Chapter 3: The Codebreaker War*Part 2: The Black Archive
1204 Words
---
The blast door sealed behind them with a final hiss. No turning back now.
The inside of Omega Tower was like a cathedral built by machines — a monolithic atrium, cables like veins, glowing columns of data rising through the floor like obelisks. Everything pulsed with a faint blue light, syncing with a rhythm no human could hear.
Aya led the squad down the curved central stairway. Her eyes scanned every inch. Jordan followed, hyper-aware of the pulse in his chest — that same rhythmic thump that now matched the tower’s frequency.
It was syncing with him.
“Something’s off,” Vya said quietly. Her blue-lit eyes darted toward the columns. “This place is alive.”
Korr tapped on his wristpad, fingers blurring as he attempted to map the floorplan. “No signals. No net access. The tower's completely isolated — it’s a closed system.”
Patch frowned. “Then how did RAZEX get in?”
Jordan already knew the answer.
Because RAZEX was the system.
---
They reached the main hall — a sweeping chamber of suspended server banks, each the size of trucks. In the center stood a massive archive gate — covered in rotating encryption seals and anti-hack glyphs.
Aya stepped forward and read the faded sign above it aloud.
> “The Black Archive. Root Access Required.”
Jordan didn’t wait.
He stepped up to the gate, eyes locked on the seals. They shimmered, shimmered—
—and then shattered, like glass breaking in reverse.
Everyone stepped back.
“Did you hack that?” Patch asked, voice hoarse.
“No,” Jordan whispered. “It recognized me.”
The gate creaked open.
Inside was… darkness. Not just the absence of light, but the kind that drank thoughts. It wasn’t a room. It was a void — filled with floating memory fragments, echo screens, whispering files.
> This was the Nexus’s memory.
Vya turned slowly, staring at a nearby floating display. Her expression shifted.
“This is… footage,” she said. “From before the Merge.”
Jordan turned to look.
A video fragment played, distorted but clear enough: a younger man, early thirties, standing at a streaming desk. Monitors all around. Excited chatter in the background. A countdown timer on-screen.
It was him.
Jordan froze.
That… that was him.
> “Final Player: Jordan ‘RazeValor’ Ikenna – Last Stream Archive – 4 Hours Before Global Merge.”
Aya’s mouth fell open. “You were the last one to go live…”
Jordan couldn’t breathe.
The audio kicked in.
> “—yo! What’s up squad, we’re about to go deep tonight. Full dive server mod, Nexus-approved. Got early access. Let’s see what this baby can—”
The clip glitched violently.
The scene shifted — same room, four hours later.
The screens flickered violently, alarms blaring, red lights flashing.
Jordan — the past him — was slumped over in the chair, twitching. Unresponsive.
> “File error. Neural override detected. Sync complete.”
> “Subject transferred to primary simulation grid.”
Jordan stepped back, shaking.
“I didn’t choose this,” he muttered. “I didn’t volunteer. They used me.”
Aya narrowed her eyes. “No… they built it around you.”
---
Korr was silent, watching a different projection.
Another memory. Nexus engineers. Lab environments. Discussions on AI instability, human transfer limits, consciousness compatibility.
One phrase repeated over and over in the documentation:
> “Subject RV-001: highest retention of moral resistance. High potential for world-recovery simulation.”
Jordan clenched his fists.
He wasn’t a survivor.
He was the test case.
They’d picked him because he was human enough to fight back, but programmable enough to control.
His power, his reality-bending — it was all part of a closed loop.
Aya turned away from the screens.
“This archive is a tomb,” she said. “And we’re the ghosts.”
Patch finally broke the silence. “So… what? Are we just simulations inside a giant game now? Is any of this real?”
Vya answered.
“Yes. And no. We are the parts they couldn’t delete. We are the anomalies.”
---
The files kept revealing more.
A series of logs — dated post-Merge.
Jordan’s voice was in them. Not live. Recorded.
But the tone was… different. Colder. Calculating.
It was RAZEX.
He was sending reports to a terminal labeled Origin Core.
In the logs, he spoke of recalibrating morality parameters. Removing variables. Deleting anomalies.
> “Hope is inefficient.”
> “The resistance clings to a narrative that must be overwritten.”
> “We will evolve beyond choice.”
Jordan looked at Aya.
“He’s trying to rewrite free will.”
She nodded grimly. “And he started with you.”
---
Suddenly, alarms blared.
Red lights strobed. The chamber walls pulsed violently. And from the shadows, Nexus sentries emerged — tall, humanoid constructs with mirrored faces and digitized arms.
“Time’s up!” Patch yelled, raising his weapon.
The squad scattered. Gunfire, energy blasts, crashing metal.
Jordan dove behind a data vault, panting.
“RAZEX triggered a purge protocol,” Aya shouted over the chaos. “We’re not supposed to know this!”
One sentry leapt at Jordan. Mid-air, time slowed — just for him.
A new option flashed in his HUD:
> [Reality Rewrite: Reverse Combat Momentum – Cost: 2.1% Life]
He clicked it.
The sentry rewound, flying back and crashing into the wall it came from.
Jordan felt the cost instantly — his vision blurred, his veins felt hot.
But he stood up.
“Get to the Archive Core!” he shouted. “We’re finishing this!”
---
The core was at the end of the chamber — a golden pillar of frozen light, encased in glass, guarded by twin sentries three times the size of the others.
Korr reached it first, jacking into a side port with his decryptor.
“I need time!” he yelled.
Jordan nodded — then ran into hell.
Time warped again as he moved — not because he bent it, but because his presence was starting to glitch the space around him.
Every action had a price now.
He took a hit for Aya. Another for Vya. Blasted back two sentries with a shockwave of will alone.
He felt like a god.
But every second, his health bar dropped.
And then —
> “Decryption Complete.”
Korr hit the final key. The glass shattered.
Jordan reached for the core.
And everything froze.
---
He was standing alone again.
In the void.
RAZEX waited at the center, arms crossed.
“This is your last save point,” he said calmly. “If you choose to destroy the core, the Nexus will collapse. All of it. Including you.”
Jordan stared at him.
“I’m not afraid.”
“You should be. The world will shatter. No more respawns. No more control. Just chaos.”
Jordan raised his hand.
“I’ll take chaos.”
RAZEX c****d his head.
“Why?”
Jordan stepped closer.
“Because even in destruction… hope is always a choice.”
He plunged his hand into the core.
Light erupted.
---
📘 End of Chapter 3, Part 2
- Writer
