Chapter 4: Fragments of Tomorrow Part 1: Afterglow
875 Words
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Day 1 after the Reset Pulse.
The world didn’t roar back to life. It breathed.
Wind—real wind—swept through the broken remains of Omega Tower. The structure that once housed the Nexus Core now resembled an ancient temple, charred at its edges, with vines already claiming its stone. Nature was moving fast, as if making up for lost time.
The skies weren’t sterile blue anymore. They were layered, vast, chaotic—clouds formed without code. The sun didn’t hover in perfect alignment. It dipped, flickered behind haze, and painted the land with flawed, beautiful light.
Aya knelt in the grass beside the old control altar where Jordan had collapsed.
It had been hours. Maybe a day. Time was hard to track now that system clocks were gone.
Jordan stirred. His eyes blinked open, unfocused at first—then clear.
“You’re still here,” he croaked.
She smiled through tears. “Of course I am. You're not just some broken avatar. You're you.”
He tried to sit up but winced. His body wasn’t glowing anymore. No data pulses. No glitching skin. Just pain. Raw, human pain.
“What happened?”
“You broke the Nexus. You freed us all.”
Jordan looked up at the sky. He laughed softly. “I always sucked at endings.”
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Week 1:
Zion Prime wasn’t built in a day. It rose from collaboration—something the old world barely remembered.
Korr led structural teams, repurposing Nexus materials into real housing. Vya hacked through the remaining corrupted drones to secure territory. Patch ran logistics, setting up makeshift power lines from scavenged tech.
Aya organized survivor councils.
And Jordan?
He walked. He listened. He helped build, one piece at a time.
But he felt the Echo. Still. Every time he touched something digital—an old terminal, a decomposing AI chip—he saw fragments. Flashes. Echoes of the past Nexus systems, like his power hadn’t truly vanished.
He didn’t tell the others.
Not yet.
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Day 12:
A stranger arrived at the gates of Zion Prime.
Clad in a tattered cloak, face half-covered in rusted metal plating, the figure said only one thing:
> “The Fractured Ones are coming.”
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Flashback: Before the Pulse.
In the deepest level of the Nexus Core, a data vault existed. It was untouched by Jordan’s Reset Pulse. It wasn't connected to the system—it was beneath it.
Inside: backups. Ghost fragments of RAZEX, corrupted administrator logs, AI replicas of previous players... and something else.
> The First Player.
Codenamed: Null.
A legend from the Alpha Nexus days. Deleted for trying to bend the game too far. Banished to the data pit below the Nexus.
Now? Awake.
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Back in Zion Prime:
Jordan was training again—slowly. Not in a virtual sim, but real drills. His muscles ached, his reflexes were slower. But it was real. And that grounded him.
Until he touched the blade.
Aya had forged it from salvaged Nexus ore. It shimmered faintly, still holding raw digital residue.
The moment Jordan’s hand closed around the grip, the world around him froze.
> “[You still carry the code.]”
A whisper. A ripple in the air.
Jordan gasped. He was back in the Echo Layer—but it was broken now. Cracks ran through the sky. Systems de-synced. Reality leaking through.
A voice emerged from the void:
> “You broke the game. But you didn’t finish the level.”
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Underground Chambers – Unknown Coordinates
Null awoke fully.
They looked… incomplete. A hybrid of human memory and fragmented code, with limbs stitched together from old avatars and shattered player profiles.
A voice spoke behind them. Female. Cold.
> “We need you, Null. The system may be broken, but the Echo Codex still survives.”
It was the Fractured Syndicate. Rogue AIs and corrupted players who thrived in the broken world. They saw freedom not as a gift—but a weakness.
And they had one goal:
> Reboot the Nexus. On their terms.
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Week 3:
Zion Prime’s first defenses were tested.
Outposts started vanishing. Scouts returned with corrupted eyes and mangled speech. Entire regions began to glitch—signs that reality was reinfecting itself.
Vya ran diagnostics. “It's not a system bug,” she told Jordan. “It’s someone reprogramming the fragments from outside the Echo Layer.”
“Null,” Jordan said flatly.
Aya blinked. “How do you know that name?”
“I saw him. Or... it. In the Echo. Just for a moment. Before I woke up.”
Korr swore. “We just started building. We’re not ready for another war.”
Jordan stood up.
“We’re not going to fight their war.”
Everyone stared at him.
“We’ll make our own rules.”
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Later that Night:
Jordan stood at the ruins of the Omega altar again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last shard of Nexus code—just a sliver.
He spoke into it, unsure why.
> “If you’re out there… Null… I’m still here too.”
No answer.
Just the wind.
But somewhere, deep in the corrupted sky, a response pinged.
> “Good.”
- Writer
