Chapter 13 Packet Loss

Chapter 13 Packet Loss


Alex ran.

As a scavenger - head down, shoulders in, weaving between the towers of black server racks. His lungs burned. His lame leg cried with each step.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Kalu was walking behind him, with slow, steady steps. He wasn't chasing. He was hunting.@

You can not conceal yourself in your own house, Admin. The voice echoed off the metal walls, and it was everywhere at the same time.

Alex skidded around a corner into Sector 7. The air was still smelling of ozone of the fried generator.

\[HP: 28/100\]
\[MANA: 2/30\]

Running on nothing. The Sentinel was a pool of useless mercury in the lobby. Somewhere behind him Jason was bleeding. And Efe was doing what a dragon did when it was feigning helplessness.

He needed a weapon. Not the cleaver. A System weapon.

His gaze fell on a bunch of high-voltage cables suspended on the ceiling, which had been stripped in the previous repairs.

A trap.

He grabbed the cable. Still humming with the leftover power of the emergency batteries, thick as his wrist.

Come out, rat, come out, hissed Kalu.

Alex said nothing. He leaned his back against a server rack and shut his eyes.

Code Vision came on. The world became green wireframe.

He was not able to see Kalu. The Stealth Cloak was too advanced. It discontinued the stream of data, made Kalu a floating patch of nothingness.

But even still data was data.

Alex saw it go. Turning round the corner, slow and cautious.

Three. Two. One.

"Now!"

He was whipping the live cable.

CRACK.

It hit empty air. Sparks rained down.

The static vanished.

Too slow, a voice said, in his ear.

Alex spun.

Kalu appeared, out of nothing, daggers in hand and flashing violet.

Game over, Kalu said, and plunged both blades into the throat of Alex.

Time went strange.

Alex looked at the blades that were heading towards him. He was able to see the code running through the steel.

\[ITEM: VOID DAGGERS\]
\[EFFECT: IGNORES ARMOR\]

No room to dodge. Nothing to block with. Two mana left in the tank.

Two mana. Not sufficient to a spell. Not sufficient to make a compilation.

But perhaps enough to glitch.

Alex ceased to attempt to move his body. Instead, he attempted to relocate the server.

"Packet Loss," he gasped.

He entered the Admin Console and shot himself.

COMMAND: LAG_SWITCH(0.5s)
TARGET: USER_LYTA

A suicidal command. He was asking the System to sever his own existence half a second out of reality.

\[Caution: Data corruption imminent.
\[COST: 50 HP (TRANSduced into LIFE FORCE)\]

He was at 28 HP.

He burnt it.

ZZZT.

The world broke.

No pain. Worse than pain. Absence. A fraction of a second he was nothing, a corrupted file with no home, scattered pixels.

The daggers came forward.

They ought to have cut off his head. The blades went right through his neck. No blood. No impact. Only a flash of electricity where his body ought to have been, as in a video.

"What?" Kalu fell, the impetus driving him on, through the apparition of Alex and beyond it.

POP.

Reality snapped closed.

Alex came back solid.

\[HP: 1/100\]

The agony came suddenly. His nose burst open. Vision went red. He struck his knees and vomited, and it seemed to him that his body had been turned inside out and stuffed back in the wrong way.

But alive.

Kalu was a few feet in front, with his back turned, thrown off his balance. He turned slowly around, daggers in hand.

What are you? he said.

Alex raised his head, dripping blood down his chin. He smiled, red-toothed.

I told you, he wheezed. "I'm the Admin."

Kalu snarled and lunged.

Before he reached there a shadow fell over him.

Not Alex's shadow.

Efe came out of a server rack. The limp was gone. She walked slowly and silently with a confidence that was not human. Her eyes were gold, and her pupils were drawn up in vertical lines.

"You're making a mess," she said. The words were low and there was a vibration Alex felt in his back teeth.

Kalu drew a dagger at her. "Get back, civilian!"

Efe reached out and grabbed his face.

Her hand remained a normal human hand. The dagger hit her forearm and sparked off without leaving a mark.

\[DRAGON SCALES (HIDDEN) (PASSIVE).

"Civilian?" she said.

She squeezed.

CRUNCH.

It was a wet, final sound, as of something thick being trampled down. Kalu did not make a sound. His helmet was drawn in. Efe picked him up with one hand and placed him in the server rack.

BANG.

The metal frame bent. Sparks fell. Kalu slipped down to the floor and remained there, with his head in the wrong position.

\[TARGET KILLED: COMMANDER KALU\].
\[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 3000\]
\[LEVEL UP! (LEVEL 5 -> LEVEL 6)\]

Alex was bathed in gold light. His nose was stuffy. Felt the torn muscle in his side knit itself back together. Air got into his lungs in the right way again after a few minutes.

\[HP: 100/100\]
\[MANA: 40/40\]

He sat a moment and only breathed. Then he gazed at Efe.

She was wiping her hand on the tactical vest of Kalu, and her face was scrunched up as though she had stepped in something.

You owe me, she said, and her eyes returned to their usual size. "That was unsanitary."

"You're right. I owe you," Alex said, getting to his feet.

He walked to the body. He kept his eyes off the helmet. He examined the equipment.

The Void Daggers were light, and perfectly balanced. He took them. Unstrapped the Stealth Cloak off the shoulders of Kalu-- it glowed like oil on water-- and carried that away, as well.

Nice gear, he said to himself.

He drew out the map. The other members of the Iron Vanguard team were still outside the blast doors awaiting the signal of Kalu.

He gazed at the body.

A gloomy thought formed.

"Efe," Alex said. Assist me in getting him on the table.

"Why?" She scrunched up her nose. "He's dead."

He is hardware, Alex said, and took the soldering iron off the workbench. And I must send a message to his friends.
"System," he said quietly. "Open Root Access. Bypass Death Protocol."

\[WARNING: NECROMANCY IS A FORBIDDEN ART.\]
\[ADMIN OVERRIDE: ACCEPTED.\]

"Let's see if we can reboot him," Alex said.