《Dinner with Death》

Chapter 28: The Saints of Subang

The monsoon rain didn't just fall; it orchestrated a symphony of biological and mechanical chaos over Jalan TK 3/14. The sky above Puchong was a bruised, electric purple, torn apart by the rhythmic, blinding searchlights of the L-Network gunships. They were hovering like hungry vultures, their rotors whipping the humid, chemical-laden air into a frenzy that felt like a localized hurricane.

But the real threat wasn't in the sky. It was on the pavement, emerging from the steam.

“They’re here,” Anchor grunted. He was leaning against the shattered remains of my mother’s kitchen counter, his shotgun leveled at the rain-slicked street. His breathing was heavy—a wet, mechanical rattle that vibrated in his chest. His left optic was flickering, a red warning light bleeding into the dark. We were both failing, two dying stars trying to outrun the dawn.

I stepped over the calcified, ash-like remains of an Apostle, my bare feet silent on the shards of broken glass. I could feel them. Three distinct, high-frequency pulses moving in perfect, sickening unison. They didn't have heartbeats; they had clock-speeds. They didn't have souls; they had sub-routines.

Three metallic pods, shaped like oversized teardrops and coated in a heat-resistant ceramic, had embedded themselves into the asphalt of the cul-de-sac. The steam from their atmospheric entry hissed against the cold rain, creating a thick, white fog that tasted of ozone and burnt rubber.

Then, the pods opened with a pressurized hiss.

[The Triad of Perfection]

The Saints didn't look like soldiers. They didn't need the bulky armor of the Apostles. They wore translucent, form-fitting kinetic suits that shimmered with the same eerie, silver bioluminescence as my own skin. Two men and one woman, their hair white as bone, their eyes fixed in a state of permanent, ecstatic focus. They looked like angels designed in a basement in Switzerland.

“Specimen 01,” they spoke in unison. The sound didn't come from their throats; it was a digital broadcast delivered directly into my auditory nerves via the Aether-Protocol. “The Overseer requests your return. Your integration window is closing. Why cling to a vessel that is already rotting?”

“I’m not a file to be uploaded,” I hissed, the silver liquid behind my eyes pulsing with a violent, violet light that threatened to burst my capillaries.

The woman Saint smiled. It wasn't a human expression; it was a pre-recorded animation of joy. She moved—not with speed, but with a total, terrifying disregard for the laws of physics. One second she was fifty yards away; the next, she was in the living room, her palm slamming into Anchor’s chest with the force of a hydraulic press.

Anchor, a man built of reinforced carbon-fiber and sheer spite, was thrown through the brick wall like he was made of wet cardboard.

“Anchor!” I screamed, but the other two were already closing in, their movements a synchronized blur of silver light.

[The Choreography of the Damned]

This wasn't a fight. It was a high-speed, living autopsy.

The Saints fought with a hive-mind intelligence that made every move I made feel like a slow-motion mistake. When I swung my diamond-tipped scalpel at the first male, the second was already parrying the strike before the impulse had even fully traveled from my brain to my hand. They knew my code. They were the upgrade, and I was the bug they were sent to delete.

I felt a kick shatter three of my ribs, the sound echoing in the small house like snapping dry wood. I felt a palm-strike burst the air-sacs in my left lung. The pain was a cold, black ocean, but the Aether-Protocol was a dam that refused to break. Every time they tore a muscle, the silver liquid in my veins rushed to the site, knitting bone and fiber together in a flash of agonizing, searing heat.

“You are resisting the inevitable, Big Sister,” the Saints harmonized. They began to circle me, their movements creating a shimmering ring of silver light in the dark, ruined house. “Version 2.0 has no flaws. Version 2.0 has no grief. Why choose to be a ghost when you can be a god?”

I fell to my knees, coughing up a thick mixture of dark blood and shimmering mercury. My vision was fracturing into a thousand hexagonal screens. I could see the Overseer watching me through their collective eyes. I could feel him—a cold, digital presence—searching for the Master Key hidden in my suffering.

[The Overclocking]

“Nian… the server…” Anchor’s voice came from the pile of rubble, weak and distorted by a broken jaw. “Connect… to the Root! Give them… what they want!”

I looked at the server rack under the stairs. The blue lights were screaming, a high-pitched electronic wail that resonated with the frequency of my own DNA.

The Saints lunged for the final blow, their hands glowing with a concentrated electromagnetic pulse designed to paralyze my nervous system and begin the forced upload.

I didn't dodge. I didn't fight. I reached back and grabbed the exposed, pulsing fiber-optic cables of the Root Directory.

“You want my code?” I roared, the silver liquid erupting from my pores like a halo of jagged thorns. “THEN TAKE NINETEEN YEARS OF IT!”

I didn't just interface; I overclocked. I opened every trauma, every memory of the cupboard, every scream of my mother, and the raw, unrefined agony of the Aether-Protocol and poured it directly into their hive-mind.

The effect was instantaneous and horrific. The three Saints froze mid-air, their bodies convulsing. Their bone-white hair began to smoke, turning black and brittle. Their ecstatic expressions twisted into masks of pure, unfiltered human horror as they were hit with the one thing the Overseer had removed from their code: The capacity to feel.

The sheer weight of my suffering acted like a localized virus. Their processors couldn't handle the irrationality of my grief.

One by one, their eyes didn't just burst; they dissolved into gray, digital static. Their "perfection" was consumed by the very human rot they looked down upon.

[The 25-Hour Mark]

The house fell silent again, save for the rain and the small, blue electrical fires dancing on the ruined server rack. The three Saints lay on the floor, their silver suits dimming into a dull, leaden gray. They weren't angels anymore. They were just empty shells.

I slumped against the wall, my skin vibrating so violently I thought my atoms would simply drift apart. The countdown in the corner of my vision flickered, red and angry.

25:00:00.

Anchor crawled out from the debris, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, his face a mask of blood and dust. He looked at the dead Saints, then at me, and for the first time, I saw something like fear in his eyes.

“You didn't just kill them, Nian,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “You… you broke their reality.”

“The Overseer is listening,” I said, my voice sounding like two stones grinding together. I looked at the flickering holographic screens. I knew my ‘brother’ was on the other side of the planet, feeling the echo of the static I’d just unleashed. “He thinks he’s the final edit. But he’s never had to bleed to keep his soul.”

I stood up, the silver liquid in my veins now a deep, bruised violet. I wasn't just Specimen 01 anymore. I was the source-code of a revolution.

“Anchor, pack the incendiaries,” I said, looking out at the gunships that were now retreating into the clouds, their command structure shattered by the loss of their elite unit. “We’re leaving Malaysia. If they want the Master Key, they’re going to have to chase me into the one place where the L-Network’s silicon heart is exposed.”

“Where?”

“Tokyo,” I said, my hexagonal pupils locking onto the next red pulse on the map. “The Arasaka-Heisai District. It’s time to find the man who built your heart, Anchor. And then, I’m going to break his.”