Chapter 4 – Part 2: The Awakening Protocol Segment 2: Fragments of Truth
1084 Words
Splinter Zone – Null Gate Perimeter
Jordan stared at Zera.
Even though half her face was covered in cracked mesh and corrupted stream lines blinked across her arms, her gaze was lucid. Sharp. Not like the broken NPCs or fading player ghosts he’d seen since the Reset.
She wasn’t malfunctioning.
She was awake.
“You know who I am,” Jordan said carefully.
Zera nodded. “You were the last player to override the system… before the world fractured. The one who broke the Death Loop. The only one who escaped.”
Jordan took a step back, heart pounding.
“You were watching?”
“We were waiting,” Zera replied. “For someone like you. Someone who could open this gate again.”
She gestured to the Null Chamber’s arch — a twisted digital relic flickering with failed system calls.
Jordan frowned. “So you’re with Null?”
“No. I was… left by him.”
Backstory Fragment — Zera’s Flashback
Zera’s voice became distant, like she was remembering something painful.
“I was one of the original Echo-Walkers. Beta testers who got trapped during the early anomaly events. The devs denied it was happening, but we felt it… code rewriting itself while we were logged in. Then Null showed up.”
“He wasn’t ‘Null’ back then. He was just a dev — a genius coder named Kalen Rhys. He went rogue, tried to warn us. When the first Pulse hit, the system blamed him. The Nexus branded him a traitor. They deleted his avatar and scattered his memory across five layers.”
Zera looked down at her hand, the digital lines pulsing.
“He rebuilt himself. Piece by piece. While we—his allies—got left behind in limbo. Forgotten.”
Jordan couldn’t hide his shock. “So… he started all of this?”
“No. You did. He just picked up the pieces after you broke the world.”
Jordan stepped back. “That’s not true. I didn’t—”
“You triggered the final override protocol, Jordan. You forced the Nexus to crash. You chose freedom over balance.”
Her eyes glinted. “But I’m not here to blame you. I’m here to ask you to finish what you started.”
Zion Prime – Meanwhile
Aya stormed into the command room.
“The east signal just surged again,” she snapped. “But we’re not alone.”
Korr and Vya looked up from the table where a projection of the map glitched and warped every few seconds.
“What do you mean?” Korr asked.
Aya tapped a console. “Multiple pings across former Nexus relay towers. Someone’s trying to reactivate the world… not just parts of it. Null isn’t just rebooting zones — he’s rewiring reality permissions.”
Patch whistled. “That’s… messed up.”
Korr leaned forward. “If he finishes that, we won’t just lose the safe zones. Everything could collapse. He’ll re-establish god access.”
Aya looked grim. “Which means Jordan needs to do more than observe. He might have to shut it all down. Permanently.”
Splinter Zone – Echo Memory Vault
Zera guided Jordan toward a dome filled with corrupted data crystals — fragments of old memory logs, dialogue scripts, broken storylines, character models melting into each other.
“This is where the old narrative was stored,” she explained. “Before the players took control.”
Jordan studied one crystal. Inside it played a scene of himself — from before the Reset. He was laughing with teammates. They were in a raid zone. None of it was real anymore.
“I remember this day,” he murmured. “This was before… before it all started glitching.”
Zera’s tone shifted. “You were part of something greater than you realized, Jordan. Players like you—streamers, record-holders, elite grinders—you pushed the code further than it was meant to go. The system couldn’t handle it. It adapted. Then it fought back.”
“Is that what Null wants?” Jordan asked. “Revenge for what we did to his creation?”
“No,” Zera said. “He wants control. Not to punish, but to contain. He wants to rebuild the game… but without choice this time.”
Jordan looked into the crystal again and saw his old avatar waving.
“I won’t let that happen.”
Zera handed him a piece of code — glowing, alive.
“Then take this. It’s a Prime Anchor — the last stable fragment of the Echo Core. You can use it to forge a gateway directly to Null’s chamber.”
Jordan accepted it. The shard hummed.
“But,” Zera warned, “if you take this, there’s no going back. This key will flag your presence across all sublayers. Null will see you. And so will the corrupted.”
Jordan nodded. “Let him come.”
Deep Nexus Core – Null’s Sanctum
Null stood before a towering statue of his old avatar, the original dev skin of Kalen Rhys. His voice was cold.
“He activated the Anchor.”
Spectra shimmered into view beside him. “Shall I dispatch the Core Sentinels?”
“No,” Null said. “Let him reach me.”
He turned toward a massive machine — not physical, not digital, but something in-between. Twisting lines of Echo code floated in and out of reality.
“The final version of the Nexus is almost ready,” Null said. “Once the Recode Protocol is complete, the past will be overwritten. Forever.”
Spectra blinked. “And Jordan?”
Null’s expression faltered for a moment.
“I want him to see it. I want him to understand why he was wrong.”
End of Segment 2 – Chapter 4, Part 2
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