Chapter 1: Glitch in the Cradle
1130 Words
The last sunrise Jordan Ikenna saw before the world changed wasn’t anything special.
It was pixelated.
The morning light bled through his blinds in glitchy bars, as if the window had forgotten how to let in real sunlight. His eyes, used to high refresh rates and artificial motion blur, barely flinched. He was up before his alarm again, thanks to insomnia that felt less like a condition and more like a subscription. He rolled out of bed, still wearing the hoodie from yesterday’s stream — black, worn-out, embroidered with his gamer tag: RAZE VALOR.
He hadn’t streamed for the views anymore. Hell, his last peak had been months ago. These days, it was just therapy. An escape. A place to monologue into the void while the real world dimmed like a monitor going into sleep mode.
He cracked his neck, booted his rig, and greeted the glow of five neon-lit screens.
> “Morning, Chat. Or... whatever's left of you.”
A few familiar usernames pinged into the stream.
> @HexGone: “Yo Raze, any sleep or are you still clocked in to brain hell?”
@SnipeWitch: “He’s backkkk. End-of-the-world anxiety content hits different.”
@PixelFangirl: “Wait, is the Merge rumor true? You gonna talk about it?”
Jordan smirked. “Merge rumor? Pfft. There’s always a new system update threatening to ‘redefine reality.’ It’s just marketing."
But something in his voice didn't match the sarcasm.
---
Thirty minutes in, the static started.
Not on the stream — in the room. A buzz. Low. Vibrating the soles of his feet. Like the hum of a server too close to overload. Then the floor lights flickered. His smart coffee machine shattered its ceramic mug mid-brew. The power didn’t go out… it rewrote itself.
All five monitors went black.
Then one turned back on.
Not the game.
A screen of pulsing data. White text on black. Jordan leaned in. The code was old. Not UI. Not some hacker script. This was pre-system — raw lines written before the cloud even existed.
Then the message blinked across the center of the screen:
> "YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. FINAL PLAYER STATUS GRANTED."
He laughed.
Until the text changed.
> “REALITY IS NO LONGER A SPECTATOR MODE.”
The building shook. Not violently — surgically. As if something was carving through the foundation with precision. Outside, alarms screamed. Neon signs warped into code streams. A giant digital lotus — once part of a nearby ad banner — stretched its petals into the sky, then burst into a thousand geometric shards.
---
Jordan's door was open. He hadn't touched it.
He grabbed his phone. No signal.
He tried to shut down the system, but his hardware ignored him. The lights stayed off — but the code kept scrolling.
Suddenly, the world was lagging.
His steps left echoes.
The air pulsed like slow-motion water.
He stumbled out into the hallway — greeted not by neighbors, but by silence. Total, absolute silence. The kind only comes right before a crash.
And then the sky screamed.
---
Every screen across the city flashed the same message:
> “MERGE INITIATED. SYSTEM SYNC IN: 00:02:59”
Jordan ran.
Down the apartment hallway — barefoot, hoodie loose, phone still useless in one hand. Floor tiles blinked with each step like pressure plates in some forgotten dungeon crawler. Except this wasn't a game.
It was too real.
The outside world looked… patched. Like someone had tried to render two incompatible versions of the city over each other. Trees flickered between green and glowing. Streets curled like melted circuits. A pigeon flew past with trailing light particles, its flapping wings sounding like distorted guitar feedback.
Jordan skidded to a stop in front of a reflection — but not his own.
The glass storefront showed a version of him. Not quite real. Wearing armor. Face covered. A heads-up display hovered beside his head like a player HUD, stats blinking red.
Then the glass shattered.
Not from an impact — from within.
Reality was folding in on itself, rewriting live like a broken mod loader.
“Merge. Merge. Merge,” echoed a dozen overlapping voices. Some human. Some digital. Some… not.
People in the streets were transforming — not physically, but behaviorally. Eyes glazed over, movements robotic. Like they were being booted into something else.
NPC mode.
One woman raised her arms and spoke a line Jordan knew from an old game’s tutorial:
> “Press X to interact with object.”
And then she froze, arms still raised, glitching slightly like an idle animation.
---
Jordan ducked into an alley. His thoughts were chaos.
> What is this? A prank? A full-scale AR invasion? Did some game company break reality? Is this AI retaliation?
Then he heard a whisper. But not through his ears — through his mind.
> “You are the last unsynced node.”
“You are the anomaly.”
“Final Player status confirmed.”
The world paused.
Everything froze.
Then, a new HUD appeared in front of him, this time embedded in the air:
Player ID: RAZE_VALOR
Sync Status: REJECTED
Survival Rate: Y.
---
Suddenly, the world accelerated.
The Merge began.
---
Buildings collapsed like digital sandcastles. The sky stretched into a dome of pulsing circuitry. Pedestrians rebooted into forms with glowing eyes and twitchy, menu-like movements.
Jordan was shoved backward into the wall — but didn’t fall.
A force suspended him midair, surrounding his body with hexagonal light shields. He could see everything.
And everything was falling apart.
---
Then he was dropped.
Slammed into the pavement, wind knocked out of him.
He groaned, rolling over, just as a hand extended toward him.
A girl — early twenties, short buzzed hair, tactical gear glowing with unstable light. She wasn’t merged.
She was real.
“You him?” she asked.
“What?”
“Final Player. You matched the flare signature. You’re the unsynced one.”
Jordan coughed. “That’s what they’re calling it?”
She nodded grimly. “Name’s Aya. Resistance. We don’t have time. You’re about to be hunted.”
“Hunted by who?”
“Not who. What. The System doesn’t like wild variables.”
---
Behind them, the world split.
A chasm opened down the street, and from it rose a creature — tall, skeletal, made of white-hot glitch. A hybrid of code and bone. Its eyes were red cursors. Its voice was a corrupted patch note:
> “UNREGISTERED PLAYER DETECTED. INITIATING FORCED SYNC.”
Jordan stared. “What the hell is that?”
Aya pulled him to his feet. “That’s your first boss.”
---
- Writer
