The Man Who Reset the World

"Move, technician! Stop pretending you're weak!" The shout exploded right beside Zevran's ear. Two large hands grabbed his arms and dragged him forward. The tips of his shoes scraped across the slippery marble floor. Zevran opened his eyes. The lights in the hall blazed down from the high ceiling. His mouth tasted like ash. He knew that taste. It was the taste of the Void Core, the last place he had seen before pressing Reset. "Let go of my arms," he said hoarsely. "Let go?" The guard on his left snorted. He had a square face and a chin covered in rough stubble. "You just shouted in the middle of the Consortium event. If I let go, you'll probably run." "I shouted?" "You fell out of the calibration chair, got up, and told the entire hall to shut down the system. Did you forget?" The guard grinned. "No sane person would do that." Zevran said nothing. His memories were intact. Thirty-one years, from this very day until the world fell apart. Thin white letters lit up in the corner of his vision. Only he could see them. [Time Synchronization. Day 1, Year 0 of the Balance.] The Root Lens. That fragment of core code had come with him. Zevran lowered his head and examined his body. Thin arms, an oversized gray technician's uniform, clean fingernails without a single burn scar. The body of a twenty-seven-year-old who had never touched the Void Core. It worked, he thought. Now, let's calculate the time. At the end of the side corridor, the stage curtain had parted slightly. Through the gap, Zevran saw a man in a white suit standing under the spotlight. His hair was slicked back, and he wore a broad smile. "The Balance System is more than just a machine," the man said into the microphone. His voice was warm and confident. "It is a promise that not a single life will be wasted." Applause erupted throughout the hall. Zevran stopped walking. Cassian Holloway. They used to share a bowl of noodles in the cafeteria while complaining about their salaries. And this was the man who had stolen the only thing Zevran had ever owned. The giant screen behind Cassian displayed a system diagram. Zevran recognized every line. The arrangement of nodes, the weighing pathways, even the tiny typo in the label at the bottom right that he had never gotten around to fixing. Those were his marks. That was his design. "Why did you stop?" The square-faced guard jerked his arm. "Move." "Stop daydreaming." A new voice came from behind the curtain. Supervisor Orlan Pike appeared, a fat man with a flushed face and a thin mustache that was always damp with sweat. Without another word, he kicked Zevran in the knee. Zevran stumbled but did not fall. He straightened up and looked at Pike. His expression did not change in the slightest. "You've embarrassed my entire division," Pike hissed. "Third-class technicians are forbidden from going near the stage. You know the rules." "I do, sir." Zevran replied flatly. "I also know that you signed the calibration report without reading it." Pike opened his mouth, then closed it again. His eyes darted left and right, making sure no one had heard. "Drag him to the back corridor," he told the guards. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Keep him there until the event is over. Don't let him make another sound." They took him through a narrow metal door. The corridor beyond was dim and smelled of dust and machine oil. One of the guards shoved Zevran until he landed on the floor, right beside a maintenance panel mounted on the wall. "Sit there and keep quiet," said the square-faced guard. "If you move, I'll break your fingers." "I'm just sitting," Zevran replied. The guard snorted, then turned around and stood with his back to Zevran near the door. His companion joined him, busy peeking through the gap to watch the event. Zevran glanced at the panel beside his shoulder. Its cover was half-open, and a cable port peeked out from inside. He touched it with his fingertip. [Backup Gateway Detected. Full Access in 40 Seconds.] He smiled faintly. In his previous life, it had taken him three days to breach a gateway like this. Now, forty seconds would be enough. His fingers moved quickly across the panel's surface. Lines of code flowed through his mind. The first lock broke, followed by the second. At the twentieth second, he found something in the core launch script. ANCHOR_PENDING. V-26. His jaw tightened. That single line confirmed all his suspicions. The Balance had not yet fully activated. The system was still waiting for something that no machine could create. "Hey." The guard near the door turned around. "What are you doing?" "Scratching the wall," Zevran answered without looking up. The guard stepped closer. Zevran pressed the final button. An odd hum came from inside the hall, followed by a long silence. A few seconds later, the sound of people murmuring grew into a commotion. "What was that?" the second guard asked. He pressed his face against the gap in the door. "The screen... the screen has changed!" The square-faced guard grabbed Zevran by the collar and pulled him to his feet. "You did this!" "Me?" Zevran raised an eyebrow. "I've been sitting here the whole time, haven't I?" They refused to listen. The door was thrown wide open, and Zevran was dragged to the back of the hall. From there, he could see the giant screen clearly. The diagram was gone. In its place, a single white sentence filled the screen. The Balance cannot weigh yet. The Anchor has not been established. The hall froze. Not a single person spoke. Onstage, Cassian stood rigid, the microphone still in his hand. His smile had vanished. In the front row, an elderly man in a black suit rose from his seat. His silver hair was neatly arranged, and his shoulders were straight. Corvane Draxmoor, chairman of the Joint Consortium. He did not look at the screen. Instead, he looked toward the back, directly at Zevran. His gaze was flat, showing neither anger nor surprise. It was the look of someone calculating the price of something. "Find out who touched the corridor panel," Corvane told the aide beside him. His voice was quiet, but it carried all the way to the back rows. "No one leaves until I know." Zevran met his gaze without blinking. He had faced this man before. In his previous life, Corvane had been the only person who remained calm while the city starved. Then his gaze shifted, and his entire body went rigid. In the auditors' section, a young woman sat with her long black hair neatly tied back. A clipboard rested on her lap. Her eyes were not on the screen, but on Zevran. Althea Viremont. Zevran recognized that face from a voice. The voice that had once echoed from inside the Void Core, deep within the code he had dismantled himself. Stop me, Zev, the voice had said. Please. He clenched his fist at his side. The woman was alive. She was breathing, sitting there, and looking at him with curious furrowed brows. She did not know anything yet. "I'll save you," he murmured, barely making a sound. "What did you say?" the square-faced guard barked. "Nothing." They dragged him out again, this time more roughly. Zevran did not resist. He needed them to let their guard down, and people who were thought to have already lost were not watched closely. The detention cell on the ground floor was narrow and cold. There was only one metal bench, one dim light, and one barred door. Zevran sat with his back against the wall and closed his eyes. Nearly two hours later, the sound of expensive shoes echoed through the corridor. Zevran already knew those footsteps. "Zev," a warm voice greeted him from behind the bars. "You look terrible." Zevran opened his eyes. Cassian stood there in his still-pristine white suit, one hand tucked into his pocket. His smile had returned, thin this time. "You were never good at small talk," Zevran said. "I'm not here for small talk." Cassian took out a sheet of paper and slipped it through the bars. "Your termination notice. Effective as of three o'clock. You no longer have access to the bureau, your service apartment, or even the food queue." Zevran did not take the paper. "That was fast." "The Consortium doesn't like surprises." Cassian shrugged. "Honestly, I don't understand how you made that screen change. But I do know one thing, Zev. You're just a third-class technician. People like you aren't meant to interfere." "That's right," Zevran replied. He stood up and walked toward the bars. His expression was calm. "I wasn't meant to. But I came anyway, without an invitation." Cassian chuckled. "You talk like someone who's certain he'll win." "You have seven days." Cassian's smile widened, as though he had just heard a joke. He tapped the bars once, then turned to leave. In the corner of Zevran's vision, white letters lit up. [Althea Viremont's Anchoring. 7 Days.] Cassian's footsteps stopped at the end of the corridor. He turned halfway around. "Seven days for what?" "To save Althea Viremont from all of you," Zevran answered quietly. Cassian's smile vanished instantly. His face hardened, and his voice dropped to a cold whisper. "Who told you that name?"