"Huh? What did you just call it?" Skyler arched a brow, staring at Roxy in disbelief.
"Epsilon Firewall," she replied flatly. "A god-tier anti-hacking defense… from my world."
"From your world? Then how the hell is it showing up here?" His questions fired off, only for the realization to hit—these two had never once said anything about where they really came from.
Roxy stayed silent, words jammed somewhere in her throat.
"Sky, can't you, like, hack it again?" Zoe cut in, mimicking his hand motions in the air.
He turned away, wanting to argue that he didn't look that ridiculous—except he kinda did.
"No," Roxy answered, sharp and short. "In three hundred years, no one's ever cracked it. The only exception is with a Pure Energy Data Set—encrypted for one purpose, and one purpose only."
Three hundred years!? Skyler's mind reeled. Was her world the future? Or some parallel universe altogether?
Then Roxy's crimson stare lit with the air of someone who'd just solved a riddle. She pulled a pendant from around her neck and hurled it forward. The tag snapped to the cube's wall, drawn in by the same gravitational force.
"We need to get back to the lab. To break through." Her sharp gaze cut back at him. "Pull up the schematics—now!"
He flinched, then projected a glowing hologram from his glove.
Roxy's vision traced the layouts, as if she were a war strategist dissecting enemy lines.
"There's a blind spot in the ventilation grid…" she muttered, fingers gliding to map a route.
"Follow me."
"Why not just go out the way we came?" Zoe piped up, sounding almost disappointed—the way someone sounds when the fight scene ends before they've had enough popcorn.
"Because we just tripped the entire security system," Roxy snapped. "Did you expect a red carpet waiting for us?"
Silence. No objections.
Somehow, they crawled out through the vents without alarms, without witnesses, without a headless robot landing on top of them. That alone was a miracle.
Especially for Skyler—making it out without seizing up mid-crawl was a huge win. For someone with a lifelong claustrophobia? Call it legendary.
"You good, Sky?" Zoe asked, worried at how pale he looked.
"I'm fine…" he muttered, hobbling a little from the muscle cramps before catching up to the redhead. "So what is that firewall? How the hell are we supposed to hack it?"
Roxy didn't slow. "We have to turn ourselves… into pure energy data."
Great. That sounds like a cosmic detox smoothie special.
"What kind of BS is that?" Zoe shot back.
Oddly, Roxy didn't bite. She was already shifting gears—converting theory into action.
By the time they burst back into the Cosmic Vision Club, Tim stood waiting at the door, perfectly polite. Only Zoe tossed him a sweet smile, the kind a girl-next-door might give after cram school.
"Welcome home, Master. Red-haired miss. Zoe-Only," the butler intoned, following them down into the workshop without fuss.
Roxy spun on her heel. "Do it again—what you did back then."
"Back when… what?" Skyler blinked.
"When you turned the room into space. Don't play dumb." Her glare brooked no argument.
Skyler swallowed hard. Then slowly stretched out his hand.
— Fwoosh —
The entire lab dissolved, reshaping into the endless void of outer space once more.
"This is how we breach the Epsilon Firewall,"
Roxy began—straight to the point, not even pausing for air. "We have to turn this room… into it."
Of course that was her way: no detours, no sugarcoating—and zero safety guarantees.
"Step one: reconfigure this room's particle code to match the defense matrix's."
A flick of her wrist, and a glass-thin panel floated up from the void, numbers racing across it so fast they could give a normal person a brain hemorrhage.
"This is the core's particle code." She shoved the screen right in front of Skyler.
He reached out, swiping the numbers into his glove as streams of code poured in, a torrent of liquid light bending to his command.
"Step two: convert the Singularity Gate into a transmitter." As she spoke, her hands summoned a hologram—a system diagram so complex it could've passed for the glowing nervous system of some colossal monster.
"It's already tethered to the undercity's energy lines. All we have to do is reverse the flow—make it transmit pure data instead of raw power."
Skyler thought back to the pendant she'd hurled at the cube earlier.
Oh. That was the receiver.
"And finally," she said with a razor-flat tone, "we turn ourselves into a Pure Energy Data Set."
Zoe's hand shot up. "Sorry, what? Why do I have to turn into data?"
"Why can't Sky just hack it? Why risk turning us into—whatever the hell that is?" She pressed.
Coming from the girl who'd just swan-dove into a machine-gun barrage, the word risk felt a little… ironic.
"Because if the firewall detects an outside hack, it resets its particle code instantly." Roxy's voice was ice. "Meaning it locks down. Forever."
"Then how would it know we're 'outside'? Isn't the room rewriting our status already?" Zoe shot back.
Roxy sighed, the heavy kind that said you're trying my patience.
"Because ordinary data… has no will of its own. We do." Her ruby eyes pinned Zoe. "And anything with will is reclassified by the system as Pure Energy Data."
The pink-hair nodded along, pretending to get it just to avoid coming off as stupid.
"…Impressive. Looks like you're finally catching on," Roxy said coolly.
Skyler stared, jaw tight. She figured all this out in under fifteen minutes? No cracks, no hesitation? What is she—an alien Zhuge Liang?
His stare wavered between awe and fear. The same way he'd once watched Valentine… only this time, no birdsong, no warm sunlight—just endless code and a suicide-level plan.
"Skyler. Decode the particle string." Her command was sharp enough to cut sheet metal.
He almost snapped to attention, mentally saluting.
Yes, ma'am. Colonel.
"Zoe, the robot—you'll assist him. Extract the system card from the defense matrix and prep it for code injection."
From the corner, Tim snapped into a perfect salute, so crisp it made Skyler want to crawl under a desk.
Oh, come on. You tin can. Playing favorites now?
Skyler glared at him hard enough to fry his CPU for three whole seconds.
"Ugh, why am I taking orders from her?" Zoe muttered, tossing her hair, the picture of someone auditioning for a shampoo commercial.
"So where's this oh-so-mystical 'system card,' huh?"
There she goes… complaining again. But she's still doing it anyway. Admit it, rich girl—you're kinda enjoying this.
"I'll handle converting the Singularity Gate into a transmitter," Roxy declared.
Everyone scattered to their tasks. Skyler found himself sneaking glances at the red-haired girl more often than he liked. He wasn't sure if what was swelling in his chest was admiration… or something scarier.
"Sky—" Zoe popped up in his face without warning, close enough to knock him backward.
"I'm done. Anything else you need me to do?"
"It's fine, Zoe. I'll take it from here. Thanks."
"If you've got that much free time, you can help me," Roxy's delivery sliced across the room.
Zoe's head whipped around, eyebrows practically weaponized. "Yes, ma'am! Anything you say, General~"
Skyler twitched. He could already feel another catfight brewing. His ribs hadn't forgiven the hair-pulling incident that morning. But strangely… nothing exploded this time. They worked together—smoothly, almost too smoothly.
Meanwhile, Skyler buried himself in building an emergency comms bracelet. Wires, code, particle converters—the room looked more chaotic than instant ramen cooked with every leftover in the fridge.
By dawn, nobody was dead. Which, in his book, made it a good day.
"We've wasted enough time. We breach the firewall before it resets its database," Roxy said, her tone calm but edged with something heavier underneath.
"And once we're in… what exactly am I supposed to do?" Skyler asked.
"Your task is to decode the data and forge it into the Lestial Key—the 'Sacred Key,' if you prefer."
Zoe snorted. "Wow. Did you escape from a soap opera or something?"
Roxy gave her a glance, an expression of someone who's just found a rat on the palace carpet. "Then call it the Sparkle Key if it pleases you."
She turned back to Skyler. "There are five layers. Gather all five fragments. Only then will the cube unlock. The rest—I'll handle."
"And me?" Zoe wrinkled her nose.
Before she could whine further, Skyler pressed a sleek black bracelet into her palm—a piece of jewelry hiding tech that could bankrupt a black-market auction.
"Whoa… it's gorgeous. Thanks!" she beamed, slipping it on. "Although, pink is more my color. Y'know, in case you're trying to impress me~"
"It's not that," he muttered, scratching his head. "It's a comms device. Emergency use only."
Funny thing was… it might be the first gift he'd ever given a girl.
He turned and handed the second bracelet to Roxy.
"It also doubles as a particle re-encoder. It'll convert us into pure energy data."
She accepted it without a word, no glance, no question—the silent efficiency of Natasha Romanoff taking an assassination order.
And what was I expecting, exactly? A thank-you card?
Tim, the ever-polite butler bot, excused himself with the poise of a five-star hotel concierge.
"Everyone, ready." Skyler pulled his glove tight. The holographic screen flared to life. Fingers flew—code pouring out in digital waterfalls.
The last sequence locked in. A long electronic whine. Black pixels spread across the walls, ceiling, floor—devouring reality until all that was left was raw, sterile void. A retro sci-fi void, if someone had remastered it for IMAX.
Then a flarestorm ripped across the horizon, a spectrum flowing as though Gaia herself was rebooting creation.
— Vwoom —
Darkness again. Then emerald glyphs unfurled through the air, alive, shifting, watching them.
"Sky, look! I'm covered in rainbow glitter!" Zoe twirled, pure Fairy Princess energy straight out of a bedtime story.
"Raw energy particles. They let the system read us as nothing but data," Skyler said flatly.
Roxy's eyes cut sharp as knives. "We're in. Stay sharp."
The air convulsed. Lights flickered. From the code ahead, strands began to unravel—spaghetti expanding, knotting together, until it became something monstrous.
It shifted.
"Snake. Giant snake!" Skyler's voice cracked as his arms flew up instinctively, useless against venom or fangs made of code.
Before panic could sink its claws in, Roxy raised her hand—fingers poised, wrist cocked—
Snap.
The basilisk exploded into a glitterstorm of pixels, raining down in a gaudy storm of confetti fit for a god-king's birthday bash.
She stepped forward, calm, measured, as if she hadn't just disintegrated a legend.
"Still standing there gawking? Or are you waiting for the next one to spawn?"