The first thing Jake felt was the cold bite of a steel crowbar wedged under his collarbone.
Pain flared through his chest, sharp and white-hot. He tried to gasp, but his lungs felt like they were filled with wet cement. The air in the room tasted like stale cigarette smoke and ozone.
[ALERT: Biological Chassis integrity at 31%. Foreign object detected near vital artery.]
Yuri's text projected directly onto Jake's optic nerve in a sterile, glowing blue font. The clinical voice echoed in the hollow space of his jawbone.
"Wake up, Father. You are being dismantled."
Jake's eyes snapped open.
A single bulb flickered overhead, casting harsh shadows across a cramped, filthy apartment. Rain lashed against a cracked window obscured by cheap plastic blinds. The neon glow of the city bled through the slats, painting the peeling wallpaper in sickly shades of pink and green.
Straddling his chest was the woman from the alley.
She had a cigarette clamped between her teeth. Her heavy combat boots dug into Jake's bruised ribs. She was grunting with effort, her hands gripping the crowbar with white knuckles as she tried to pry his left arm from its socket.
"Come on, you piece of junk," she muttered, ash falling onto Jake's trench coat. "Pop loose."
She leaned her entire body weight back onto the crowbar.
The metal dug deeper into Jake's flesh. The agony was blinding, pulling a raw, choked scream from his throat. He was just a man again, flesh and bone, and his body was failing.
"Stop," Jake rasped, blood bubbling on his lips.
The woman froze. She looked down at him, her eyes wide with surprise. She had a jagged scar running down her left cheek and hair shaved close on one side.
"Well, look at that," she said, her voice rough like sandpaper. "The meat is still breathing."
"Get off me."
"Not happening, buddy," she said, shifting her weight to pin him harder. "You're a walking goldmine. That chrome arm is worth a ticket out of Sector 4."
She adjusted her grip on the crowbar and prepared to yank it again.
[THREAT DETECTED. Calculating optimal disengagement.]
"Yuri," Jake thought, panic and rage flooding his system. "Get her off."
[Override engaged. Forgive me, Father. This will cause muscular tearing.]
Jake didn't even have time to brace himself. His left arm moved on its own. It was a blur of liquid chrome and terrifying speed.
Before the woman could blink, Jake's synthetic hand snapped up and grabbed the thick iron of the crowbar. He didn't just stop her leverage. He crushed the metal.
The crowbar warped and folded under his grip like wet cardboard.
The woman gasped, dropping the ruined tool. She scrambled backward, reaching for her waist.
Yuri wasn't done. Jake's body surged upward, driven by the cold math of the OS. His human muscles screamed as they were forced to match the speed of the cybernetics.
Jake's chrome hand shot forward, wrapping around the woman's throat. He slammed her against the moldy plaster of the wall.
The impact knocked the breath out of her. The cigarette fell from her lips, sparking on the wet linoleum floor. Jake stood over her, his breathing ragged, his eyes burning with a desperate, hollow fury.
[Threat neutralized. Warning: Right bicep micro-tears detected. Biological chassis degraded to 28%.]
Jake ignored the text scrolling across his vision. He focused on the woman gasping for air in his grip.
"I am not a scavenger pile," Jake whispered, his voice trembling with exhaustion. "Do not touch my arm again."
The woman didn't panic. She just glared at him, her hands coming up to grip his chrome wrist. She wasn't trying to break his hold. She was stalling.
"Tough guy," she choked out, a dark smile pulling at her scarred cheek. "Look at your coat, idiot."
Jake frowned. He glanced down.
His black trench coat was smoking. The left sleeve, where it covered the base of his Admin arm, was charred and melting. The synthetic skin of the cybernetic limb was glowing a dull, angry orange.
The heat radiating from the arm was immense. It felt like his blood was turning into boiling water.
Jake let go of her neck and stumbled backward, clutching his shoulder. The pain was entirely different now. It was a deep, searing burn spreading through his chest cavity.
The woman slid down the wall, coughing violently. She drew a heavy kinetic pistol from her jacket and aimed it squarely at Jake's chest.
"You're cooking from the inside out," she said, wiping spit from her chin. "I wasn't just stealing it. I was trying to save your life. That hardware is frying your nervous system."
[CRITICAL ALERT: Thermal overload in local storage.]
"Yuri," Jake gripped his head, the room spinning. "What is happening?"
"The 'Hope' archive is too massive for this biological chassis," Yuri stated coldly. "The compressed data is generating extreme thermodynamic friction. Your core temperature is 104 degrees and rising."
Jake fell to his knees. The floorboards creaked under his weight.
He could feel it. The entire simulated world of 1960s Neo-Moscow. The digital souls of a billion people. He was carrying an entire timeline in his head, and his human body couldn't process the sheer weight of the data.
"Estimated time until fatal cardiac arrest: twenty-two minutes," Yuri added. "Recommendation: Vent 40% of the localized data to reduce thermal load."
"No," Jake said aloud, his voice cracking.
"Father, failure to vent the data will result in biological death."
"I said no!" Jake slammed his human fist into the floor.
If he vented the data, he would be deleting chunks of the simulation forever. He would be deleting the only remnants of Taranov, Valentina, and Menzhinsky.
He would be burning Nadya's ghost a second time.
"I won't lose her again," Jake whispered, staring at the floor. "I'll die first."
[Logic error. Biological preservation is the primary directive. Recalculating survival parameters.]
The woman watched him argue with thin air. She kept the pistol aimed at his heart, but her expression shifted from anger to curiosity.
"You've got military combat-stims frying your brain, don't you?" she asked. "Talking to ghosts."
"I need coolant," Jake looked up at her, sweat pouring down his face. "Medical foam. A thermal spine replacement. Anything."
"In Sector 4?" She laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "You're out of your mind. Best I can do is a bag of frozen peas and a bullet to put you out of your misery."
Jake forced himself to stand. His legs shook violently. The room tilted, but he locked his knees.
"You brought me here," Jake said, his eyes narrowing. "You know this city. Help me fix this, and I can pay you."
"With what?" she scoffed. "You don't even have a credit chip."
"I am the credit chip," Jake said.
He raised his glowing, chrome arm. He pointed a single finger at the digital lock on her apartment door.
He didn't need to touch it. The Admin arm interfaced with the crude local network instantly. The deadbolt clicked open. The security panel flashed green, displaying a sudden transfer of ten thousand Omni-Corp credits into the apartment's utility account.
The woman's jaw dropped. She looked from the door to the glowing numbers on the wall panel, then back to Jake.
"You didn't even plug in," she breathed. "You just... thought about it."
"I can crack any bank in this city," Jake said, his voice dropping to a low, desperate growl. "But if I die in twenty minutes, you get nothing. Find me a Ripperdoc."
She lowered the pistol slowly. The calculation in her eyes was cold and immediate.
"There's a black-market clinic three blocks down," she said, holstering the weapon. "Guy named Silas. He deals in industrial cooling units for mining borgs. It'll hurt like hell, but it'll keep you from catching fire."
"Let's go," Jake took a step toward the door.
Before his boot hit the floor, Yuri's voice screamed in his ear.
[INCOMING THREAT: Massive thermal spikes detected on the perimeter. Military-grade cybernetics approaching.]
The cheap plastic blinds on the window violently rattled. A low, rhythmic thrumming sound vibrated through the floorboards. It sounded like the engines of a heavy transport ship hovering just outside the building.
Suddenly, three bright red laser sights pierced through the gaps in the blinds. The crimson beams tracked across the grimy wallpaper, settling directly on Jake's chest.
"Orion," Jake breathed, his heart slamming against his ribs.
The woman swore loudly. She lunged forward, grabbing the collar of his burning coat and yanking him away from the window just as the glass shattered inward.
A hail of high-caliber kinetic rounds tore through the apartment.
The bullets shredded the walls, obliterating the cheap furniture and sending clouds of plaster dust into the air. Jake hit the floor hard, covering his head with his chrome arm as debris rained down on them.
"You brought corporate death squads to my house?!" the woman screamed over the deafening roar of gunfire.
"They tracked the EMP from the alley," Yuri calculated calmly. "Breach teams are currently ascending the stairwell. Estimated time to door breach: forty seconds."
Jake rolled onto his back, gasping for air. The heat in his chest was agonizing. Every movement felt like tearing wet paper.
"We can't fight them," Jake yelled to the woman. "There's too many."
"No kidding, shiny!" she snapped, crawling toward the back of the apartment.
She kicked open a rusted metal door leading to the fire escape. The roaring wind and acid rain immediately whipped into the room.
"Move your ass!" she shouted, waving him forward.
Jake forced himself up. His vision swam with black spots. The LitRPG warnings flashed rapidly, turning his vision a chaotic shade of red.
[Core temp: 105 degrees. Biological failure imminent.]
He stumbled toward the open door. Behind them, the heavy steel of the apartment's main entrance groaned as explosive charges were magnetically clamped to the frame.
"Father," Yuri warned. "Jumping to the fire escape requires a 12% increase in motor function output. Your muscles will tear further."
"Do it," Jake gritted his teeth.
The door charges blew. A massive fireball consumed the hallway, blowing the door off its hinges. Heavily armored Orion soldiers poured into the smoke, their visors glowing a deadly, insectoid red.
Jake threw himself out into the freezing rain just as the apartment erupted in gunfire.