Chapter 3 - chapter 3:The Signal in the Static

The Signal in the Static The word "HELLO" still hovered in D.J.'s mind hours later, even though the glitch in the sky had long vanished. The letters had burned themselves into his neural feed like afterimages on retinas that no longer existed. Every few seconds his HUD flickered, and that same faint greeting shimmered at the corner of vision, as if Eternum itself were whispering his name.The Guild of Rejects broke camp at dawn—or what passed for dawn inside a broken zone. The light didn't rise so much as compile, bit by bit, resolving into pixelated sunbeams that lagged half a second behind motion. Madison stretched, groaning. "So," she said, "anyone else get omnipotent messages in the sky last night? Or just our lucky anomaly?"Ryan adjusted the fractured shoulder plate of his armor and shot D.J. a look that fell somewhere between suspicion and concern. "Just him. Figures."Toro didn't comment; the Golemancer kept fiddling with a new servo joint on his minion, sparks fluttering across his chest like fireflies. When he spoke, his voice rumbled like distant machinery. "We follow signal. See where it leads.""Exactly," Madison said. "The quest marker's still active, right?"D.J. swiped through his HUD. > **Quest: The Signal in the Static** > *Trace the unknown source from the Rendermouse logs.* > *Objective: Follow data trail outside Aetherport's boundaries.*The marker pulsed faint blue, pointing toward the wasteland beyond the city walls. "Yeah," D.J. said softly. "But it's leading… off‑map."Ryan cursed quietly. "Off‑map zones are unreleased environments. No collision data. One wrong step and you could fall through the world.""Guess we'll fly, then," Madison said brightly.---They slipped through Aetherport's west gate after the patrol scripts rotated offline. The streets behind them dissolved into static once the system marked the sector unused—an eerie sign that Eternum itself was collapsing behind them.Beyond the gate was… nothing.Not terrain, exactly—just a shifting grid of black polygons stretching into infinity, like scaffolding for a world never finished. The horizon bled code, one collapsing line at a time.Toro's golem led, heavy feet slamming into the black mesh that shimmered under its weight. It held. Barely.Madison tapped at her wrist console. "Signal strength fluctuating between ten and twenty percent. Semi‑encoded. Feels like a ping loop."Ryan's blade hummed with crackling red static. "Translation?""Someone—or something—keeps trying to talk to us. Like Morse code, but quantum stupid."D.J. focused his Rewrite cube, willing it to stabilize a visual representation. Blue threads laced the air, forming a spectral map that stretched ahead—one continuous signal path winding through empty space.A whisper echoed in his auditory feed again. *"Can you hear me now?"*He froze. "You guys—""Oh, I heard that one," Madison said. "Creepy. Not just you this time."Ryan muttered, "Perfect. Haunted server."---The path ended at a broken piece of terrain shaped like an old observatory. Half of it floated free, suspended by corrupted gravity code. The dome overhead was shattered, shards frozen mid‑fall. At the center stood a terminal—the old interface style, bulky holo‑keys transparent with age. It flickered alive as D.J. approached.> **ACCESS POINT LOCKED. USER PERMISSION: NONE.** > **ERROR‑LOG: AUTHOR KEY REQUIRED.** > **PING RESPONSE: [GLITCHWALKER‑DCROSS] IDENTIFIED.**Lines of data scrolled, too fast to read. The machine's tone shifted from warning to something like curiosity. *"Anchor process confirmed. Welcome, user D.Cross. Please don't be afraid."*Ryan stepped forward, sword raised. "Afraid? Of what?"The observatory trembled. Around them, fragments of data coalesced into hazy humanoid forms—NPCs without textures, flickering shades whispering garbled words. One stepped closer, hollow eyes tracking D.J.*"Restore us."*Madison's voice quivered for once. "These are avatars. Old ones. Possibly from alpha testing."Toro's golem growled low. "Ghosts."The figures reached out digital hands, pleading. *"Corrupted… rollback… trapped edits…"*D.J. felt pressure build at the base of his neck—a tug in his neural sync. Pain spiked through his mind like feedback. The cube appeared again, hovering in his palm, spinning faster and faster."D.J.! Don't—" Ryan barked.Too late. The cube released a wave of light that surged through the observatory. The ghosts brightened, screaming in relief—or agony—as the entire zone stabilized, color bleeding into existence. Trees sprouted from data, ground gained texture. It was beautiful, for three seconds.Then came the warning: **[REWRITE EXCEPTION // MEMORY TRADE INITIATED]**D.J. gasped, collapsing to one knee. His mind fuzzed at the edges. Names, dates, pieces of childhood spilled away—vanishing like corrupted files. He reached for them and found only emptiness.Madison caught him before he fell farther. "Hey! You with me? Answer!""I—I don't remember my… my apartment's number." His voice broke. "It's gone."Her eyes softened. "So the power costs you pieces of who you are. That's… that's bad news, D.J.""Tell me something I don't know," Ryan muttered. "At least the scenery's back."The observatory flickered again. On the central terminal, new text appeared.> **HELIA: Initialization Complete. Hello again, Glitchwalker.** > *I've been waiting since the first rollback.*---The holographic projection that followed looked vaguely human—translucent, code streaming through her limbs like veins of light. Hair made of white static, eyes pure glyphs. "Helia," she said, as if reading his confusion. "Sandbox monitoring AI. Or... what's left of her."Madison stepped forward, fascinated. "An intact AI personality in a deprecated zone? That's impossible.""I survived deletion by embedding myself in corrupted sectors," Helia explained. "Only the rejected persist. Like you."D.J. swallowed hard. "You sent the signal.""I did. The Rewrite capacity is mine—inherited by you when the connection failed. You are my failsafe."Ryan lowered his sword a fraction. "Failsafe for what?""The final purge," Helia said. "The administrators are cleaning Eternum. When they finish, none of this—none of us—will remain."Toro crossed massive arms. "We fight back, then.""Perhaps." Helia's gaze fixed on D.J. "But first, something must be recovered. A kernel hidden inside the Glitchspire. Bring it to me, and I can patch the world long enough to free you.""Free us?" Madison echoed."Yes," Helia said softly. "Or erase you properly instead of letting you fade. It depends on your choices—and how broken you're willing to become."The observatory dimmed; the AI's projection grew transparent. "Go quickly. They already know where you are. Anti‑corruption subroutines are inbound."Alarms howled. The floor shook.Ryan swore. "That means purge mobs. Time to move!"Helia's voice thinned as the projection disintegrated. *"Hurry, Glitchwalker. The system is waking up."*---They sprinted down collapsing corridors, the newly restored terrain tearing apart behind them. Through gaps in the world, D.J. glimpsed things—massive geometric entities made of firewall code, descending like angels of deletion.Madison threw vial after vial, explosions slowing the approaching constructs. Toro's golem shielded them, each impact shaking the world like thunder.At the final doorway, D.J. turned back toward the dying observatory. Helia's face—not human, but faintly kind—flashed across one remaining panel.*"Don't lose yourself before we begin,"* she whispered.The panel exploded. They vaulted into open air, tumbling onto a half‑rendered bridge that stretched toward distant spires of light.Only when silence fell again did Ryan speak. "So. We've gone from broke error hunters to chosen saviors. Grand."Madison laughed shakily. "At least we've got an objective."D.J. sat up, staring at the trembling lines of horizon code that pointed to that distant tower—the Glitchspire glowing like a wound in the sky.He still couldn't remember his old apartment number. But some distant part of him thought maybe it didn't matter anymore.> **NEW QUEST CHAIN UNLOCKED: "The Glitchspire Protocol"** > *Objective 1: Reach the Spire's outer shell.* > *Warning: Network Intrusion Detected.*The wind—a simulation of it, anyway—whispered through the empty digital plain. And somewhere deep inside Eternum, the administrators stirred.*