The stairwell ended at a heavy blast door painted with hazard stripes. The air down here was frigid, smelling of ozone and recycled dust.
Caleb stood before the door, his breath misting in the red light of the emergency exit sign. The silver keycard felt heavy in his hand.
"Sub-level 3," Maya whispered, checking the corners with her flashlight. "Why build a blast door for a server room? Unless they were expecting the servers to explode."
"Or expecting something to try and get out," Caleb muttered.
He scanned the door. No electronic lock. No keypad. Just a sleek, recessed slot in the center of the steel.
[OBJECT: GATE_KEEPER]
[ACCESS LEVEL: ADMIN REQUIRED]
[STATUS: WAITING...]
Caleb slid the titanium card into the slot.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, a deep, resonant thrum vibrated through the floor. The heavy steel bolts retracted with the sound of grinding bone. The door hissed open, sliding into the wall.
A blast of freezing air hit them.
"Jesus," Maya shivered, raising her gun. "It's a meat locker."
They stepped inside.
It wasn't a room. It was a cathedral.
The ceiling vanished into darkness thirty feet above. The floor was a grid of black metal grating, suspended over a bottomless pit of cabling and pipes. And stretching out before them were rows and rows of monoliths.
They weren't standard server racks. They were pillars of black glass, six feet tall, pulsating with an inner blue light. They hummed with a sound that wasn't mechanical—it sounded almost like breathing.
"What is this?" Maya asked, her voice echoing in the vast space. "This isn't standard architecture. These servers... they're arranged in a spiral."
Caleb walked to the railing. He looked out over the sea of black pillars.
To Maya, it was impressive technology.
To Caleb, it was blinding.
The Overlay was screaming. Every pillar was a node. Connecting lines of light—thick as ropes—shot between them, weaving a complex web that pulsed with data. And in the center of the spiral, suspended by thick cables, was a massive, spherical structure.
[LOCATION: THE CORE]
[SERVER LOAD: 12%]
[UPTIME: 742 DAYS]
"It's a neural net," Caleb said, his voice awestruck. "A physical one. They didn't just build a computer; they built a synthetic brain."
"A brain?" Maya walked up to the nearest pillar. She reached out to touch the black glass.
"Don't!" Caleb warned.
She stopped inches from the surface. "Why? Is it hot?"
"No," Caleb said, seeing the [FIREWALL: LETHAL] tag hovering over the glass. "It's... sensitive. Static shock could wipe a petabyte of data." (Another lie to save her life).
Maya lowered her hand. She shone her light down the aisle.
"There's a terminal," she said. "In the center. Under that... giant ball thing."
They walked along the metal grating, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the hum of the machine. The closer they got to the center, the more Caleb's head pounded. The data density here was crushing. He felt like he was walking underwater.
In the center of the spiral, beneath the suspended sphere, sat a single, lonely desk.
It was an old wooden desk, contrasting sharply with the futuristic tech. On it sat a dusty keyboard, three monitors, and a half-empty bottle of expensive scotch.
And a chair.
A chair that looked like a dentist's chair mixed with an electric chair. It had a metal headrest with strange, needle-like sensors pointing inward.
"The Neural Link," Caleb whispered. He recognized it. He had seen diagrams in the dark corners of the internet. This was the prototype.
Maya approached the desk. She touched the mouse.
The three monitors flickered to life. No login screen. No password prompt. Just a single window open on the center screen.
It was a chat log.
[USER: ADMIN]
[STATUS: ACTIVE]
The cursor was blinking.
"It's live," Maya said, her grip tightening on her gun. "Someone is logged in. Right now."
She looked around the empty cavern. "Show yourself! Police!"
Silence.
"He's not here, Maya," Caleb said, staring at the screen. "He's remote. Look at the latency."
He pointed to the corner of the screen. PING: 4ms.
"That's a direct line," Caleb said. "He's not in the building. But he's watching."
Suddenly, text began to scroll across the center monitor.
> WELCOME BACK, CALEB.
> I SEE YOU FOUND THE BACK DOOR.
> BRAVE. BUT FOOLISH.
Maya stared at the screen, then at Caleb. "He's talking to you? How does he know you're here?"
"He knows everything," Caleb said, stepping up to the keyboard. "He has the cheat codes."
Caleb typed:
WHO ARE YOU?
The response was instant.
> I AM THE PATCH.
> I AM THE FIX.
> DR. KASPAROV WAS A VISIONARY, BUT HE WAS AFRAID TO COMMIT.
> HE WANTED TO SIMULATE REALITY.
> I WANT TO OPTIMIZE IT.
"Optimize it?" Maya read aloud. "By freezing people? By killing them?"
Caleb typed:
YOU'RE MURDERING PEOPLE.
> NO. I AM DEFRAGGING THE SYSTEM.
> ARTHUR STERLING WAS CORRUPT DATA. HE WAS HOARDING RESOURCES.
> THE SQUATTERS WERE IDLE PROCESSES. WASTING BANDWIDTH.
> I AM FREEING UP MEMORY FOR THE NEW WORLD.
"He's insane," Maya hissed. "He thinks the city is a computer program."
"To him, it is," Caleb said. He looked up at the massive sphere above them. "And with this machine... maybe he's right."
> ENOUGH CHAT.
> YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED ZONE.
> INITIATING PURGE PROTOCOL.
"Purge protocol?" Maya spun around.
From the darkness of the ceiling, a red light began to glow on the underside of the sphere. A low, rising whine filled the room—the sound of a massive capacitor charging.
[WARNING: AREA OF EFFECT ATTACK IMMINENT]
[TYPE: MAGNETIC PULSE]
[DAMAGE: INSTANT DEATH]
"He's going to wipe the room!" Caleb yelled. "Like a hard drive magnet!"
"Run!" Maya shouted.
"No time!" Caleb looked at the blast door—it was a hundred yards away. They'd never make it.
He looked at the chair. The Neural Link chair.
A desperate, suicidal idea formed in his mind.
"The system can't wipe the User," Caleb stammered. "It has fail-safes. It won't fry the Admin chair."
"Caleb, what are you doing?"
Caleb jumped into the metal chair.
"Connect me!" he yelled at Maya.
"What?!"
"Put the headset on me! It's the only shielded spot in the room! If I log in, the system might recognize me as a user and pause the wipe!"
"You'll fry your brain!" Maya screamed. The whine was deafening now. The red light was blinding.
"DO IT!"
Maya didn't hesitate. She slammed the metal halo onto Caleb's head. The needle-sensors dug into his scalp.
"Pull the lever!" Caleb pointed to a manual release on the armrest.
Maya yanked the lever.
CLICK.
The world didn't go black.
It went white.
Caleb screamed as a bolt of pure data shot into his cerebral cortex. The room, Maya, the servers—everything dissolved.
There was no pain. Only code.
He wasn't in the basement anymore. He was floating in a void of infinite white grids. And standing in front of him, looking like a towering avatar of shadow and static, was a figure.
[ENTITY: THE ADMIN]
[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED]
"Hello, Null," the voice boomed inside his head. "Welcome to the lobby."