17. TheKrash
TheKrash
Playlist: The Drain - Bad Omens, HEALTH, SWARM
Kael
I feel like my body has been slammed into my office sofa, my teeth rattling from the sheer force of impact on the hard cushions.
For a moment I just lay there, startled from the DreamNet drop back into the reality of my office.
It’s dark. Only the glow of my monitor glimmers blue on the walls, but my head flashes with bright white light from a searing pain in my temples.
The lab outside is lit up like a nightclub, code blinking, warnings flashing, and alarms buzzing all around me like one of Ash’s stage shows.
The overhead LED lights pulse, as the servers, stacked in towering columns, begin gleaming with red dots of errors.
LINK is activating firewalls, forcing my code to rewrite itself to accommodate whatever the fuck Vikktor released into the TheKast feed tonight. How the hell did he get past my security locks?
DR. RYUDON
SERVER COLLAPSE DETECTED
WAITING FOR YOUR COMMAND
LINK’s voice fills the lab as I run out of my office, head spinning, feeling slightly concussed.
I run to the main console and lean over it, desperate to know what exactly is happening.
I don’t bother to take the DreamNet band off, my focus is locked on the glowing images before me.
Not only is a virus tearing through my system, destroying years of hard work and dedication, but one anomaly flare is spreading over the city grid like spilled blood. The other just vanished into thin air.
The patch I ran earlier seems to be containing most of the civic system’s damage, but the DreamNet is a fucking mess. I type furiously to make sure that it doesn’t implode and trap people inside or throw them out violently, like it did to Lyra and I.
DR. RYUDON
ANOMALY DETECTED IN THE MAIN FRAME
CORRUPTION IMMINENT
Dammit. The two anomalies. One spiking, spreading across a sector, and one vanishing, swallowed in my mainframe by the virus Vikktor deployed. That special ops idiot team knows nothing of my system and is clearly destroying it before my eyes.
Just then, the second anomaly reappears.
I tune out the noise of the alarms and chaos in the lab and focus on the feed as it blooms alive.
The grid lights up with an odd shape, a human silhouette, flickering in and out like corrupted code.
A symbol follows, as bright light forms in the center, like a shining four-pointed star with an aura around it. I freeze.
“What the hell have they injected into the grid?!” I yell, but no one could hear me over these alarms even if I weren’t alone.
Ember barges in at a runner’s pace holding her DataLINK. Her eyes are wide with alarm. “What’s happening?! Is that what I think it...? “
“Quiet!” I snap, cutting through her panic mid-breath.
Ember stops dead in her steps, guilt creeping in over her face.
Good. She should feel it. This is partly on her for blindly following her father’s orders, executing an update she knew damn well could not be trusted. I don’t have time for her apologies—not when my entire system is bleeding, being hollowed out from the inside.
Ember steps closer, her voice shaking. “Kael, I didn’t know it would...”
“I know,” I cut in again, harsher this time, because if I let her finish, if I let myself acknowledge the look on her face, I’ll lose seconds I don’t have. “You followed his orders; that’s how he gets you. Believe me, I know.”
I drag my focus back to the center console, fingers already flying, rewriting, rerouting, fighting my own creation like it’s turned against me. “LINK, can you hear me?”
YES DR. RYUDON
I’M HERE
Thank the stars. “Move the ZenCam images to the wall and magnify!” My gaze shifts to the giant system of screens. Ember joins me, her eyes locked on the images coming in. She remains silent.
The city fragments into a grid of live and archived feeds pulled from ZenCam, VikkCorp’s all-seeing eye. Zen, as in calm, balance, stillness. The illusion that everything is exactly where it should be.
The citywide surveillance consists of lenses embedded in streetlights, transit rails, storefront glass, even the undersides of public benches.
It watches everything, all the time, and then sells the footage back to citizens as protection or peace of mind.
I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t appreciate it for what it really is, a way to enforce balance and to flatten rebel dissent into compliance.
Non-citizen sectors and U21s call it something else: WatcherWeb.
Right away, I recognize the footage as the “low-value” sector. Of course, the purge didn’t touch any other part of the city. “LINK, zoom in to the non-citizen zones.” I continue to watch the devastation unfold. The street level is another story.
Power flickers in and out, whole blocks are dark. No neon, no holo-ads, no transit rails humming overhead. En4ce drones move through the streets in sweeping formations, their lasers set to stun. People scatter but don’t make it far.
Ember looks down as the feed expands, someone is dragged from a doorway, another collapses mid-run as the neural implant inserted into the non-citizen shorts out violently.
That’s how he did it. The same device meant to observe the non-citizens, to feed them, track their vitals, dispense credits, has been weaponized against them. The virus kills cleanly, disables them, then scrambles their bodies at the molecular level.
Citizenship revoked without corporate paperwork or patrols, quietly and discreetly and most of all, at zero cost to the Corporation. Annihilation is expensive, takes money out of Vikktor’s and the shareholder’s wallets.
“I knew something was wrong, why did I believe he wouldn’t...” Ember starts to beat herself up, her voice fraying at the edges.
I cut her off with a raised hand again. “Look.” My eyes remain locked on the screens. “Something or someone interrupted it.”
She blinks. “What?”
I step closer to the wall, scanning the data feeds running beside the footage.
The update log shows me everything I need to know.
Captured by LINK, her measures to stop it, sequester it.
It’s all there along with Vikktor’s code, brutal and efficient.
Threaded through it is something strange, a massive distortion, a spike that shouldn’t exist.
A void? I don’t say the word aloud. I haven’t seen a void-virus like that in years.
Entire sections of LINK’s grid show corrupted timestamps, enforcement routines failing, and drones freezing midair before dropping lifelessly into the streets.
In some zones, the purge simply...stopped.
It wasn’t reversed, just wasn’t fully executed.
Every file after the event was renamed to .
VOID, like time itself hit a wall and just disappeared.
Ember sees it now. Her breath catches. “Dr. Ryudon, that’s not a system failure.”
“I know.” My voice is rough. “Someone did this: an anomaly, a powerful U21.” Someone really powerful, who didn’t understand the cost of intervening blindly.
The feeds keep rolling. Med-drones begin to fill the sector, but the virus did its damage, just not completely, the way Vikktor had intended.
I don’t know which is worse.
Ember clears her throat. “How many?”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. The number continues to tick upward in the corner of the display.
“This was never an update. It was a virus, created to erase non-citizens,” I say quietly. “And whoever stopped it, didn’t even know what they were doing.”
A person? A U21. But where? Still out there? Or hacked into my system?
I touch the screens to move the images around, ridding ourselves of the carnage. “LINK, can you lock on the location of the nearest anomaly?”
SCANNING DR. RYUDON
ONE MOMENT
On-screen, LINK brings up the city grid, the anomaly moves then stumbles.
The form flickers, breaking into static, then stabilizes again.
A strange sound comes through the speakers like a wave of broken frequencies and distortion, layered until it’s almost unbearable. Ember flinches, covering her ears.
MY APOLOGIES DR. RYUDON
ONE ANOMALY HAS REAPPEARED
PLACING LOCATION ON SCREEN
A single point blooms on the city grid, pulsing out of rhythm, like it’s distressed. My jaw clinches as the map zooms in automatically, layers focusing in, until the coordinates resolve into datapoints that can’t possibly be correct.
VikkCorp. Here in my tower.
It’s not external. Internal.
I straighten slowly. “That’s not possible,” I mutter, fingers already flying as I pull up diagnostics and access logs, No breaches, no flagged entries, no unregistered users inside the system at this hour. So...not hacked.
ANOMALY STATUS: DESCENDING
LINK chimes back in.
Descending.
Whatever this is...it isn’t attacking. It’s falling deeper into the architecture of my own system, past my firewalls, slipping through layers that should have been sealed to intrusion.
My hand hovers over the command code, readying to terminate whatever it is.
It’s protocol, I should terminate it, purge the anomaly before it spreads through the system.
That’s what Vikktor would demand. That’s what I normally would do, but something tugs at my conscience.
I remain still, a stark contrast to Ember’s incessant fluttering around trying to make sense of all this.
A strange sensation crawls through my veins and slithers up my spine then disappears as if it were a fire that water has extinguished. Calmness and clarity follow as I remember what happened in DreamNet.
LINK will contain it and destroy it.
“Shit! Lyra!” LINK is rewriting scripts to cure this infestation, so I shift my focus. I need to make sure she’s safe after being dropped out of DreamNet.
“LINK—call Ash. Now!” I yell into the air of the lab as I walk over to the DreamNet server. It’s back up and running, but alarm lights are flashing and blinking with fervor.
“Where are you, Little Taiyō?” I murmur. “Where did you go?” I pull the keyboard and begin typing to recover any dream data.