Chapter 14 – Trace the Phantom
The flickering glow of the emergency system filled Zane's dark hideout, casting harsh shadows across the cracked walls and humming equipment. Smoke still curled from the damaged rig. He sat cross-legged on the floor, a cold compress clutched against the side of his head where a capacitor blast had grazed him.
Pain throbbed with every heartbeat, but he didn't care.
Redline Protocol was his now.
Half the code was corrupted and encrypted in a language even he didn't recognize, but he could feel it—the pulse of potential. System Hijack v1.0 was only the beginning.
Root Access Update: Hijack v1.0 Status – Stable (36% Integration Complete)
Warning: Y42-THX remains active. Retaliation probability: HIGH.
He knew they wouldn't sit still.
Zane pulled up the residual data from the digital battlefield. Fragmented traces of Y42-THX's signature still lingered. It wasn't much, but it was enough—a shard of code disguised as a compressed file named "phantom.msi".
He narrowed his eyes.
Bait?
Probably.
But that's what made it interesting.
"Time to see who's wearing the mask," Zane muttered.
He isolated the file and slipped it into a sandboxed environment—cut off from the rest of his system. As soon as it executed, the file decrypted itself into a live data burst: a flash of symbols, video static, and one clear message pulsing at the center.
"You shouldn't have touched Redline."
Zane's lips curled into a grin.
"Neither should you."
The message suddenly shifted—static warping into a rapid stream of hex data, then into coordinates. A challenge. A trap.
Or maybe an invitation.
He tapped a command into his keyboard, launching his tracer and mapping the coordinates onto the digital grid. It pointed to a location deep within the Omniscient Net's Ghost Layer—a heavily obfuscated zone used only by military-level users or rogue AI clusters. No ordinary hacker operated from there.
Which meant Y42-THX was anything but ordinary.
He wasn't just facing a rival hacker anymore.
He was up against a phantom.
Zane packed his gear.
He didn't trust the old rig anymore—not after what happened during the Dive. So he turned to something newer. Something illegal.
Beneath a false floorboard in the far corner of his hideout, he unlocked a titanium case and opened it with a magnetic DNA key. Inside lay a compact rig—the Ghostfire Terminal. A prototype he'd built during his final year with Omniscient, designed for one purpose:
Silent infiltration. No signature. No trace. Total stealth.
He hadn't used it since the day of the betrayal.
But tonight, it would be resurrected.
He slid into the terminal chair, strapped the neural band across his head, and let the Ghostfire merge with his pulse.
The world vanished.
The Ghost Layer was a sea of black code, lined with fractured architecture and glitching fragments of abandoned systems. Broken AI constructs wandered in loops, repeating corrupted mantras. The deeper Zane moved, the more unstable the world became—memory echoes of long-deleted wars playing on invisible speakers.
And then, he saw it.
A building.
An impossibility.
Floating in the void was a perfect digital replica of Omniscient Systems' old headquarters. The place he had died.
His fists clenched.
So that's how Y42-THX wanted to play it.
He crossed the corrupted terrain, each step melting into the ghost-data beneath his feet. The front doors parted like teeth. Inside, the lobby flickered with half-formed echoes of people—ghosts of his old colleagues, frozen in loops.
Then, the static changed.
A voice spoke.
"I always wondered if you'd come back here."
Zane turned.
There, standing by the old executive elevator, was a figure draped in silver static. Their face flickered—a digital mask warping between avatars.
Y42-THX.
"Wasn't hard to find," Zane said calmly. "You left crumbs. Got cocky."
The masked figure chuckled. "Or maybe I wanted you to follow. Maybe this is all part of the next phase."
Zane raised an eyebrow. "Who are you?"
Silence.
Then: "Someone who remembers what you did. Someone who watched you build the system that became a prison. We're not so different, Zane. You died to escape it. I live to destroy it."
"You don't even understand what Root Access is," Zane said coldly.
"I understand enough. I know it can overwrite laws. Rewrite identities. Control systems. Steal power."
Zane's gaze hardened. "And you want that power?"
"No. I want to burn it."
The floor beneath Zane cracked. Suddenly, the virtual lobby collapsed into a battlefield of shifting data and broken constructs. A Redline-inspired arena, formed from Y42-THX's own custom Dive Protocol. They were initiating a code duel.
Combat Mode: Engaged – Redline vs Shadow Protocol
Opponent: Y42-THX (Override Tier 2)
Level 3 Threat – Adaptive Algorithm Detected
Zane's HUD flared.
The enemy moved first—hurling a chain of null-packets designed to scramble memory threads. Zane rolled into a firewall shell, deflecting the strike with a burst of stabilizing code. He retaliated with a logic piercer, breaking through the enemy's lower defense grid.
Sparks exploded.
Y42-THX was faster than last time.
Smarter.
But Zane was evolving too.
He activated Hijack v1.0, channeling it through the Ghostfire Terminal. His fingers flew as he accessed the rival's temporary constructs—rewriting one of their own attack programs mid-strike. The energy curved, turned, and slammed back into Y42-THX's side of the field.
System Hijack Successful – Enemy Protocol Corrupted (12%)
Y42-THX growled.
"You're still a thief."
Zane smiled darkly. "No. I'm the original owner."
The battle raged on, the digital field collapsing and reforming with every attack. Zane dodged, struck, hacked, rerouted. Every second pushed the limits of his system—and his mind.
But Y42-THX was unraveling.
Slowly.
Zane caught a glimpse through the static. A flash of a face.
A woman?
Mid-20s. Short silver hair. Eyes like broken glass. Her avatar flickered, revealing not an imposter, but a survivor.
And then it clicked.
Zane's voice dropped.
"…You were one of the test subjects."
Y42-THX froze.
"You were part of Redline Phase Zero," Zane said. "You weren't a rival. You were a victim."
Her voice came through, low and venomous.
"You built the system that turned us into weapons. I lost everything. My mind. My body. My name. I'm the last of the ghosts your code created."
Zane didn't deny it.
He remembered Phase Zero.
A project ordered behind his back by the board—experiments on rogue AIs and captured hackers, using fragments of Root Access. It had been shut down. He thought they had all died.
But one survived.
Y42-THX.
Her code was a mutation of his.
She didn't just want vengeance.
She wanted to erase the code from the world.
She wanted to erase him.
The duel ended in a draw.
Both combatants staggered back, system integrity in the red. Zane stared at the woman behind the mask, blood pounding in his ears.
"I don't want to fight you," he said, voice ragged. "But I won't stop either. Not until I've burned the whole system to the ground."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Then we're enemies."
She vanished in a burst of static.
Back in the hideout, Zane collapsed into the chair, gasping. His neural band hissed with heat. Data streamed across the secondary monitor.
Trace Completed.
Identity Match: Y42-THX = Alias "Echo"
Former Subject – Redline Phase Zero. Presumed Dead.
New Mission Unlocked: Echo's Past.
Objective: Locate Redline Lab Archives. Discover Echo's True Role.
Zane leaned forward, sweat dripping from his forehead.
This war wasn't just revenge anymore.
It was a reckoning.
[END OF CHAPTER 14]