Two months after the Lord's defeat, I received a message that wasn't from the System.
It happened while I was reviewing trade manifests in my office. The holographic screen flickered. Static snow washed over the display, and then a face appeared.
It wasn't a friendly face. It was a young man with pale skin and hollow eyes, sitting in a dark room filled with glowing monitors. He looked like he hadn't seen the sun in years.
"Hello, Evelyn," he said. His voice was distorted, sounding like it was being transmitted through a tunnel.
I immediately slammed the emergency shutdown on the console. It didn't work.
"Don't bother," he laughed. "Your firewall is cute. Like a picket fence in a hurricane."
"Who are you?" I demanded, standing up. My Spatial Compression instinctively activated, warping the air around my hands.
"I'm a Ghost," he said. "A digital nomad. I exist in the spaces between your System's code. I've been watching you, Evelyn Shen. The Reborn Queen. The Titan Slayer."
"What do you want?"
"I want what everyone wants," he said, leaning closer to the camera. "A body. My biological form died... let's see... three hundred years ago, my time. I'm just data now. But you... you have cloning tech in your System shop, don't you? Level 4 Bio-replication."
I stiffened. I had seen the schematics. It was expensive, but possible.
"You want me to build you a body," I said slowly.
"Smart," he grinned. "Here is the deal. I can scrub your code. I can remove the limiters the Celestial Directorate put on your Multiverse Module. I can give you access to the Black Market—the real market. In exchange, you print me a body and upload me."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I brick your Base Core," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I shut down your barrier. I open your gates. I delete your inventory. You'll be sitting in the dark with a thousand zombies before you can say 'System Error'."
The threat was real. If he was in the code, he could kill us all.
"Give me a minute," I said, buying time.
I closed my eyes. I didn't access the external interface. I went deeper. I accessed the Base Core itself—the physical heart of the valley.
System, I thought. This unit is compromised. Requesting manual purge.
[WARNING: MANUAL PURGE WILL RESET ALL USER PREFERENCES]
[DATA LOSS: 10%]
[DURATION: 6 HOURS]
"Do it," I thought.
"Hey," the Ghost said, his image glitching. "What are you doing? I see your processes moving..."
"I'm cleaning house," I said aloud.
"Wait! No! We can deal!"
"There is no deal," I said. "You threatened my family. You don't get a seat at the table. You get erased."
[PURGING...]
[EXTERNAL CONNECTION SEVERED]
The screen went black. The lights in the base flickered and died, plunging us into total darkness. The hum of the barrier vanished.
"Emergency lights!" Alex shouted from the corridor. The red glow of the backup generators kicked on.
The base was running on minimal power. The barrier was down. But the Ghost was gone.
"Status?" I asked, panting.
[PURGE COMPLETE]
[SYSTEM REBOOTING...]
[GUEST ACCESS: REVOKED]
We survived. But it was a wake-up call. The System wasn't invincible. And we weren't the only ones playing the game.