his beard. Beside him, Jester crouched with his new leg, fashioned from scrap metal and industrial waste. The leg made a hydraulic *hiss* followed by a metallic *clank* with every movement. It lacked aesthetics; pistons were exposed, cables wound like veins, and a rotating gear sat where the kneecap should be.
"You're getting too close," Kaelen warned, his voice mingling with the howl of the wind. "If you touch that thing, you won't even have your dental fillings left."
Jester seemed not to have heard his warning. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to an invisible orchestra. His hazel eyes were focused on the vibrations on the shield's surface. A normal person would only see a deadly energy wall there. Jester, however, saw the flowing data, the frequency ranges, and the system's breathing.
"You're right, Detective," Jester said, pointing with a metallic finger at the massive outflow pipes at the base of the shield. "Systems are paranoid. They perceive anything trying to enter from the outside as a virus and destroy it. But..." A twisted smile appeared beneath the dull, melancholic mask on his face. "...nobody checks the trash leaving the house."
Kaelen shifted his gaze to where Jester was pointing. Right at the base of the shield, a magnetic rail system stood a few meters above the ground. Massive, rusty, armored containers—Autonomous Waste Barges—periodically exited the shield, emptied their loads, and returned inside. This cycle was the city's digestive system. They carried waste out and raw materials in for processing.
"Recycling time," Jester whispered. He stood up. His new leg let out a mechanical groan as it crushed the gravel on the ground. "We won't infiltrate, Detective. We'll be invited."
***
Ten minutes later, they were in the rusty belly of a waste barge.
Inside, it was filled with the sharp smell of metal shavings, burnt oil, and unidentifiable chemicals. They were surrounded by compressed blocks of scrap. Kaelen had pulled the collar of his trench coat up to his nose, leaning his back against the cold metal wall. His hand reflexively went to "The Judge" at his hip.
"This is suicide," Kaelen muttered. "That shield's sensors can hear a fly's heartbeat. They'll turn us into fried chicken."
Jester, meanwhile, was kneeling in front of the barge's control panel. He had pushed aside the hair at the nape of his neck, revealing the port beneath his skin. He had connected the panel's data cable directly to his own nervous system. His eyes had rolled back, showing only the whites. His body trembled slightly, twitching as if caught in an electric current.
In that moment, Jester was not in the physical world. His mind was inside the barge's primitive operating system. For him, codes were not green and black lines, but tangible objects. Firewalls were paper castles, and passwords were children's riddles.
*Manifest File: Accessed.*
*Load Description: Scrap Metal (Type-4).*
*Weight: 4.2 Tons.*
Jester deleted this data with his mental fingers. He wrote new ones in their place. This wasn't hacking; this was changing the label of reality.
"Calm down, Detective," Jester said, pulling the cable from the nape of his neck. His eyes had returned to their normal hazel color, but momentary purple glints danced in their pupils. "If they search for us as humans, they'll find us. But systems are lazy. If you tell them we're dangerous, but *differently* dangerous, they get confused."
The barge suddenly lurched. The floor slid beneath their feet as the magnetic motors engaged. They were ascending.
Kaelen held his breath. The barge was accelerating towards the energy shield. Even though they were inside the windowless container, the intensity of the purple light from outside seeped through the seams of the metal walls.
A moment later, everything turned red.
A laser scanner on the edge of the ceiling passed over them. Kaelen felt that red line scanning his body. His heart was pounding against his ribcage. *This is it,* he thought. *The alarm will sound, and this metal box will be our coffin.*
But the alarm didn't sound.
Instead, a mechanical, emotionless female voice was heard from the barge's speakers:
*"Warning: High-Level Bio-Hazardous Waste Detected. Decomposed Organic Material. Radiation Scan Aborted. Quarantine Protocol Skipped. Redirecting to Processing Facility."*
The red light extinguished, replaced by an approving green light. The barge lurched and passed through to the other side of the shield, into the city.
In the darkness, Jester's teeth gleamed. The sad clown makeup on his face looked even more unsettling in the dim light.
"You don't need to be a virus to enter the system, Detective," he said, his voice a delighted whisper. "Sometimes you just need to convince them you're trash. Radiation sensors are sensitive; they shut down to protect themselves when they detect biological waste. A simple survival instinct. Even machines have it."
***
The barge disgorged them into Nova-Veridia's guts, deep within the Industrial Zone.
This was a hell of smoke and noise, never seen by the city's glittering skyscrapers above. Massive pressing machines rose and fell rhythmically, and melting pots emitted an orange glow. The air was so heavy it felt like it needed to be chewed rather than breathed.
There were no humans around. Only spider-like welding robots and heavy load carriers moving on rails. Human workers were too fragile for this place.
Jester and Kaelen hid behind a pile of scrap. But there was a problem. Jester's new leg was affected by the factory's intense magnetic fields. With every step, the servos in his knee emitted a high-pitched hum, attracting metal dust from the ground.
"Can't you silence your leg?" Kaelen hissed.
"It's not a leg, it's a prototype, Detective," Jester replied, tapping his knee. "It's not broken in yet."
Just then, there was movement on one of the overhead rails. A spherical Security Drone with a single red eye—a "Watcher"—had heard the sound. It descended with the whirring of its propellers. Its red optical lens focused on the scrap pile where they were hiding.
Kaelen reached under his trench coat, gripping the hilt of "The Judge." "I'll take it down."
"No!" Jester placed his hand on Kaelen's shoulder. His touch was surprisingly strong. "We need to be silent. If you fire a single shot, the whole factory will come down on us. We can't leave a trace."
The Watcher Drone glided towards their hiding spot. Its scanner light swept over the metal piles. In a few seconds, it would see them.
Jester took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and reached for the exposed main lighting cables on the factory wall. The moment his white-gloved fingers touched the cable, the veil between the physical and digital worlds thinned.
He was an "Error." A tear in the universe's code. And he didn't just transmit electricity, he *persuaded* it.
Suddenly, all the ceiling lights in that section of the factory began to flicker. But this wasn't a random malfunction. The frequency of the lights vibrated in a pattern too fast for the human eye to perceive, yet complex enough to turn a machine's optical sensors into hell.
The Watcher Drone froze in mid-air. Its red eye rapidly expanded and contracted. Jester's light signals had created a logic loop in the drone's processor. The light, like Morse code, pumped the command "Error. Restart. Error. Overload" into the drone's brain.
The drone began to spin around its own axis like a drunken fly. One of its propellers stopped, and it crashed into the wall with a metallic shriek, falling to the ground. It lay motionless, emitting smoke.
Kaelen stared at the wreckage in astonishment. "What did you do to it?"
Jester pulled his hand from the cable. A faint wisp of smoke curled from his fingertips. There was a tired but satisfied expression on his face.
"I asked it a riddle it couldn't solve," he said. Then he moved his fingers as if typing on an imaginary keyboard in the air. "And I deleted the error log. The report going to central now reads: *Routine Maintenance: Successful. Battery Replacement Required.* Nobody will come to check."
***
As they emerged from the labyrinths of the Industrial Zone and reached the streets of the Lower City, Nova-Veridia's familiar, suffocating atmosphere hit them.
Here, the rain never stopped. The lights of neon signs reflected on the wet asphalt, and the streets overflowed with the steam of cheap noodle stalls and the smell of desperation. People walked like ghosts, heads bowed, in their grey trench coats.
But tonight, there was a different weight in the air. Everyone had stopped, looking up.
On a holographic screen covering the side of a massive skyscraper, the Consortium's logo—three intertwined golden rings—rotated. Then an AI-generated announcer with perfect facial features appeared. Her voice echoed through every street of the city.
*"Attention, Citizens of Nova-Veridia. The Mandatory Update Package for Public Safety and Continuity has been approved."*
Jester and Kaelen mingled with the crowd, looking at the screen.
*"The time has come to break free from the limitations of the physical body,"* the announcer continued, her voice soothing yet commanding. *"The Grand Reset is commencing. The consciousness of all citizens will be uploaded to the secure Cloud Network. Your current organic bodies will be recycled for the city's energy needs. Do not resist. This is not an end, but an eternal beginning."*
The announcer's image disappeared, replaced by a massive, red countdown timer. The numbers flowed backward.
**47 HOURS 59 MINUTES.**
Whispers of horror rose from the people in the street. Some began to cry, while others simply collapsed where they stood. Kaelen's face had turned ashen. He had clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles were white.
"They're going to kill them all," Kaelen said, his voice trembling with rage. "Recycling their bodies... They're going to use people as fuel."
Jester, meanwhile, had tilted his head slightly, looking at the massive countdown. The permanent, painted expression of sadness on his face hadn't changed, but a pure, sharp intelligence gleamed in his hazel eyes. He wasn't afraid. On the contrary, he looked like a grandmaster at a chessboard.
He pulled a crumpled apple from his pocket—where he found it was a mystery—and took a noisy bite.
"Perfect," he said, his mouth full.
Kaelen looked at him in disbelief. "Perfect? We have less than 48 hours!"
Jester tossed the apple in the air, caught it, and turned to Kaelen. The blue paint at the corners of his lips curved upwards with his real smile. This smile wasn't friendly; it was a hunter's smile.
"We have a deadline, Detective. This is great," he said, his eyes locked on the red countdown. "I work better under pressure. Plus, they told us exactly when they're going to end the game. This tells us exactly when we need to cheat."
Limping, he walked into the crowd, towards the neon-lit darkness of the city.
"Let's go. We have a few visits to make before we blow the city's fuses."