Inside the reinforced steel crate, the air stank like a PC running too hot mixed with chemical fumes.
I was trapped, folded into the crate like a figure jammed back into its packaging—wide awake.
The Tox-Tech engine bolted to my spine idled low—angry and steady.
My new chassis—heavy Siege Minion plating—felt tight, like I’d overbuilt and the frame couldn’t breathe.
I checked the timer and watched it crawl. We had been ascending for three minutes.
Mag-lev rails. Power cables. Network cables.
We were leaving The Dregs.
Then the lag hit.
Not the usual stutter—more like the game froze for a beat, then everything snapped back at once.
The server finally caught up with Sector D's mess—Tox Baron down, map bugged, kill-streak spam. The backlog dumped all at once.
[SYSTEM ALERT: PROCESSING BACKLOG...]
My HUD flared white in the dark.
[+2500 XP]
[+2500 XP]
The numbers spammed down my HUD. My XP bar filled, popped, then instantly filled again.
My reactor spun up with a high whine that rattled the crate.
The hydraulics in my legs kicked open, bulging the steel walls outward.
It felt like getting out of a long stun-lock—everything snapped online, settings slammed to Ultra.
My HP bar pushed past my old max.
"Level 8," I rumbled.
My voice wasn’t a rasp anymore—deep, synthetic, vibrating through my chest plate.
"Mid-game scaling."
I wasn’t just a minion . I had raid-boss stats stuffed into a minion skin.
The ascent cut out.
Weightlessness for a split second—like the elevator cut and my stomach tried to uninstall itself.
Then, gravity reclaimed me.
CRASH.
The crate slammed down.
The stone cracked in a web, but my shock-absorbers ate the hit.
[-0 HP] (Armor Mitigation)
"Tank stats," I grunted. "Good."
The crate locks blew out. Hidden auto-arms yanked the lid off in one go.
Light flooded in.
It wasn’t The Sink’s sick green or arcade neon. This was HDR sunlight—blinding and clean, like someone cranked brightness to max.
I stood up, my heavy hydraulic legs hissing as they took the weight.
I stepped out of the debris, my metal feet cracking the polished floor tiles.
I looked around.
I wasn’t in a factory. I was in a showroom—built to flex.
White marble walls laced with pulsing gold lines rose into a perfect, cloudless skybox.
The air reeked of disinfectant and rich-people perfume.
The textures were flawless—no grime, no rust, no flicker.
Zenith. The high-detail part of the map.
"Too clean," I muttered, my [Mutagen Cannon] whining as it settled into idle. "This place tanks FPS just to flex."
"ID yourself."
The voice was razor-clear. No static. No distortion.
I froze. I snapped my camera to the source.
Standing twenty meters away, framed by a massive archway of gold and glass, was a woman.
She wore a tactical command coat—dark navy with silver piping, tailored to a pixel-perfect fit. A high-collared half-mask obscured her lower face, but I could feel her aim on me anyway.
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In her hands was a Core-Tech Rifle—long, precise, humming with clean, by-the-book Core-Tech that made my Tox-Tech engine feel scuffed just looking at it.
My HUD tagged her instantly. Not red—skull icon.
[ENTITY: JUSTICIAR CAMILA (Chief Peacekeeper of Zenith)]
[LEVEL: 16 (Boss)]
[STATUS: INVESTIGATING]
She didn't raise the rifle. She didn't need to.
Her Overwatch passive was already stacking. I watched the counter tick up on her status bar.
"I said, Identify," she repeated.
Her tone wasn’t angry. It was cold and official—like a mod about to kill an exploit.
I planted my feet.
I was a nine-foot-tall siege machine dripping toxic sludge on her clean floor, and I still flinched.
"Minion," I boomed. My reverb kicked on by itself. "Unit 2940. Red Side."
Justiciar Camila tilted her head. A holographic targeting overlay flickered to life in front of her face.
"A Red Side Siege Minion," she said, her voice dry. "In a secure Zenith Upper District transfer hub. With unauthorized Tox-Tech modifications."
She took a step forward. Her heels clicked on marble—sharp in the quiet.
"And," she continued, her lens zooming in on my cannon arm, "is that a modified Core-Tech Turret barrel welded to your chassis?"
"It's… a skin?" I said, and even I didn't buy it.
"Negative," she said.
She tapped a device on her wrist.
The air around me went heavy. Not gravity—admin lockdown hit.
A clear wall of scrolling text popped up between us—System logs. Not magic. A full scan.
[WARNING: EXTERNAL QUERY DETECTED]
[SOURCE: ADMIN_TOOL_V4]
My HUD flickered red.
She wasn't chipping my HP. She was digging into my account data.
"You're big," Camila said, eyes flicking over the readout. "Heavy. 1750 Hit Points. Not bad for a creep."
She looked through the code-wall and locked onto my optics.
"But your tag doesn't match. The model says 'Siege.' But your build…"
She frowned.
"Your build says 'Ranged.'"
My joints locked up. I gripped the [Corrupted Data Stick] hanging at my belt—my only remaining trick.
"Patch glitch?" I said, like that explained anything.
"No," the Justiciar said, leveling her rifle. The lens flared. "An exploit."
[ALERT: SCAN INTENSIFYING]
[SYSTEM CHECK: IN PROGRESS]
Cold crawled through my wiring.
This wasn't damage. It was an admin check—and I didn't have permission.
The scan slid past my inventory and hit my Skill Tree.
This was where you get nerfed into dust.
My inventory was just loot. My skills—Source Drain, Injection Strike—those were exploits.
If she saw those, she wouldn't arrest me. She'd patch me out of the game.
[SCANNING: AI BEHAVIOR...]
[DETECTING: AWARENESS FLAG]
Blue scanlight flared bright enough to sting.
"Impossible," the Justiciar whispered.
She lowered the rifle by an inch. Her admin-bored mask cracked.
"Proxies operate on a swarm-logic script. Simple pathfinding. Attack triggers. You... you have a player ID."
[ALERT: ADMIN ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED]
She was trying to see who was controlling me—looking for a Operator Name. I didn't have one.
I had to stop the scan. Shooting her was an instant flag. I had to force her admin tool to crash.
"System," I growled. "Queue [Injection Strike]. Send it."
I looked at Camila.
"You want to know what I am?" I asked. "I'm the glitch you can't recreate."
I gripped the [Corrupted Data Stick] on my belt. I channeled my mana into it.
[-50 MP]
"What are you doing?" Justiciar Camila's eyes narrowed.
"I'm rewriting your backstory," I said. "Patch notes included."
I didn't touch her HP. I went for her Lore.
I opened the lore tab in my head—not stats. Story. The Core current, where every character's past was written into their code.
The tragedy that reshaped her kit and left her standing like she was always waiting for bad news.
"Ask the system about the Ash-Fall," I boomed.
Camila froze.
The name hit like recoil from a bad shot.
"That... is a closed case. A rebellion."
"Ask it about the Sun-Gate Garrison," I pressed, stepping forward.
My heavy metal feet cracked the pristine tiles.
"Ask it about the day the sky burned black."
The scrolling text on the scan-wall stuttered. Her admin tool lagged when it hit the lore she kept buried deep in her character file.
[QUERY: SUN_GATE_MASSACRE]
[SEARCHING ARCHIVES...]
[WARNING: LORE OUT OF SYNC]
"Stop," the Justiciar ordered, her voice trembling. "
"That event is classified by the High Council. We held the line as long as we could."
"Is that what you tell yourself?" I interrupted. "About the civilians you locked in the vaults? The brother you left on the wrong side of the gate?"
I dumped more mana into it.
[DATA STREAM: LORE FRAGMENT RECEIVED — BUFFER INTERRUPTED]
[-50 MP]
I pushed harder and flooded the scan with the corrupted memory—the smell of burning flags, the screaming in the courtyard, and the heavy thud of the brass doors locking her squad out forever.
[DATA SPIKE: CAMILA_BACKGROUND_FINAL_ARCHIVE.mp4]
The scan wall fractured.
Zenith's clean System couldn't handle the emotional dump. The System tried to force "Justiciar Camila the Prime"—the flawless, emotionless Peacekeeper record—to match "Camila the traumatized survivor."
It crashed.
CRACK.
The holo-display shattered into a spray of digital glass.
The Justiciar stumbled back and dropped her rifle. She clutched her head, gasping, her breathing ragged and terribly human.
[SCAN: ABORTED]
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD: EMOTION CONFLICT]
The pressure on my chest vanished.
A new window popped up in my vision.
The room went dead quiet, like someone hit mute.
Camila looked up at me.
Her eyes were wide—tears there that hadn't been a second ago.
"How?" she whispered. "How do you know that? That's not in the public records. That's… my memory."
"I know," I rumbled, my voice dropping low. "Because I saw it happen—from the other side of the screen."
I pointed a metal finger at the exit.
"Something's coming, Justiciar. Worse than Spark's wake—when the glitches first spread. Glitches. Null-sector leaks. The world peeling at the seams."
Camila picked up her rifle. She didn't aim it at me. She checked the safety.
"You're not a minion ," she said, her voice steeling itself. "You're a warning."
She stepped aside and keyed the door release.
"Walk with me, Anomaly. If what you showed me is true… Zenith's already on fire. The flames just haven't rendered."
The heavy blast doors hissed open.
I stepped into Zenith's clean light and left The Dregs behind.
I knew better.
The Dregs wasn't just below us. It was baked into the System.
And it was creeping up.
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