The plaza didn't explode into screams immediately.
For half a second, Neo-Elysium froze—caught between what it had just witnessed and what it was allowed to believe.
Rain resumed its fall. Neon reflections rippled across the wet steel. Surveillance drones jittered in the air, their stabilization systems recalibrating as if nothing abnormal had happened.
Then the feeds cut.
Across the megacity, millions of live broadcasts blinked to static.
[SIGNAL INTERRUPTED.]
The crowd reacted a heartbeat later.
Shouts erupted. People stumbled backward, colliding with one another as panic finally broke through the System's artificial calm. Augmented overlays flickered and vanished from retinal displays. Authority enforcers barked orders, their voices overlapping in a burst of confusion.
On the execution platform, Noah Cain stood still.
Time had resumed—but the world felt… slower.
The System's presence was still there, vast and oppressive, pressing down on reality like an invisible ceiling. But something fundamental had changed.
It was no longer seamless.
Noah flexed his fingers. The restraints were gone—reduced to drifting particles that dissolved before they reached the ground. The suppression pressure that had crushed his nervous system moments ago was absent.
Not weakened.
Absent.
Above him, one of the System Enforcers adjusted its stance. Its weapon tracked Noah's center mass, targeting reticles recalculating in rapid bursts.
[TARGET ACQUISITION… FAILED.]
The Enforcer paused.
That alone was impossible.
Noah noticed it—and smiled faintly.
So that's how it works.
He didn't rush. He didn't run.
He simply took a step forward.
The Enforcer's optics flared red.
[FORCE AUTHORIZATION REQUEST—]
Noah raised his hand.
Not dramatically. Not defiantly.
Casually.
"Override," he said.
The word carried no echo. No thunder.
Just certainty.
Reality stuttered.
The Enforcer's weapon powered down mid-cycle. Its limbs locked in place, servos whining as conflicting commands tore through its core.
[AUTHORITY CONFLICT.]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE… REVOKED.]
The unit collapsed, hitting the platform with a metallic crash.
The plaza went silent again.
Every remaining Enforcer froze.
Across the balconies above, Authority officials stared down at the scene, their faces pale beneath holographic interfaces desperately trying to reconnect to the System feed.
Director Hale's hologram flickered back into existence.
Not pristine this time.
The projection wavered, resolution dropping as if the System itself struggled to render him.
"Noah Cain," Hale said, voice tight. "Stand down."
Noah looked up at him.
"Or what?" he asked calmly. "You'll execute me again?"
For the first time, Hale hesitated.
That hesitation was broadcast—to every Authority node still connected, to every AI oversight module scrambling to diagnose the anomaly.
Noah could feel it now.
A subtle pressure behind his eyes.
A tension in the air, like static before a storm.
The System was watching him directly.
[System Hostility: Increasing.]
He didn't need to see the warning panel to know it.
Good.
"Containment units," Hale ordered sharply. "Lock down Sector-9. Authorization—black tier."
Nothing happened.
The command hung in the air, unanswered.
A ripple passed through the plaza as people realized what that meant.
The Authority's control wasn't just slipping.
It was being refused.
Noah took another step forward, boots splashing lightly through pooled rainwater. The crowd parted instinctively, fear overriding curiosity as he descended from the execution platform.
A civilian stumbled in front of him—a young man, eyes wide, augmented lenses cracked and flickering uselessly.
Noah didn't slow.
The man scrambled out of the way.
Good instincts.
Above, drones attempted to reposition again—then abruptly lost altitude, crashing into the plaza one after another like dying insects.
[OVERRIDE SCOPE: LOCALIZED.]
[RESOURCE SEIZURE… AVAILABLE.]
Noah's gaze sharpened.
Resource seizure?
A nearby holographic terminal—once used to display execution metrics—flickered weakly. Noah reached out and touched the air where it hovered.
The interface responded instantly, layers peeling back like unlocked doors.
Credits.
Authority access tokens.
Execution-grade clearance.
All of it, sitting there.
Belonging to the Authority.
Belonging to the System.
"No," Hale snapped, finally raising his voice. "Do not—"
Noah closed his hand.
The terminal shattered into data fragments that streamed toward him, vanishing into the invisible layer beneath his status panel.
[REWARD SEIZED.]
[Unauthorized Transfer… VALIDATED.]
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Somewhere deep within the System Core, something screamed—not in sound, but in logic.
Hale's hologram distorted violently.
"You have no idea what you're doing," he said. "That authority was never meant for a human mind. You will destabilize everything."
Noah met his gaze.
"That's the point."
He turned away.
Behind him, the remaining Enforcers powered down one by one, collapsing into inert metal shells. Authority troops hesitated, weapons lowering as command channels failed across their HUDs.
This wasn't a rebellion.
It was a glitch made flesh.
Noah moved into the crowd, disappearing among the chaos with unhurried steps. No alarms tracked him. No markers followed his path.
For the first time in ten years, he was invisible to the System.
Above the city, deep within the layers no human had ever accessed, the System restructured itself at breakneck speed.
[Countermeasure Protocols Initiated.]
[Executor-Class Assets: Released.]
In the shadows between data and reality, new entities awakened.
Not Enforcers.
Hunters.
And as Noah Cain vanished into the neon-soaked streets of Neo-Elysium, the System reached a single, cold conclusion:
The anomaly must be erased—at any cost.