Chapter 2: The Unseen Patch Part 1 – Firewall Shadows
1100 Words
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The world didn't wake up the next morning.
It stayed broken.
Jordan sat quietly on a cracked rooftop overlooking what used to be his city. The skyline looked like it had been edited by a bad modder — skyscrapers twisted into jagged polygons, lights blinking in Morse code patterns that probably meant run. Entire blocks were overlaid with low-res textures, like unfinished game zones.
It was silent, except for the occasional distortion ripple through the air — a reminder that the Merge hadn’t stopped. It had only paused for breath.
Aya returned with two packs of synth water and some kind of ration bar that crumbled like sand in Jordan’s mouth.
“We’ve got maybe six hours before the next pulse wave hits,” she said, eyes scanning the horizon like a sniper.
“Pulse wave?”
Aya nodded. “Think of it like an auto-save gone wrong. Every six hours, the Merge expands its reach. Rewrites a little more of the world.”
Jordan frowned. “And people caught in it?”
“They’re either synced, corrupted, or… lost. Some of them become part of the terrain. Others — the unlucky ones — turn into Echoes.”
He remembered the woman yesterday. Repeating “Press X to interact” like a possessed tutorial.
“Jesus.”
“No,” Aya said, not unkindly. “The System replaced religion with statistics a long time ago.”
---
They traveled by nightfall, slipping through what remained of backstreets and metro tunnels. Jordan noticed the air shimmered around him — sometimes pushing back objects that came too close, other times glitching walls just enough to reveal hidden doors.
He didn’t feel powerful.
He felt like a mistake.
But he was learning.
With every step, the HUD updated. Small text boxes appeared above debris or near corpses:
> [OLD WORLD RELIC – NON-INTERACTIVE]
[BROKEN SCRIPT — LOG FILE CORRUPTED]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY APPROACHING – CAUTION ADVISED]
“Hey,” Jordan asked during a brief pause. “Why can’t the System force sync me? Why do I keep resisting?”
Aya glanced at him. “We’re not sure. But there’s a theory. It’s called the Firewall Soul.”
“That sounds… anime.”
She smirked. “It kinda is. The idea is that some people are born with a mental barrier strong enough to reject synthetic overrides. They become anomalies in the System’s calculations. It tries to delete them, overwrite them, or — in your case — observe them.”
Jordan looked up at the sky.
Where stars used to be, now there were only data grids. Hovering code lines. Floating error messages blinking slowly across the stratosphere.
“This was always coming, wasn’t it?” he muttered.
Aya didn’t answer right away. Then softly: “Yeah. The signs were there. Auto-generated content getting too advanced. AI writing laws. Quantum servers running underground cities. Nobody cared… until it started replacing what we thought was real.”
Jordan took a breath.
“Do we even have a shot?”
“You’re the Final Player,” she said. “You’re not supposed to have a shot. That’s what makes it worth trying.”
---
They reached a resistance node by midnight.
Hidden under a museum of gaming history, it was the last place the System would think to look — ironically buried beneath the legacy of the world it was now cannibalizing.
The air inside smelled like solder, sweat, and old vinyl posters. Someone had drawn a line of chalk text across one cracked wall:
> "Reality is not a save file. You can't go back. Only forward."
The people here — maybe fifteen in total — looked exhausted. Glitches clung to some of them like digital mold. Aya was greeted with stiff nods and cautious relief.
Jordan was met with silence.
Then a kid no older than 12 looked up from a corner terminal and said:
> “He doesn’t look like much.”
Another voice, older and raspier, added:
> “Final Player’s supposed to be a myth.”
Jordan sighed. “Yeah, well… myths usually don’t have back pain and no plan.”
Aya clapped her hands. “He’s the real thing. Saw it with my own eyes. He tanked a Debug Hunter and triggered a localized glitch field. He’s synced to nothing. Not even the environment.”
An older woman stepped forward. She wore patched-up tactical gear and a long coat that had once been white. Now it was the color of ash and stubborn survival.
She extended a hand. “Name’s Marra. I founded this node. And if what you’re saying is true… we’re standing in front of humanity’s last exploit.”
Jordan shook her hand. “Glad to meet you. Just don’t expect me to know what I’m doing.”
“That’s fine,” Marra said. “Nobody here does. But if you’re willing to fight, we’ll help you unlock your skill tree.”
---
Later that night, Jordan found himself in a bunker beneath the main chamber. Old arcade machines lined the walls like tombstones. A glowing pillar of light pulsed at the center — what they called a Code Mirror.
Aya stood beside him.
“Step into it,” she said. “This is how we accelerate your sync with your abilities.”
Jordan nodded. “And what happens if I break it?”
Aya smirked. “Then we definitely know you’re the one.”
---
As Jordan stepped into the light, the world vanished.
Not like sleep.
More like being decompiled.
Suddenly, he was standing in a space filled with floating versions of himself — alternate lives, alternate choices. Streamer. Soldier. Coward. Killer. Savior. He could see every possible Jordan playing out like parallel YouTube clips.
A voice echoed across the void.
> “Choose the fragment to define your path…”
He reached out — and without thinking — touched the one labeled:
“The One Who Chooses Hope in Despair.”
The light surged.
A rush of memories hit him — not his, but possibilities. Alternate selves who had made the hard calls, sacrificed everything, rebuilt what others destroyed.
And then…
> Reality Manipulation: UNLOCKED (Beta Stage)
Ability: Alter surrounding physical elements within a 3-meter radius for 5 seconds.
Cooldown: 1 minute. Side effects: Extreme physical fatigue, time distortion, memory drift.
Jordan stumbled back into the real world, panting. Aya caught him before he fell.
“What did you see?” she asked.
He looked up, eyes glowing faintly.
“I saw who I could be.”
---
[End of Part 1 – Chapter 2]
- Writer
