The drone descended into the depths of Sector 2, leaving the glittering lights of the Casino District far behind.
Sector 2 was the Industrial District — a graveyard of the Old World. Rusted smokestacks, abandoned factories, and chemical plants that hadn't made anything but poison for fifty years. The air was thick and tasted like sulfur and rusty metal.
We flew into the mouth of a massive, rusted drainage pipe jutting out of a collapsed sea-wall. The drone's spotlight cut through the darkness, lighting up layers of graffiti that glowed in the dark.
THE SYSTEM IS A LIE.
WAKE UP.
MALACHI WATCHES ALL.
"Comforting decor," I muttered, shivering as the damp air cut through my torn jumpsuit.
"Home is where the hard drive is," Glitch's voice chirped in my ear.
The drone slowed down, hovering over a concrete platform hidden deep within the pipe maze. A heavy steel blast door — clearly stolen from a military vault — hissed open with a grinding of gears.
We touched down. I rolled off the flatbed, catching Sarah as she stumbled. She was pale, her skin burning hot. The adrenaline of the fight was fading, and her human body was paying the price for using Admin powers.
"I got you," I said, draping her arm over my shoulder.
We stepped inside.
The bunker looked like a teenager's bedroom had exploded inside a space station control room.
It was a beautiful mess of technology and trash. Screens covered every inch of the walls, with thousands of scrolling code streams, camera feeds, and energy readings. Pizza boxes were stacked like towers in the corners. Cables ran across the floor like a nest of black snakes, pulsing with blue light.
In the center of it all, sitting in a custom-built swivel chair surrounded by six screens, was Glitch.
He spun around.
In the dark Casino lounge, he'd just been a kid eating noodles. Here, in his own world, he looked different. Under the glow of his screens, his messy neon-green hair almost matched the code scrolling behind him. His hoodie — still three sizes big than him, with food stains I didn't noticed before. He was younger than me, but the way he sat there with his machines around him made it clear—he was in charge.
"Welcome to the Batcave," he grinned, revealing a chipped tooth. "Or... the Rat-Cave. Haven't decided on a name yet. 'The Nexus' is taken."
"Do you have a med-bay?" Sarah interrupted, her voice weak. She leaned heavily against me. "My energy is dropping. I need to stabilize."
Glitch's grin vanished. He pointed down a hallway lined with server racks. "Second door on the left. The Auto-Doc is running. Just don't use the blue needles — those are for adrenaline, not healing. Use the green ones."
"Go," I told her. "I'll handle things here."
She nodded and disappeared down the hall.
That left me and Glitch.
He looked at me, his eyes scanning me up and down. He wasn't just looking — he was analyzing. His eye implants zoomed and focused like camera lenses.
"You look terrible," he said bluntly. "Three fractured ribs, energy burns on your arms, and your power is leaking all over my floor."
"Thanks," I muttered, limping toward a spare chair. "So, this is the resistance? A kid in a basement?"
"This is it," Glitch said, spinning back to his screens. "Me, myself, and my army of bots. Quality over quantity, Caretaker."
He typed a command, and a small wheeled robot rolled over with a bottle of water. I chugged it in three seconds, crushing the plastic bottle in my hand.
"So," I wiped my mouth. "Explain it to me. What am I? You called me a Devourer."
Glitch tapped a key. The massive main screen shifted.
"Look at this," he said.
On the screen was a picture of a human soul — or at least, a digital version of one. It looked like a neat, organized ball of golden light.
"This is a normal user," Glitch explained. "When they kill a monster or complete a quest, the System gives them a packet of energy. XP. It absorbs into the sphere, making it brighter. It's a closed loop. Safe and Controlled."
Then he pulled up my file.
It didn't look like a sphere. It looked like a black hole. Jagged, chaotic, and dark violet. It wasn't absorbing light — it was violently ripping the light from the air around it.
"Every person connected to the System has a Class," Glitch went on. "Most are Worker, Soldier, Manager. Some rare ones are Technomancer, Hacker, Infiltrator. They all use the System."
He pointed to my black hole.
"A Devourer breaks the rules. You don't use the System. You eat it. You're a leak in the loop. You can drain a battery, a robot, a forcefield... anything with a digital signature."
He paused, looking at me seriously.
"The System is built on energy. XP is just energy. Power is energy. Credits are energy. You can consume it all."
"And... people?" I asked quietly. The question hung in the air like smoke.
Glitch hesitated. He tapped his fingers on the desk. "Theoretically? Yes. If a person has a brain chip — which everyone does — they have energy stored in their body. If you touched them... and you willed it..."
"I could drain them dry," I finished, staring at my hands. "I could kill them just by touching them. am a monster."
"You're a weapon," Glitch corrected. "A weapon doesn't have morality. It just has a trigger. And right now, you're the only weapon that can hurt Malachi."
"Why?" I stood up, pacing the small room. "Why is he so special? He's just a CEO. I can put a bullet in his head like anyone else."
"No, you can't." Glitch pulled up an image of the CEO.
It wasn't a photo. It was a blueprint.
"Malachi isn't human anymore," Glitch said, his voice dropping. "He Ascended ten years ago. But he didn't go to the Aether paradise like the others. He uploaded his mind into the Corporation's main computers."
The image zoomed out. It showed the massive black tower — the Spire, rising above Sector 1 like a needle stabbing the sky.
"He is the building, Elias. He is the security system. He is the cameras. He is the drones. His mind is spread across the entire network. You can't shoot him because he's everywhere."
I stared at the screen. "So he's invincible."
"To a hacker? Yes. His firewall — they call it 'Black Ice' — is impossible to break through. If I even touch it, my brain fries."
Glitch leaned forward, his eye implants glowing.
"But you... you don't need to hack the firewall. You can eat it. You can drain the energy holding his mind together. You are the only thing in the world that scares him."
The door to the med-bay hissed open. Sarah walked out.
She looked better. She'd cleaned the grime off her face and tied her hair back. She wore a clean grey jumpsuit she must have found in the lockers. She looked less like a slum survivor and more like the Queen she claimed to be.
"He's right," Sarah said, walking over to the map table. "Malachi is pure data now. A massive ball of energy spread across every server. But we can't just walk into the Spire and touch the Core. The defenses are too strong. He has the Iron Legion guarding every floor."
"So we need a plan," I said, crossing my arms. "If we can't get close, I can't drain him."
"We need an army," Sarah said.
She pointed to a spot on the holographic map, marked in blinking red. It floated high above the city, held in place by gravity beams.
Sector 5: The Penitentiary.
"The Corporation locks up its enemies there," Sarah explained. "Hackers, rebels, Technomancers who refused to join the Security Forces. Five hundred high-level fighters rotting in those cells."
"You want to break them out?" Glitch's eyes went wide. "That's insane. The Penitentiary is floating ten thousand feet in the air. They call it 'The Iron Cloud' for a reason. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out."
"I know," Sarah said. Her eyes began to glow again, that familiar blue light coming back. "But I have the entry codes. I built the back door into its landing system twenty years ago."
She looked at me.
"Elias, you're Level 5. That's cute for a street fight. But to storm the Sky-Prison, you need to be at least Level 10. You need better gear. You need to master your hunger."
"How do I level up fast?" I asked. "I can't exactly go back to the Casino."
Glitch grinned. It was a wild, hungry look. He pressed a big red button on his console.
A wall of the bunker slid open with a heavy thud. Behind it was a reinforced chamber packed with deactivated combat droids, laser turrets, and obstacle courses.
"We grind," Glitch said. "Welcome to the Danger Room. I've set the bots to 'Lethal.' Try not to die."
I looked at the droids. I looked at Sarah. I looked at my hands — still trembling with the memory of the power I'd drained from Wu's Penthouse.
"Let's get to work," I said.