The sky above was a bruised shade of violet, tinged with the faint glow of artificial neon that flickered across the shattered skyline. Zane stood alone on the rooftop, the wind whipping against his coat like a predator testing its prey. His knuckles were bloodied, and his breath came in shallow gasps. The mission was done—but the cost had only just begun to tally.
His reflection shimmered faintly in the cracked glass of a rooftop sign, eyes hollow and rimmed with fury. The man who had just taken down the first Tier Guardian wasn't the same man who had once been betrayed, beaten, and left for dead. That man had burned away in the digital crucible of Root Access.
"Phase One complete," the System droned within his neural link.
But Zane didn't answer. His mind was still echoing with the final scream of the Tier Guardian—a synthetic voice corrupted by corrupted code, shrieking as Zane overrode its protocols with brutal precision. The battle hadn't just been physical. It had been a war of code, instinct, and raw vengeance.
The rooftop door burst open behind him. Zane didn't turn.
"I saw it," came a voice—low, smooth, laced with intelligence and hidden emotion. Raven.
She stepped forward from the shadows, her obsidian-black hair rippling with the wind. Her eyes were focused on the blood staining his knuckles, but she didn't flinch. Instead, she pulled out a small data-drive and held it up.
"I cracked part of the data left behind in the Guardian's core. You need to see this."
Zane took the drive wordlessly and plugged it into his wrist port. The stream of corrupted code that erupted before his augmented vision wasn't random—it was deliberate. A signature. A taunt.
DRK.EXE: INITIATED
WELCOME BACK, ZANE.
He stiffened. That name—the one he'd buried deep in his past. That program should have been erased a decade ago when the system betrayed him.
"They knew you'd come back," Raven said.
Zane's jaw clenched. "They never stopped watching."
Silence stretched between them. The shadows on the rooftops stretched longer. Beneath them, the city pulsed with corrupted rhythm—a network of power and decay, a symphony of false gods and desperate puppets.
"I'm going after the next layer," Zane said, voice like steel dragged across concrete.
"You're not ready. This... this isn't just code anymore, Zane. It's something alive. It's mutating."
He turned to her, his expression unreadable. "Then I'll mutate with it."
Raven stepped closer. "You're changing. You know that, right? Not just your body. Your mind. Your emotions. You're getting... darker."
Zane's laugh was a low, bitter thing. "You think this city was ever built for light?"
Her hand brushed his wrist. "Just don't forget who you were."
"I haven't," he replied coldly. "That's exactly why I won't stop."
The night split with the screech of sirens as another node of the Root Access network shimmered into view on his HUD. This one wasn't buried in cyberspace. It was inside the old NeoCore tower—a fortress rumored to house the sleeping remnants of the Prime Directive AI. The birthplace of the System. The place where Zane had once stood before losing everything.
Mission Initialized:
INTRUDE NEOVECTOR VAULT
OBJECTIVES: INFILTRATE. LOCATE PRIME MEMORY CORE. EXTRACT MASTER KEY FRAGMENT.
PENALTY FOR FAILURE: MEMORY CORRUPTION - 12%
Zane narrowed his eyes.
"12%?" Raven echoed, pale. "That's a kill shot if it hits your cognition bank."
He cracked his neck and stepped to the ledge.
"I'm already dying every second I don't take control."
With that, he jumped—falling into the abyss of the city below, a black comet slicing through a world of hollow data and blood-soaked asphalt.
---
The descent was long, chaotic, and relentless. He bounced off automated signs, twisted mid-air through neon billboards, and landed on the fire escape with a grunt. By the time he reached the alley, the HUD was blinking red.
ROOT ACCESS NETWORK: ENGAGED.
SECURITY ENCRYPTION: ADAPTIVE.
LIFEFORCE DETECTION: HOSTILE PRESENCE.
His boots crunched against broken glass as he approached the NeoCore Tower. Security drones buzzed overhead, but he moved like a shadow. His presence, masked with decoy subroutines Raven had slipped into his system, let him pass the first firewall unnoticed.
Inside, the tower was a labyrinth of steel and memories. Every corridor triggered flashbacks—of his betrayal, the day he'd been locked out of his own creation, sold to the corporations that built Root Access into a weapon.
He made it to the lower chamber. The Prime Memory Core.
It was alive.
The data swirled like a storm inside the vault. But something else was in the room. A shape. A mirror.
It was... him.
A clone? A mimic? No. It was an echo—of Zane, before Root Access. Before pain. Before the code had rewritten his morality.
The copy smiled.
"Would you kill yourself to win?" it asked.
Zane stared.
"No," he said. "I'd kill what's left of me."
And then he attacked.
The battle was savage. Fists met fists, fire met fire. Each move mirrored, anticipated, but Zane was no longer that man. He was sharper. Meaner. More ruthless.
He tore through the phantom, piece by piece, until it was reduced to code and screams.
The core unlocked.
MASTER KEY FRAGMENT ACQUIRED.
NEW DIRECTIVE: PURGE SYSTEM LIMITERS.
Zane stood in the flickering light of the open core. He didn't smile. He didn't feel triumph.
He felt... nothing.
Whatever part of him had still clung to the idea of redemption was gone now. This wasn't about revenge anymore. This was war.
As he walked out of the vault, Raven's voice came through his comms.
"Zane. You okay?"
He didn't answer.
Because the mask had burned away.
And the monster had just begun to roar.