Chapter 2: First BloodPart 4 – When the World Stops Rendering
962 Words
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It was raining pixels.
Not water. Not ash.
Just raw, digital fragments, falling from the corrupted sky like dead snow.
Jordan stared up at it, letting it coat his face. Every second felt like standing inside a glitching cutscene. Around him, the world was fractured — buildings warped in and out of existence, ground textures looping on repeat, the air humming with invisible code.
And deep beneath all that…
He felt something watching him.
Not an enemy.
Not even the System.
But the game itself.
---
Aya sat nearby, arms crossed, staring at her boots like they’d betrayed her. They were huddled in the remains of a subway tunnel, lit by emergency flares and old advertisement panels that still flickered with ghosted faces of celebrities long since deleted.
“Do you think this was ever real?” she asked.
Jordan didn’t respond.
She continued, quieter, “The lives we had before. The games. The laughs. The noise. The streams. My brother’s stupid Fortnite dances. Were any of those even ours, or were we just coded to believe they were?”
Jordan finally turned. “I don’t care.”
She looked up, shocked.
He clarified, “If they felt real… they were real. We lived them. That’s what matters.”
---
There was a beat of silence.
Then Aya stood and walked toward him, stopping close enough that he could hear her heartbeat.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
He gave a dry smile. “More like terrified.”
“Of dying?”
“No. Of disappearing.” He tapped his temple. “Piece by piece.”
---
Hours passed.
Aya slept in shifts. Jordan didn’t. He sat near the entrance to the tunnel, scanning the static-choked skyline with a handheld scanner that kept glitching every time it passed over him.
[ERROR: SIGNAL UNSTABLE]
[USER ID: UNKNOWN]
He shut it off and sighed.
The silence was broken by a mechanical screech.
Then came a faint voice — from behind.
“Jordan?”
He spun around fast, gun drawn.
But it wasn’t an Echo.
It was a child.
---
She couldn’t have been older than ten.
Messy hair. Digital burns on her arms. Eyes glowing faintly with the sign of partial sync. She wore an old, oversized VR headset around her neck like a necklace.
Behind her was a drone — disabled — with Resistance tags.
“Who are you?” Jordan asked, lowering his weapon but keeping it tight in his grip.
The girl looked up at him and smiled.
“I’m Patch.”
Aya woke up at the sound of the name.
She stood quickly. “The Patch? As in… the tech prodigy who used to mod battle royales for fun before the Merge?”
Patch giggled. “You make me sound like I’m famous.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Patch just shrugged. “I respawned.”
---
Aya muttered under her breath, “No way.”
But it made some twisted sense. Before the world went sideways, Patch was an infamous child hacker. She’d once broken into a global tournament’s backend just to fix the lag on her own team’s side. Legends said she nearly got recruited by the System before the Merge fully initialized.
Jordan crouched to her level. “Why are you here?”
Patch leaned forward. “Because I know what’s happening to you.”
He blinked. “What?”
She pulled out a cracked tablet and projected a hologram between them — a visual map of data nodes, pulsing lights and corrupted zones.
“The System didn’t just merge games and reality. It started syncing personalities. Cloning behaviors. You weren’t chosen randomly, Jordan.”
He leaned in closer. “Then why?”
Patch looked up at him, suddenly dead serious.
“Because you were the last player to reach Endgame Mode before the Merge.”
---
Jordan’s brain whirred like a struggling console.
Aya asked, “What does that mean?”
Patch tilted her head. “It means his data profile — his instinct patterns, decision loops, emotional scripting — was the most complete. The most… adaptable. So when the System needed a failsafe to test Reality Merge viability…”
Jordan finished the sentence.
“They copied me.”
---
Patch nodded solemnly.
“And now that the original is diverging — now that you're altering things — the System is trying to overwrite you again. Reset the simulation. You’re not just playing anymore, Jordan. You’re the glitch.”
Jordan stood slowly, blood rushing in his ears.
“I need to find out what they left inside me.”
Patch smiled again, mischief returning. “Then you’re gonna need a better loadout.”
---
She turned and opened a hidden cache behind a loose section of tunnel wall. Inside was an old VR suit, patched with crude wiring, fused with cybernetics. A cracked helmet sat on top.
Patch lifted it. “This was meant for the Final Player.”
Jordan stared.
“I thought that was a myth.”
“Nope.” Patch tossed him the helmet. “It’s you. Or at least, it used to be.”
He caught it, feeling a pulse as the helmet’s HUD flickered to life.
> [SYNCING PLAYER: JORDAN IKENNA]
[WARNING: SYSTEM BREACH IMMINENT]
Aya looked at him. “You sure you want to keep going?”
He didn’t answer.
He strapped the helmet on, eyes glowing faintly as the suit synced with him. He heard voices — distant echoes — fragments of timelines not yet lived.
Then a line of code blinked on his HUD:
> “Even in destruction… hope is always a choice.”
Jordan smirked.
“I’m ready.”
---
[END OF CHAPTER 2: First Blood — Part 4]
- Writer
