Anya's scream was a physical jolt to my system. "Do it now!" She was a wall of defiance between me and the silent, data-deleting horror. There was no time to hesitate, no time to second-guess. Her sacrifice could not be for nothing.
I ran. My boots echoed on the cold metal floor of the server room. I ran straight for the glowing blue pillar at the center of the room, the system's heart. The second Cleanser entity turned its faceless head towards me and began to glide silently in my direction, a wave of digital death ready to cut me off.
I held the Data Spike in my hand, Caden's corrupted fragment already attached to it. It felt warm, pulsing with a chaotic energy that was the complete opposite of the clean, orderly hum of the server core. I reached the core, a massive structure of humming crystal and light. A single maintenance port glowed on its surface.
I did not hesitate. I slammed the Data Spike into the port.
The connection was instant. The room's cool blue light immediately shifted, turning a deep, angry blood-red. A system-wide alarm blared, not just in my ears, but seemingly inside my very skull. On my HUD, a massive countdown timer appeared, dominating my vision.
[DATA DECRYPTION IN PROGRESS: 60 SECONDS]
At the same time, a new alert flashed across my screen, an alert I knew every single player in the match was also seeing.
[WARNING: SYSTEM KERNEL UNDER ATTACK. ALL HOSTILES REDIRECTED TO SERVER CORE.]
I had just painted a giant, glowing target on our location for every other player on the map. I had turned our secret mission into the new King of the Hill.
The next sixty seconds were the purest form of chaos I had ever experienced.
Anya was in a desperate dance with the first Cleanser. She could not hurt it, but she could distract it. She threw her last grenade, not at the entity, but at the floor next to it. The explosion of light and sound caused the Cleanser's form to flicker and destabilize for a precious second. She was buying me time, one microsecond at a time. Her health was still low, and every near-miss from the creature's deleting touch was a gamble she could not afford to lose.
I turned my attention to the second Cleanser, the one that was coming for me and the server core. I could not let it get close. Remembering my fight in the void, I did not shoot at the creature itself. I fired my assault rifle at the server rack right next to it. The bullets sparked, creating a shower of disruptive energy. The Cleanser recoiled, its form stuttering. Its white, inner core was exposed for a moment.
"Anya, its core!" I yelled.
Anya understood instantly. While her Cleanser was still recovering from the grenade, she turned and fired a quick burst from her rifle at the core of my target. The bullets hit home. The entity dissolved into nothingness. One down.
But there was no time for relief. A loud, rhythmic booming sound started at the blast door. The players outside were trying to get in. A health bar for the door appeared on my HUD, and it was already starting to tick down.
[50 SECONDS]
The remaining Cleanser was now solely focused on Anya. It was relentless. She dodged and weaved, her movements becoming more desperate. She was a leaf in a hurricane, and her luck was about to run out.
The blast door groaned, a large dent appearing in its center. They were getting through.
[40 SECONDS]
I had to help her. I reloaded my rifle, my hands slick with sweat. I repeated my trick, firing at the server racks near the Cleanser to try and expose its core again. But this time, it seemed to adapt. It ignored the energy splash, its focus entirely on Anya. It lunged.
Anya was too slow. The creature's arm, a limb of pure anti-code, brushed her leg.
Her health did not drop. Instead, her leg dissolved into a shower of red static from the knee down. She screamed, a sound of pure agony and terror, as she fell to the floor. [ANYA SUFFERING FROM DATA CORRUPTION. MOVEMENT DISABLED.]. She was not just wounded; she was being erased.
[30 SECONDS]
The Cleanser stood over her, ready to finish the job.
No. I would not let that happen.
I ran towards it, firing my rifle, screaming a wordless challenge. The Cleanser turned its attention to me, the greater threat. It lunged, its deleting arm swinging towards me.
I threw myself in the way of its attack, my body shielding Anya from the blow. I braced for the feeling of being erased.
But it did not come. The creature's arm hit me, but instead of deleting my body, the corrupted code of its limb reacted violently with my Ouroboros chest piece. The legendary armor sparked and short-circuited. Then, my assault rifle in my hands dissolved into a cloud of glitchy static. It was gone. The creature's attack had destroyed my weapon instead of me.
I was now down to my last pistol. But I had saved Anya. And more importantly, I had saved the data transfer.
[10 SECONDS]
The blast door outside finally gave way. It exploded inwards with a deafening crash. A dozen heavily armed players stormed into the room, their eyes wide with confusion and greed. They saw me, the VIP. They saw the glowing server core. They saw the countdown.
[5... 4... 3...]
They all raised their weapons to fire at me.
[2... 1... 0...]
[DATA DECRYPTION COMPLETE. MAP FRAGMENT TRANSMITTED TO ORACLE.]
A flash of blue light erupted from the server core. My mission was a success. The moment the transfer completed, a swirling vortex of blue code, a perfect circle of calm in the chaos, opened up in the floor next to me. It was a backdoor. An escape route sent by the Oracle.
The room full of players opened fire. But they were too late. I grabbed the wounded, terrified Anya, pulling her off the floor. I threw us both into the vortex just as a hail of bullets ripped through the space where we had been.
We were thrown out of the fire, tumbling through the clean, blue code of the system's backend. We landed in a heap in the familiar, dusty darkness of the Undercroft, collapsing in front of the Oracle's flickering campfire.
We were alive. We were battered, broken, and disarmed. But we had succeeded.
The Oracle looked up from her fire. She was holding a small, crystalline shard that pulsed with a soft, steady blue light. It was a map fragment. Clean, stable, and readable. "You did it, boy," she rasped, a hint of true surprise in her voice. "You actually did it. The first piece of the Exile's Path."
I felt a surge of triumph. We had done the impossible. But as I looked at my own HUD, a new status effect appeared below my health bar. It was not a temporary buff or a debuff from a match. It was permanent. It was written in blood-red letters, a mark that I knew could never be removed.
[SYSTEM ANATHEMA (LEVEL 1) - You have been permanently marked as a threat by the System. The chance of encountering System Anomalies (Cleansers, etc.) during matches has permanently increased. Your presence may now destabilize game arenas.]
I had the first piece of my map to freedom. But I had paid a terrible price. I was no longer just a Marked Man to other players.
I was now an official enemy of the game itself.