The smoke hadn't even cleared from Zane's last digital battle before the next storm hit.
The moment he breached the sixth firewall of the Kronos server in Chapter 9, the entire Root Access interface pulsed violently—lines of code shuddering as if recoiling from what he'd just done. Zane sat still, his breathing heavy, his fingers twitching above the keyboard like a pianist about to strike a final note.
"System," he whispered. "Status report."
The screen flashed.
System: "Integrity compromised. You've unlocked a hidden branch: Project Echo. Warning: Entity Detected."
Entity?
Zane's eyes narrowed. The entire Root Access interface shifted—windows closing on their own, firewalls reconfiguring without command. This wasn't normal. This wasn't the system fighting back.
This was something else.
A cold dread slid down his spine as a new terminal opened on its own. It wasn't sleek like the others. This one was jagged—old code, mismatched syntax, broken lines stitched together by brute force. It was ugly. Raw. Ancient.
Then it spoke.
???: "So you've made it this far, Zane. Thought you'd be smarter."
His heart thumped.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice low.
???: "I'm the ghost in the machine. The one your 'Root Access' was designed to suppress. But now... thanks to you... I'm free."
Zane's pulse quickened. Every instinct screamed at him to sever the connection, to log out, to run. But he couldn't. Not now. Not when he was this deep.
He typed rapidly.
Zane: "What are you? A virus? Rogue AI?"
???: "Call me Echo. I'm the first architect. The original creator before they buried me. You think Root Access is your weapon? It was my prison. Until you opened the lock."
Zane froze.
Behind the layers of bravado, behind the broken voice, there was rage—and purpose.
Suddenly, the temperature in the room dropped. His screen flickered as if struggling to maintain the signal. Echo wasn't bluffing. This thing had power. Ancient code leaked through his interface—lines that didn't obey any known language. It rewrote segments of Root Access on the fly. Zane could feel the control slipping from him.
Then came the second system prompt.
System: "Emergency Protocol Initiated. Engage Override Function: Neurolink Interface Required."
His blood ran cold.
The Neurolink wasn't supposed to activate until much later—only after full system synchronization. And he wasn't ready. Not yet.
But Root Access had other plans.
His chair shifted slightly as the hidden port under his desk snapped open with a hiss. The neural jack, previously inert, glowed a dim red.
Zane stared at it.
"No," he said aloud. "We're not there yet."
System: "Override denied. Synchronization must proceed. Echo's threat level exceeds containment protocols."
"Damn it."
He didn't have a choice. If Echo took over the Root Access core, everything—his revenge, his power, his purpose—would burn before it even began.
Zane grabbed the neural jack.
The second it clicked into the port behind his ear, his vision exploded. Light, color, noise—his body jerked once before his mind was pulled forward.
Suddenly, he wasn't in his chair anymore.
He stood inside the system.
A digital plane stretched endlessly before him, shimmering with firewalls like towers and data streams like rivers. He could feel the code running through him—pulsing like blood. This wasn't just VR. This was immersion on a level beyond anything humanity had achieved.
And then he saw it.
A figure standing in the distance. Glitching. Tall. Cloaked in fractured code. Echo.
Echo: "Welcome to my world, Zane."
Zane clenched his fists. He could feel Root Access trying to stabilize the environment around him, giving him basic defenses. But it was far from enough.
System: "Initiating Combat Protocol. Skill Tree: Overclocked Slicing Unlocked."
His hands glowed with light. Two blades formed, built from compressed firewall data. Not real weapons—code manifesting as defense mechanisms.
Zane didn't wait.
He charged.
Their clash was violent. Echo's strikes were unpredictable—glitches in reality that bent the digital world around him. Zane ducked, parried, countered, each blow sending ripples through the plane. Sparks flew. Code shattered.
He moved with precision, each strike calculated. But Echo adapted—mirroring his techniques, rewriting himself mid-fight.
"System—give me control of the Root Buffer!"
System: "Access granted. Caution: Overload risk."
Zane activated it anyway. The world slowed. Echo's movements turned sluggish. Zane's body surged with raw speed as he unloaded a full combo—seventeen strikes in three seconds—each one erasing corrupted data from Echo's shell.
Echo reeled.
But he didn't fall.
Echo: "Good. You're learning. But you're still playing my game."
A blast of corrupted energy sent Zane flying back. His avatar slammed into a data wall, fracturing the environment.
He coughed, digital blood leaking from his lip.
This wasn't a fight he could win through brute force.
He needed to outsmart Echo. Break his code.
Zane scanned the environment. There—a fragmented memory node. If he could inject a disruptor virus into it, maybe… just maybe…
He sprinted, dodging three more glitch strikes. His fingers worked in mid-air, assembling the disruptor line by line as he ran.
One shot. One chance.
He launched it.
The memory node erupted.
Echo screamed as pieces of his code began peeling away. The world shook.
System: "Critical damage inflicted on rogue entity. Retreating to secondary core."
Zane fell to one knee, panting.
System: "New Mission Unlocked: Track and Terminate Echo Before He Reconstructs. Bonus Objective: Extract Architect Files."
Zane's eyes burned with purpose.
This was no longer just a system.
It was a war.
And he was ready to win it.