We stepped into the room, and the black door swung shut behind us, vanishing into the wall and sealing us inside. We were cut off from the Safe Zone, alone in the ghost's room. I held my shotgun at the ready, my eyes scanning every dark corner for a threat. Anya did the same, the low hum of her chainsword the only sound in the dusty silence. But there were no enemies. No traps waiting to spring. There was only dust, silence, and the faint smell of old, ozone-scented electronics.
The room was small and cluttered. It was the complete opposite of the clean, sterile arenas and the blank white Safe Zone. This place felt real, in a way that nothing else in this world did. It felt human.
We began to explore, moving cautiously. I ran my hand along the surface of the desk. It was covered in a thin layer of dust. A half-empty mug sat next to the computer terminal, its contents long since evaporated. This place had been abandoned in a hurry.
On a workbench against the far wall, we found the first real clues about the room's owner. There were no high-end weapons or spare ammunition. Instead, the bench was littered with technology. A dismantled system data pad, its casing pried open to reveal the complex circuitry inside. A set of custom-built tools with fine, delicate points, designed for manipulating microchips. Stacks of memory drives, most of them cracked or scorched from what looked like failed attempts to access them.
Anya picked up one of the custom tools, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She had seen tech like this before. "This isn't a soldier's room," she said, her voice a low whisper. "This is a hacker's den. Look at this stuff. He wasn't just trying to maintain his gear. He was trying to take it apart. He was trying to understand it. Caden wasn't just a grunt for Ouroboros. He was trying to break the game."
The idea that someone could even try to fight the system itself was staggering. The system was like gravity. It was a fundamental law of our existence. To try and break it was an act of supreme rebellion.
We found more personal things that painted a clearer picture of the man who had lived here. On a small shelf above the bed, there was a digital photo frame. It was still on, its power source humming quietly. But it was not showing pictures of family or friends. It was cycling through a series of high-resolution images of real-world landscapes. A dense green forest with sunlight filtering through the leaves. A vast blue ocean with waves crashing on a sandy beach. A snow-capped mountain peak under a sky full of stars.
They were places that did not exist in our world of sterile arenas and neon-drenched cities. They were images of Earth, or a world like it. A stark, painful reminder of everything we had all lost. It was a collection of memories of a home he could never return to.
I noticed there were no pictures of Viper. No pictures of a wife or a child. Nothing to connect him to his brother or the life he had in the real world. It was as if he was trying to forget them, or perhaps he had already been cut off from them. The story was more complicated than I ever imagined.
The main feature of the room, the centerpiece of Caden's entire secret life, was the large computer terminal on the desk. Its screen was dark, but a small light on the casing pulsed with a steady rhythm. It was on standby, waiting. This was it. This was where the real secrets were hidden. This was the treasure chest at the end of the map.
Anya sat down in the dusty chair in front of it. She tapped a key, and the screen flickered to life. A single word glowed in the center of the screen, written in the Ouroboros faction's stark, angular font.
[PASSWORD:]
Of course. It was locked.
Anya leaned forward, examining the terminal. "This is a custom OS," she muttered, more to herself than to me. "It's not connected to the main system network. It's completely isolated. That's why the system couldn't just wipe it." She picked up one of the hacking tools from the workbench. "Let me see if I can bypass it."
She worked for several minutes, trying to use Caden's own tools to break into his machine. But it was no use. The encryption was too strong. It was not a standard system lock. It was something Caden had built himself. A personal vault.
"I can't get in," she said, frustrated. "The encryption is tied directly to the password. There's no back door. We have to guess it. It has to be something important to him. Something personal."
I stood behind her, thinking. What would a man like Caden use as his password? A man who hated this world, who was trying to escape, who was estranged from his family.
I suggested the first things that came to mind. "Try 'Ouroboros'," I said. Anya typed it. [ACCESS DENIED].
"Try 'Freedom'." [ACCESS DENIED].
"Try 'Escape'." [ACCESS DENIED].
"Viper?" [ACCESS DENIED].
We were getting nowhere. I felt a sense of despair creeping in. We had come all this way, only to be stopped by a single word we could not guess.
Then, my eyes fell on the digital photo frame again as it cycled to a new image of a peaceful beach. A memory. It reminded me of the other photograph. The one that was still bound to my inventory. The one I had taken from the pack leader in the Dustgate match. No, that was not right. The first man was a nobody. The pack leader... the one from the fight in the courtyard... he was Caden. I had gotten it mixed up in the chaos.
I focused my thoughts, accessing the item in my inventory. The system projected a holographic image of the photograph into the air in front of us. There was Caden, smiling, looking younger and happier. And there was a woman, and a small child on his shoulders. His family. The family he had left behind.
Anya looked at the hologram. "That's the man from the courtyard match," she said. "Viper's brother."
My eyes scanned the photo, looking for any clue. A word on a shirt. A sign in the background. Anything. And then I saw it. The little girl on his shoulders was wearing a small, silver charm bracelet. The light caught it just right. I could make out the letters engraved on it. A name.
"Anya," I said, my voice barely a whisper. My heart was pounding. "It's not about him. It's not about this world. It's about what he was trying to get back to."
I leaned over her shoulder and typed the name into the password field. Four simple letters.
LILY
The screen flashed a bright green.
[PASSWORD ACCEPTED]
The terminal unlocked.
The screen filled with icons. Dozens of files, most of them with complex, encrypted names. But one folder, right in the center of the screen, was already open. It was labeled in plain, simple text.
[PERSONAL LOGS]
My hand was shaking as I reached out and used the terminal's touch interface. I clicked on the first file, an audio log dated several months ago.
A man's voice filled the silent room. It was Caden's voice. Tired, stressed, but clear and determined.
"Log entry 34," the voice said. "My brother thinks I'm a fool. He thinks power is the only thing that matters in this world. But he's wrong. I've found it. A flaw in the system's core architecture. A vulnerability in the code that governs our reality. It's not a perfect prison. There are seams. There are backdoors."
He paused, and his voice filled with a desperate, burning hope that sent a shiver down my spine.
"I think... I think I've found a way out."