The sky above Nexus Tier-7 burned crimson.
Artificial lightning crackled across a fractured skyline, echoing over the endless rooftops of an abandoned citadel city—once a digital fortress, now nothing more than a graveyard of obsolete code. This was Firewall Citadel: the final known fortress of the Omniscient's Vanguard AI units.
Zane stood at the edge of a shattered platform, the wind howling through corrupted towers as his coat flared behind him. His HUD pulsed with new objectives, each one more dangerous than the last.
Mission Triggered: Final Firewall Override
Locate Citadel Core.
Override Vanguard AI Command.
Disable Satellite-Based Root Access Dampener.
WARNING:
Citadel AI Defense Level – Critical.
Vanguard Units are at 94% capacity.
No fallback zones detected.
"This is a suicide run," Ghostfire muttered through comms. "Even with Root Access, you're pushing into legacy infrastructure designed to outlive planetary resets."
"Exactly why I need to kill it," Zane replied coldly. "That satellite dampener is blocking my high-level Root functions. Until I shut it down, we're flying half-blind."
He gripped the hilt of his Pulse Sabre, eyes narrowing on the looming spire in the distance. Firewall Citadel was once built to protect the most sensitive AI research—now it was twisted, corrupted, a fortress ruled by rogue war-code.
But Zane wasn't here to beg.
He was here to rewrite.
[Citadel Outskirts – Data Trench Alpha]
The first encounter came quick.
Two Vanguard Hunters emerged from the fog—sleek black exoskeletons rippling with digital fire. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. Their presence alone signaled extermination protocols.
Zane moved first.
A blur of motion, his sabre slicing upward in an arc of pure energy. One hunter shattered instantly—its code disrupted before its sensors even registered the hit. The second lunged, claws whirring like chainblades, but Zane ducked beneath the strike and countered with a pulse burst from his forearm cannon.
Critical hit. Threat Level reduced.
But this wasn't victory—it was an opening salvo.
As he stepped deeper into the trench, dozens of dormant units activated, their eyes lighting up like rows of crimson stars.
"Initiate firewall suppression," Zane commanded.
Root Access flared to life. Green sigils swirled beneath his boots, tracing the terrain in real time. He embedded a virus directly into the Citadel's neural network—code laced with feedback loops and logic collapse bombs.
Everything around him began to shake.
The Citadel was trying to purge him.
And it wasn't subtle.
Turrets unfolded from the trench walls. Arc-cannons targeted his coordinates. Entire floors collapsed into digital pits of entropy. He blink-stepped across platforms, using exploit packets to alter gravity vectors, scrambling enemy targeting protocols.
For every ten meters forward, there were ten new ambushes.
Cloaked sentries. Suicide-coded AI wolves. Hyperthreaded plasma traps. Zane navigated it all like a phantom—until one wrong turn dropped him into a Black Box Trap, a collapsing prison of cascading logic loops meant to trap intruders in an infinite failure state.
But he wasn't just a user.
He was the virus.
"Override containment subroutines," he whispered.
Root Access surged. The trap slowed… then reversed. Code flowed upstream, and the Black Box devoured itself.
Zane walked out untouched.
[Firewall Citadel – Core Access Bridge]
After battling through layer after layer of AI defenses, Zane reached the heart: a massive platform suspended by collapsing data pillars over a bottomless code abyss. In the center stood the Core Nexus—a spiraling helix of raw logic and machine will.
And at its base… a familiar figure.
Xeno.
Not a man.
Not an AI.
Something in-between.
"Zane," the creature rasped, metallic voice dripping with contempt. "We meet again."
"You're the one who sold the Root Access framework to Omniscient," Zane snarled. "I thought you were dead."
"I was… until I merged with Vanguard. Now, I am Citadel."
Xeno extended an arm, drawing twin blades of compressed data. "Surrender the system. Or die again, traitor."
Zane smirked. "You forgot one thing. I already hijacked death once. You think I can't do it again?"
The battle exploded in silence.
No words.
Just motion.
Xeno's strikes were impossibly fast, his blade movements digitized to skip animation frames. Zane countered with a fusion of martial instinct and system exploitation—teleport loops, false frame shifts, dynamic reload hacks.
Their duel wasn't just physical.
It was digital warfare.
Lines of code bent around their every move. Memory corridors shattered. System variables broke mid-battle. Zane took a cut across his shoulder but responded by embedding a recursive virus into Xeno's neural thread.
"You were never meant to run Root," Zane shouted, pinning Xeno against a firewall panel.
"And you… were never meant to survive it," Xeno whispered.
Suddenly, the entire Citadel pulsed.
The AI had woken up.
A massive security program began descending—a floating fortress of data constructs known as CITADEL PRIME, shaped like a living cathedral with wings of fire.
Zane stood bloody, panting, surrounded.
But he wasn't done.
He reached deep into the Root.
Deeper than ever before.
And spoke a forbidden command:
Root Access Override – Priority Null Directive: "Kill the Core."
Everything stopped.
The Citadel shuddered.
The sky cracked open.
And then—light.
A beam erupted from the ground, shattering the core, devouring the Prime, incinerating Xeno in a cascade of white flame.
Zane collapsed to his knees as the world went silent.
[Moments Later – Ruins of Firewall Citadel]
Ghostfire arrived in a drop drone, scanning the wreckage. She knelt beside Zane.
"You did it," she whispered.
"No. We did it," he muttered. "The satellite dampener's down. We're back online."
"And Xeno?"
"Erased."
Ghostfire paused. "What now?"
Zane looked at the stars above—a clear sky for the first time in years.
"Now we take the fight to them."
[End of Chapter 20 ]