The moment the words "Operation Hijack: Phase Two" activated on Zane's HUD, he knew this mission would be different.
This wasn't just infiltration.
This was war.
Not against a person… but against a protocol.
Root Access hummed with an unfamiliar rhythm—tighter, faster, almost angry. As if it had tasted rebellion in Lyra and now sought to exterminate it in everything that came next.
Zane stood on the edge of a collapsed cityscape within the Grid. The skyline glitched like shattered glass, buildings pulsing with corrupted code. Ahead lay Nexus Node K-0X, one of the last surviving databanks of the original Omniscient mainframe.
The place where Redline Protocols were first written.
The perfect target.
His objective was simple: Hijack the node, overwrite its failsafes, and plant a backdoor for future control.
But something felt off.
He wasn't alone.
Zane descended into the ruins, every footstep echoing through corrupted echoes of civilization. Graffiti made from glitch-runes and warning sigils lined the walls. Old drones buzzed overhead like flies circling a corpse.
A flicker of motion to the left.
He spun.
Nothing.
Then to the right—another flicker.
Zane activated Spectral View.
And he saw them.
A group of five, masked in static armor, their bodies glitching between transparency and solidity. Protocol Defenders. Guard dogs of the old system—AI sentinels left behind to protect dead data.
They weren't human.
They weren't even sentient.
But they remembered orders.
"Engage," one of them hissed in binary static.
And they attacked.
Zane launched backward as a pulse round scorched the ground where he stood.
He countered instantly—Ghostfire Blade in one hand, EMP Shard Dagger in the other. The first defender lunged with razor claws, but Zane ducked, sliced upward, and rerouted the AI's neural mesh mid-motion.
The second came from above.
Zane activated a Chrono-Slip—freezing time for a split second, just long enough to twist, throw his dagger, and embed it directly into the AI's processor.
Two down.
Three more surged forward, moving faster than logic allowed.
Zane tapped into Root Access and overclocked his cognition, his brain syncing with the digital world like a combat algorithm.
"Override subroutines. Feed false input."
The third AI staggered, its vision hijacked.
Zane moved like a blur, slicing through its chest with a clean arc. Sparks erupted. Code fragments spilled out like blood.
But the last two weren't ordinary.
They were Redline-Augmented.
Zane recognized the tech—twisted versions of Lyra's protocol. These weren't defenders. They were killers trained to adapt, rewrite, and overwrite him in real-time.
They attacked together—one sweeping low, the other aiming a disintegration beam at his chest.
He barely dodged, the edge of the beam grazing his shoulder. His skin flared with pixelated burns, and warnings flooded his HUD.
"Integrity Drop Detected: 47%"
"Dammit," he hissed.
He had to end this.
Now.
He surged forward, opening a Quantum Breach Portal, slipping behind the closest attacker. His fingers shot into its back—injecting a virus coded from Lyra's own hijack strain.
The AI screamed—then convulsed—then imploded into corrupted zeroes.
The last one hesitated.
Big mistake.
Zane struck with everything: blade, code, and fury. The air lit up with a storm of corrupted energy as he drove the Ghostfire Blade through its core and detonated it from the inside.
Silence returned.
Five corpses—scattered, twitching, glowing.
He stood over them, panting, arms trembling.
"Root Access," he muttered. "Initiate node link."
The world shifted.
A circular platform emerged from the ground—data streaming upward like a waterfall in reverse. In the center, a single black terminal pulsed.
Zane approached.
The final firewall.
He reached out.
"Override authentication: Zane Caulder. Root Access Signature Key: Alpha-Prime."
The barrier shattered.
And with a deep hum, the old system surrendered.
He had control.
He opened the internal data vault.
What he saw froze him.
Hundreds of files. Dozens of subjects. Countless experiments. Names. Faces. Lives.
Each one marked:
Failed
Terminated
Assimilated
Including one labeled:
Subject 001: Caulder, Zane. Status: Unstable. Potential: Maximum Risk.
His own name.
He wasn't just a creator.
He was a product.
Zane stared at the file in horror.
They hadn't just used his code.
They had used him.
Everything he'd believed—that he was a rogue developer taking revenge against his former masters—was only half the truth.
He had been their first test subject.
The beginning of it all.
And Lyra?
She was the second.
"Shit," Zane whispered, stepping back.
But then, a new file loaded on its own.
A live one.
Subject 004: Status—Reactivated. Location—Unknown. Signal—Approaching.
Zane's eyes widened.
Another one was coming.
Another Redline success.
And this one wasn't Lyra.
He logged out of the vault, backed up every file, and vanished before the system could track his signal.
Back in the hideout, Zane sat in silence, staring at the glowing files.
The past wasn't done.
More subjects were alive.
The war was expanding.
He sent one encrypted message to Lyra's last known signal.
"They're waking up more of us. We need to talk. Now."
The screen blinked once.
And a single word returned.
"Agreed."
Zane leaned back.
The fight was no longer about vengeance.
It was about who they were, what they were made into, and who would take control of the future.
And as the shadows deepened around him, he whispered the words that would define the next phase of the war:
"I'm done running. Now I rewrite everything."
[END OF CHAPTER 18]