The 4th Precinct's "Cyber Division" was technically a converted storage closet with upgraded ventilation. It smelled of stale coffee and hot electronics.
Caleb sat in front of three monitors, watching the loop of the Titan truck heist for the hundredth time. He was advancing the video frame by frame.
Click. The Red Figure touches the hood.
Click. The figure vibrates.
Click. The figure is inside the cab.
"He's using a collision mask exploit," Caleb muttered, rubbing his eyes. "He overloads the physics engine with rapid inputs just as he hits the solid object. The system can't decide if he's 'in front' or 'behind' the glass, so it defaults to the nearest open space. Inside."
Maya leaned over his shoulder, placing a file folder on the desk.
"I don't speak nerd, Caleb. I speak motive. And I found one."
She opened the file. It was a cargo manifest for the Titan truck.
"The manifest said 'Raw Lithium,' but that was a cover," Maya explained. "The truck was actually transporting Hyper-Conductive Graphene Cores. Prototype batteries designed for orbital satellites."
"High output," Caleb noted. "And high heat."
"Exactly. These things are unstable. If you draw power from them too fast, they melt. They need industrial cooling."
"Or," Caleb spun his chair around, "they need to be used by someone who runs so fast they need a heatsink strapped to their back."
He pulled up the profile of "Kairos."
"Speedrunners," Caleb explained, "obsess over optimization. They strip away everything essential to go faster. Armor? Too heavy. Health packs? Waste of time. But they always need energy. If Kairos is glitching reality, he's burning calories—or battery power—at a rate that would kill a normal person. He didn't steal those batteries to sell them. He stole them to wear them."
"Great," Maya sighed. "So we're looking for a guy who can walk through walls and is powered by a nuclear battery."
"Not just walk through walls," Caleb corrected. "Look at the tag he left."
He pointed to the screen where the [RANK 1: KAIROS] tag was glowing.
"Kairos isn't a hacker name. It's Greek. It means 'The Opportune Moment.' It's about timing. Frame-perfect timing."
Caleb stood up and grabbed his coat.
"If he's a speedrunner, he practices. You don't pull off a 'truck clip' on your first try. You grind the level until you get it right. He needs a sandbox. Somewhere with complex geometry but no witnesses."
"I can check satellite thermal scans for heat spikes," Maya offered.
"No," Caleb shook his head. "Think like a gamer. Where do you go when you want to break out of the map? You go to the edges. Places where the developers got lazy with the textures."
He tapped the map of St. Lazarus on the wall. He pointed to a grey, unfinished section on the west side.
"The Underline," Caleb said. "The subway extension they abandoned in 2023. It's a maze of unfinished tunnels and jagged geometry. It's 'Out of Bounds' central."
The Underline was a concrete tomb. The air was damp and silent, save for the dripping of water from the ceiling. There were no lights here; the tunnels stretched into infinite darkness.
Caleb and Maya walked along the rusted tracks, their flashlights cutting through the gloom.
"Stay sharp," Maya whispered, her hand on her weapon. "If he's here, he could be behind us before we hear him."
"If he's here," Caleb said, looking at the walls through his Overlay, "we won't hear him at all."
The Overlay was picking up strange artifacts.
[TEXTURE: UNSTABLE]
[POLYGON COUNT: LOW]
The deeper they went, the more the reality of the tunnel seemed to fray. The concrete walls had gaps where you could see the dirt behind them. Some steel beams didn't connect to the ceiling; they just floated a few inches below it.
"Lazy devs," Caleb muttered.
They reached a wide junction—a massive, unfinished station platform.
And there, they found it.
It wasn't a hideout. It was a gymnasium.
The walls were covered in spray-painted markings. Not gang tags, but arrows. Lines. Angles calculated to the decimal point.
On one pillar, a series of horizontal lines were painted at different heights.
[OBJECT: JUMP HEIGHT MARKERS]
[MAX RECORDED: 4.2 METERS]
"Four meters?" Maya looked up at the highest mark. "That's twelve feet. No human can jump that high."
"Not with muscles," Caleb said. "With a physics exploit. A 'super-jump'."
He walked to the edge of the platform. There was a gap—a thirty-foot drop to the lower tracks. Across the gap, a narrow beam stuck out of the wall.
Above the beam, a neon-green spray-paint tag read: [CHECKPOINT 1].
"He's turning the city into a platformer," Maya said, disgusted.
Caleb looked at the gap. He looked at the beam.
"He wants me to try it," Caleb realized. "It's a tutorial."
"Don't," Maya warned. "Caleb, you're not him. You're a patch, not a player."
"I have to know how he moves," Caleb said, taking off his coat. "If I can't replicate the glitch, I can't predict where he'll go next."
He stepped back, calculating the distance. His Overlay brought up a trajectory arc.
[ESTIMATED SUCCESS RATE: 12%]
[RISK OF INJURY: HIGH]
"Caleb..."
"I got this," Caleb lied.
He ran.
He sprinted toward the edge of the platform. As he hit the lip, he didn't just jump. He tried to trick the system. He visualized the air under his feet becoming solid for a split second—a 'coyote time' jump.
Jump.
He launched into the air. For a second, he felt weightless. He soared over the black drop.
But he was too slow.
His foot missed the beam by an inch.
Crap.
Gravity took over. The "glitch" failed. Real physics kicked him in the chest.
Caleb slammed into the concrete wall below the beam, his ribs screaming. He slid down the rough surface, scrabbling for a grip, and crashed onto the lower tracks in a heap of dust and bruised ego.
[HEALTH: 85%]
[STATUS: EMBARRASSED]
"Caleb!" Maya shone her light down. "Are you okay?"
Caleb groaned, rolling onto his back. "I missed the frame window."
"You missed the beam!"
Caleb sat up, wiping blood from his elbow. He looked up at the gap.
"He's fast," Caleb whispered. "He's terrifyingly fast. To make that jump, you have to hit the edge within a 0.05-second window."
Suddenly, a sound echoed through the tunnel.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Slow, sarcastic applause.
Caleb and Maya froze. Maya swung her light toward the far end of the tunnel.
Standing on top of a derailed subway car, backlit by a flare he had just lit, was the Red Figure.
He wore a sleek, aerodynamic suit that looked like it was made of liquid mercury and red trim. On his back was a custom rig—a glowing blue pack pulsing with the light of the stolen lithium cores. His face was covered by a helmet with a V-shaped visor.
[BOSS DETECTED: KAIROS]
[LEVEL: ???]
"Nice try, Null," Kairos called out. His voice was distorted, autotuned to sound like it was coming from a radio. "But your ping is too high."
"Police!" Maya shouted, aiming her gun. "Get down from there!"
Kairos tilted his head. "Police? In a tutorial level? That's bad game design."
He dropped the flare.
"Let's see if you can keep up with the actual gameplay."
Kairos didn't run away. He ran at them.
He sprinted along the top of the train car, then leaped. He hit the wall, ran three steps horizontally along the curved concrete (Wall Run), and launched himself toward Caleb.
"Move!" Caleb scrambled backward.
Kairos landed exactly where Caleb had been a second ago. He didn't attack. He just stopped, crouching in a perfect landing pose.
He looked at Caleb.
"You're the Admin's son," Kairos said. "The Glitch. I expected... more."
He tapped the glowing drive on his chest.
"Catch me if you can. I'm going for the Any% World Record."
Kairos vanished.
He didn't teleport. He just moved so fast, accelerating instantly from a standstill, that he was a blur. He strafed past Maya, snatching the extra magazine from her belt before she could even pull the trigger, and clipped through a rusted service door that should have been locked.
The door didn't open. He just phased through it.
Silence returned to the tunnel.
Caleb stood up, breathing hard. Maya checked her belt, staring at the missing ammo.
"He took my mag," she whispered. "He touched me, and I didn't even feel it."
"He's not just fast," Caleb said, staring at the closed door. "He's running on a different frame rate."
[NEW QUEST: THE CHASE]
[OBJECTIVE: UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE]
Caleb looked at his own trembling hands.
"I can't beat him," Caleb said. "Not with this build. I need an upgrade."
"Upgrade?" Maya asked. "What kind of upgrade?"
"I need to learn how to cheat," Caleb said grimly.