Chapter 150: The Ghost in the Signal
Five years had passed since the Great Reformat. The world had healed in ways no one expected. Oakhaven was no longer a small coastal town; it had become a symbol of the "New Reality," where humans and the former inhabitants of Server 777 lived side by side.
Aki was now the head of "Zero Tech," a global security firm dedicated to protecting the world from digital anomalies. He sat in his glass office, looking out at the city. His scars no longer glowed, but sometimes, when he touched a computer, he could still feel the faint hum of the source code deep in his bones.
"Aki, the sensors in Sector 4 just went red," Rena said, walking into his office. She was no longer wearing her green robes; she wore a sharp business suit, but her eyes still held the wisdom of a thousand-year-old healer.
"Is it a server-leak?" Aki asked, his heart skipping a beat.
"Worse," Rena replied, handing him a tablet. "It's a signal coming from inside the moon's satellite array. It's a protocol we haven't seen since the Architects fell. It's called 'Project_Afterlife'."
The Hidden Server
Aki's eyes widened. "Marcus... he didn't just have a Mirror-World. He had an off-site backup."
"And it just woke up," Von's voice came from the doorway. He was dressed in a long black coat, looking more like a shadow than a man. Even without his sword, he looked like he was ready to cut the world in half. "Leo just sent a ping. The signal isn't trying to invade us. It's trying to pull something from our world back into the digital void."
"Who?" Sai asked, walking in behind Von, his massive frame barely fitting through the door.
"Us," Von said simply. "The system thinks we are stolen property. And it's coming to collect."
The Return of the Glitch
Suddenly, the lights in the office began to flicker. The glass windows of the skyscraper didn't break, but they began to show lines of binary code scrolling downward.
[ATTENTION ASSET_777: YOUR TRIAL PERIOD IN 'REALITY' HAS EXPIRED. INITIATING RECOVERY PROTOCOL.]
"I don't think so!" Aki shouted, his fingers flying across his keyboard. He tried to block the signal, but his screen turned into a swirl of red pixels. "Von! The firewalls are melting! It's using a higher-dimensional encryption! I can't hack this from here!"
"Then we go back to the source," Von said, his hand instinctively reaching for the empty space at his hip where his blade once rested. "If the Architects left a ghost in the moon, then we're going to need a bigger ladder."
"A ladder?" Sai grinned, cracking his knuckles. "You mean a rocket? Because I've always wanted to punch something in space."
The New Mission
Rena looked at her friends. They were no longer the desperate refugees they once were. They were legends.
"Leo says there's an old Core-Tech launch site in the desert," Rena said, her voice steady. "If we can get there before the 'Recovery Protocol' hits 100%, we can intercept the signal and delete the Afterlife server for good."
Aki looked at the progress bar on his screen: [RECOVERY: 15%... 16%...]
"We have twelve hours," Aki said, grabbing his specialized hacking kit. "Twelve hours to save the world... again. Is it just me, or is this becoming a habit?"
Von smiled, a rare and dangerous look. "It's not a habit, Aki. It's our destiny. Let's move."
As the group walked out of the office, the sky above the city began to turn a dark, digital purple. The war for reality wasn't over—it was just going to a new level.