GLITCH IN BLOODLINE

CHAPTER 3 : THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

Riding on top of a subway train is significantly less "cool" than the movies make it look. It’s loud, it’s freezing, and the wind feels like it’s trying to peel your eyelids back. By the time the train hissed to a stop at Sector 4—The Void—I felt more like a frozen burrito than a legendary "Subject 7."

I rolled off the roof and landed on a walkway made of rusted metal grating. Below me, the city didn't just look different; it looked wrong. In the main city, the magic was hidden behind suits and cufflinks. Here, it was out in the open, bleeding through the cracks like neon sewage. The sky wasn't even black; it was a flickering shade of deep violet, pulsing like a bruised heart.

The Void was where the "errors" lived. People with glitches in their skin, shops selling spells that looked like malware, and a thick, heavy fog that tasted like copper and old batteries. My palm started to itch again. The brand was cool now, but it felt... heavy. Like it was trying to pull my hand toward something specific deeper in the district.

"You're going to get yourself deleted, kid."

I jumped nearly three feet in the air, spinning around so fast I almost fell off the walkway. Standing there, leaning against a stack of humming server crates, was a girl who looked like she’d been put together in a junkyard. She had neon green hair chopped short, a jacket covered in glowing patches, and eyes that didn't match—one was brown, the other was a bright, glowing cyan.

"I'm not—I'm just lost," I stammered, trying to hide my branded hand in my pocket.

She laughed, a dry, sharp sound. "Lost is the default setting in The Void. But you? You've got a trail of digital exhaust behind you that I could smell from three blocks away. You're Subject 7, right? The 'Prince of the Glitch'?"

My heart stopped. "How do you know that name?"

She stepped closer, her cyan eye whirring softly like a camera lens. "Because my name is Nix, and I’m the one who leaked the Project Horizon files that got your parents killed. Or 'uninstalled,' if you want to be technical."

The air felt like it left the planet. I lunged at her, not even thinking, but she didn't move. She just tapped a device on her wrist, and I hit an invisible wall of force that felt like running into a giant block of jello. I bounced off and landed on my butt.

"Take it easy, Leo," she said, her voice softening just a fraction. "I didn't kill them. I tried to help them. But the System... it doesn't like it when the code starts talking back. Your parents found a way to bridge the gap between human DNA and the Source Code. They didn't want a weapon. They wanted a bridge. And you? You're the bridge."

I scrambled up, my face hot. "I don't want to be a bridge. I want to be a normal sixteen-year-old who doesn't have suits trying to fry his brain!"

Nix looked at me, and for the first time, she looked genuinely sorry. "Normal isn't an option anymore. Look at your hand."

I pulled my hand out. The brand was glowing again, but this time, it was throwing a holographic image into the air. It was a map. A map of St. Jude’s, but with levels I’d never seen. Deep, underground levels. And in the center of the map was a heartbeat—slow, steady, and orange.

"That's not yours," Nix whispered, leaning in. "That’s a signature. A parental match."

"They're alive?" I felt a surge of hope so strong it made me dizzy.

"Or the System is using their ghosts to bait you," Nix warned. "But we won't know until we get to the Core. And to get there, we have to go through the 'White-Room'—the place where the System deletes the trash."

She reached out and touched the brand on my hand. Her fingers were cold, but where she touched me, the pain vanished. "I can hide your signal for an hour. Maybe two. But once we enter the Core, every suit in the city is going to know exactly where you are."

I looked at the map, then at the weird, flickering sky of The Void. I thought about the mystery stew, the clanking radiator, and the life I thought I had. It was all a lie. A simulation designed to keep me quiet until I was "ready." Well, I was ready now. But not for their tests.

"Let's go," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "Show me how to crash this place."

Nix grinned, revealing a silver tooth. "That's the spirit. But first, we need to get you a different jacket. You look like a hobo, and the guards at the Core have very high fashion standards."

We started walking deeper into the maze of Sector 4. The further we went, the more the world began to break. Buildings drifted six inches off the ground. People spoke in languages that sounded like static. It was beautiful and terrifying, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was actually awake.

But as we turned a corner into a dark alleyway lined with glowing "Data-Casks," Nix suddenly froze. She grabbed my arm and pulled me behind a stack of rusted pipes.

"What?" I whispered.

"Shh," she hissed.

From the shadows at the end of the alley, a figure emerged. It wasn't a suit. It wasn't a guard. It was... me. Another Leo. Same hoodie, same scruffy hair, same terrified expression. He was stumbling along, clutching his hand just like I had been ten minutes ago.

My breath hitched. I looked at Nix, then back at the "Other Leo."

"Nix," I whispered, my voice trembling. "Why am I seeing myself?"

She didn't answer. She just stared at the other me with a look of pure horror. Then, the "Other Leo" stopped. He turned his head—not toward the alley, but directly toward the wall we were hiding behind. He smiled, a wide, distorted grin that stretched too far across his face, and his eyes turned into glowing, red "X" symbols.

"Subject 7 found," the double said, but the voice didn't come from him. It came from the pipes right next to my ear. "Deleting duplicate."

The "Other Leo" began to dissolve into a cloud of black, oily smoke that rushed toward us like a tidal wave, and the last thing I heard before the world went dark was the sound of a thousand voices laughing in perfect unison.