Chapter 138: The Binary Rebellion and the Ghost in the Machine
The hallway of the Core-Tech building was a sharp contrast to the lush valleys of Server 777. Here, everything was glass, cold steel, and humming sensors. Von, Aki, Rena, and Sai stood outside their hospital rooms, dressed in stolen black security uniforms that felt stiff and strange on their new skin.
"Okay, Leo," Aki whispered, touching a small wireless earpiece. "I can feel the 'Pulse' of the building. It's like the heartbeat of a giant iron beast. How do I... you know... break it?"
"Don't think of it as breaking, Aki," Leo's voice crackled in his ear from the safety of the server room. "Think of it as 'Editing'. You are a Living Admin. Reach out with your mind to the electronic lock on the elevator. Don't push it. Just tell it that it's already open."
Aki closed his eyes. In the world of the system, he would have used a lockpick. Here, he felt a stream of data flowing through the wall. He reached out with his "Digital Sense" and saw the code: Lock_Status = True.
"Change to... False," Aki muttered.
DING.
The elevator doors slid open instantly. Aki's eyes snapped open, glowing with a faint, golden-blue hue. "Whoa... that was faster than stealing a wallet! I didn't even have to move my fingers!"
The First Encounter
As they stepped into the elevator, the lights turned red. A mechanical voice echoed through the ceiling: [SECURITY BREACH. EXPERIMENTAL ASSETS 01 THROUGH 04 HAVE ESCAPED CONTAINMENT. INITIATING NEURAL-LOCKDOWN.]
"Experimental assets?" Sai growled, his fists clenching. "They still think we're just pieces of equipment."
The elevator doors opened on the 45th floor, and a squad of six security guards with stun-batons and tactical shields was waiting for them. They weren't monsters or knights; they were men in high-tech gear.
"Stay down!" the lead guard shouted. "Or we will initiate a remote-reset on your neural chips!"
Von stepped forward, his eyes burning with a violet fire that seemed to flicker between reality and code. "You cannot reset a soul that was never yours to begin with."
The Combat of Two Worlds
The guards rushed forward. In the old world, Von would have summoned a storm of shadows. Here, his body was slower, but his "Admin Brain" saw everything in slow motion. He saw the electrical arc of the stun-baton before it even swung.
Von moved with a terrifying precision, dodging the strike by an inch and striking the guard's wrist. At the same time, his mind sent a command to the guard's electronic baton: Voltage_Output = 500%.
The baton exploded in a shower of sparks, knocking the guard unconscious.
"My turn!" Aki yelled. He didn't even fight physically. He looked at the smart-visors the guards were wearing. Display_Error: Blinding_White_Light.
The guards screamed, clutching their helmets as their visors flooded with 10,000 nits of pure white data. They were blinded instantly.
"This is almost too easy," Sai said, simply shoving the blinded guards aside with his brute human strength. "I miss having a shield, but their toys are very easy to break."
The Architect's Office
They reached the top floor—The Penthouse. The doors were made of reinforced carbon fiber.
"Leo, I can't 'Edit' this door," Aki said, sweating. "The code is... it's encrypted with something I don't recognize. It feels like... the old Architects' handwriting."
"That's because it's a 'Hard-Link'," Leo replied, his voice urgent. "It's not connected to the network. You have to open it manually. And guys... be careful. The board of directors isn't alone. They've brought in 'The Optimizer'—a specialized AI hunter designed to delete rogue programs."
Von placed his hand on the door. "Then we show them that a program that has learned to love and hate can never be optimized."
The door hissed open, revealing a boardroom overlooking the entire city. Five men in expensive suits sat around a table, and behind them stood a figure that looked like a human, but its skin was perfectly translucent, showing glowing gold circuits underneath.
"Welcome home, Volt," the man in the center of the table said, sipping a glass of wine. "I trust the transition to 'Real Life' has been... enlightening?"