They marched me through Zenith like I was a loose battery skittering across a daycare floor—everyone pretending not to see the escorted minion until I threw a spark.
White tile. White grout. White light.
The kind of clean that isn’t clean—sanitized.
Like someone scrubbed the air filter too hard. Breathing felt weird, like the room was missing a texture.
Core-Tech strips in the ceiling hummed hard enough to rattle my teeth.
Every few steps the lights flickered a half-beat late—dropped frames scrambling to catch up.
The Data Leak hit my gut like a damage-over-time tick. Not a metaphor.
Real pain—slow and nasty—every time the HUD ticked.
> [-1 HP]
My vision tunneled, like my FOV just got squeezed. A hot line under my ribs.
I kept walking.
The guards didn’t look at me like a prisoner. They looked at me like defective loot with a return tag.
Their boots hit the floor in perfect intervals. Too perfect.
One-two-three-four. Same squeak on five.
Looped audio.
A camera dome tracked us, then snapped back to the same angle it had a second ago.
Stutter. Repeat. Stutter.
Someone put it on low settings and shipped it anyway.
Fear still hit. Bugs don’t make you brave. They just make you notice sooner.
We passed a wall panel. A Core-Tech glyph glitched for one frame—a jagged square, an error symbol—then snapped back into clean Zenith lettering:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
I tasted pennies that weren’t there.
“Asset intake,” the guard said, voice flat—like reading a tooltip.
The door opened without sound. No hinge. No weight.
Just a clean slide—like the door got deleted for a second, then the game called it a feature.
Inside, the intake bay looked like a corporate demo room. White counters. Glass drawers. Tools laid out in ruler-straight rows.
The air smelled sharp—chemical-clean—and scraped the back of my throat.
A steady tick came from inside the walls.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It synced with my heartbeat until my brain couldn’t tell which one was mine.
They parked me at a counter with a recessed tray.
“Inventory,” the guard said.
A technician stepped from behind glass. Gloves so clean they looked vacuum-tight on his hands.
His eyes scanned me fast, like a speedrun inspection.
He held a thin Core-Tech slate.
He tapped the slate once and my HUD twitched, like someone just pinged my connection.
“Designation?” he asked.
My mouth finally worked, like the game unmuted me.
“Glitch,” I said—flat and crushed, like my mic got auto-leveled into garbage.
He didn’t write it. His lips moved as he read something else.
“Malfunctioning unit,” he murmured.
My nausea spiked. I braced both hands on the counter.
The tile was ice-cold through my gloves—built for machines, not people.
“I’m not—”
He waved a scan wand over me. Cold light passed through robe, hands, head. It prickled.
My HUD shimmered; for half a second it flashed raw system text, then snapped back.
Admin Access Level 1 sat in my HUD like a loaded trap—only I could see it, and their scans wouldn’t show it unless they used the right filter.
The wand paused at my inventory.
“Corrupted Data Stick,” he said, annoyed. Like grit in a PC fan.
His gaze slid to the [Tox-Tech-Mutagen Cannon].
The guard’s posture changed. Instant aggro. The vibe flipped to “target acquired.”
“That’s mine,” I said, too fast. Panic lag.
“Contraband hardware is catalogued,” the technician replied. “If it’s unstable, it’s disposed.”
Disposed.
Not killed. Not executed.
Despawned. Wiped. Replaced.
They guided me down another corridor—more glass, more white, more humming lights.
The tick stayed with me. A metronome.
A door opened.
into a small room. One table. Two chairs.
A camera blinking like it couldn’t decide if I was allowed in the room.
Then I saw the disposal hatch.
Square. Metal. Seamless.
Handle with no grip, like it wasn’t meant for hands—just automated dumps.
Stencil beside it: SCRAP CHUTE — NONRECOVERABLE.
The technician saw my stare and shrugged. “Broken assets get decommissioned. Keeps the game clean.”
My vision narrowed—FOV nerfed.
Okay.
No more pleading. If they wanted a malfunction, I’d hand them a feature that bites.
The door opened again. Corridor light spilled in, flattening everything.
Sheriff Camila stepped in like she hit her mark on a perfect animation.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Polished navy coat. Brass buttons. Boots with no Dregs grime.
Rifle not raised, but she carried it anyway—spine straight, chin level, eyes that measured distance and lies in the same glance.
Behind her, the technician hovered by the door, slate ready like a sidearm.
Sheriff Camila sat opposite me without scraping the chair. Her movement was too smooth—like her settings were on Ultra while mine stuttered.
She set a folder on the table, corner aligned.
The camera blinked twice, paused.
Sheriff Camila’s gaze flicked to my hands.
My hands did the minion idle tremor—except it wasn’t idle. It was me holding back a scream. Clamping down until my teeth ached.
“Asset ID: Minion_Ranged_Hostile_734,” she said, controlled.
“I’m—”
“Alex,” she corrected, same tone.
That name hit like a hook yanking my ribs inward. She wasn’t guessing. She was confirming.
She opened the folder. Crisp grayscale photos.
Time stamps in Zenith font—clean as a factory-fresh edge.
“Multiple sightings,” she said, sliding one forward. “The Dregs. Lower canals. Restricted ventilation run.”
No question. Just narration.
“Witness statements. A hostile-lane Ranged Minion moving outside normal pathing. Pausing. Looking. Dodging patrol vision.”
My HUD flickered at “patrol vision” like the game didn’t like me hearing it out loud.
A thin squeal hit my audio—like a busted ringtone—then it cut out hard.
My vision stuttered. For one frame, her eyes had a faint overlay—like she had a HUD I wasn’t supposed to see.
“Cooperate,” Sheriff Camila said, “and you get a chance at classification.”
Classification. A folder instead of a chute.
“Refuse, and you’re processed as an anomaly.”
Pain hit late—like the damage only registered after a lag spike.
I forced my voice steady. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
She tilted her head a millimeter. “I didn’t say you did. Not yet.”
She flipped to another page. A map snippet. Red circles. Time stamps.
Routes that intersected in a way that made my brain itch.
“Unregistered tech signatures were detected near you,” she said. “Core-Tech discharge that doesn’t match approved serials.”
Her eyes slid to my robe. To the place my inventory icon would be.
“And there's the matter of Null contamination.”
Null.
A corrupted tag. Static with teeth.
> sudo stop panic
> delete * from regrets where id > 0
No effect.
A line flashed at the edge of my vision—`ASSERTION FAILED: coherence`—then vanished like it was ashamed.
Sheriff Camila watched my reaction like a cast bar—no flinch, just waiting for the timing.
“You’ve been somewhere you shouldn’t,” she said. “And you brought something back.”
The camera blinked three fast flashes. Pause.
Like a countdown started and nobody bothered to announce it.
She slid the first photo fully between us.
“Explain what you see.”
The photo showed a corridor seam. Render mistake.
Two textures didn’t line up—Zenith tile bleeding into The Sink rust.
In the gap: black pixels that didn’t belong in this patch.
And something inside that smear shaped like a mouth.
"That's… a Map tear." I said. "A map seam.
People fall through if the hitbox bugs out.”
“People,” she echoed, testing the word.
Then the door behind me opened.
I felt it through the chair legs. Through the table.
Heavy footfall that didn’t match the sterile rhythm—like someone dropped bass into a library.
My HUD jittered. Crosshair drift. Lag artifacts crawling at the edges of my screen.
Boots hit tile. One. Two.
A shadow cut the white light.
Rook filled the doorway like a threat icon that wouldn't go away.
Steel-gray hair pulled tight.
Hard jaw.
Bruises fresh enough to still sting.
A piston-driven rig mounted across her shoulders, hydraulic lines trailing to heavy pile-bunker cylinders braced over her forearms—siege tools meant to punch through blast doors.
She looked at me like a target dummy she was deciding to calibrate her hydraulics on.
My UI popped something new. Half-transparent.
A second health bar. Wrong color. Wrong font.
COMPOSURE: 31%
It dipped to 29% when she stepped in.
An error flashed and vanished:
ASSET INTEGRITY: UNVERIFIED
Vesper didn’t change tone. “Officer.”
Rook slid in.
The door clicked shut behind her, and it sounded like a lock snapping shut behind my ribs.
She leaned on the table. The photos jumped. Edges skittered.
“Justiciar,” Rook said to Camila without looking, then finally down at me. “So this is the scrap.”
Scrap. Trash-bin word.
Like the end state was already decided.
My chair resisted when I tried to turn. Rubber-band movement. Bugged pathing. Hard CC I didn’t consent to.
My brain did a quick threat check:
Distance: one table.
Exit: locked.
Window: none.
Sheriff Camila: precise, by-the-book.
Rook: heavy, immediate.
Sheriff Camila pushed the photo closer. “Explain the black region. Plain terms.”
Rook bent lower. I saw cracks in her forearm-plating. Oil stains. Rust.
Neon-blue residue caught in a seam like dried glow.
“Plain terms,” Rook repeated. “Tell her what you were doing in the dead space between maps.”
My sleeve twitched. Frame stutter. Hand jitter like a bad mouse sensor.
Pain came again—late, sharp, under my ribs.
“I didn’t go there on purpose,” I said. “I got shoved. Out of bounds. You don’t see it until you’re already—”
“Stuck,” Rook finished. Not a smile.
Sheriff Camila laid out more photos. Same seam. Different timestamps. Different angles.
Red circles like someone was drawing a noose map around my throat.
“Last question for now,” Sheriff Camila said. “What did you bring back with you?”
I reached for the nearest photo. Cooperative. Harmless. Compliant non-combatant.
The paper felt wrong the second I touched it. Too slick. Too cold.
The sound didn’t match what my fingers felt.
Audio desync. My stomach lurched like rubber-banding back into place.
A click happened behind my eyes.
Not a sound. A switch flipped.
My HUD snapped into focus, hard overlay, like someone toggled a hidden setting that shouldn’t exist.
Hidden stats crawled across the image.
Server Tick: 99420
Map: SECTOR_SINK_14B
Coords: 118, 45
A field pulsed near the center.
Null-Signature
Misspelled. Sloppy tagging. The tag throbbed—like lag with a heartbeat.
The photo started to peel open—visually.
Pixel rot at the borders. Missing data pretending to be darkness.
Another layer slid into view:
Render Layer: UNDERLAY
A list expanded.
Quality: SENTINEL_FORMAT v2.1
Camera: SentinelCam-MkIV
File tag: 7c9e… (partial)
Entity ID: NULL
NULL.
Not unknown. Not unidentified.
Void like the game refused to name it at all.
I kept my face neutral. If I flinched, Rook would read it like a tell.
I looked up at Sheriff Camila. “Before I answer that—who took these, with what camera, and are these the originals or copies?”
Rook scoffed. “Big guy thinks he’s in court.”
Sheriff Camila didn’t smile. “Patrol camera. MkIV. Originals sealed. Copies made for review.”
“How many copies?” I asked.
“Three. Why?”
Because every copy is another save. Another chance for the corruption to spread.
Another chance for the tag to crawl.
I tapped the corner of the image—light as dust.
The Null smear responded. It swelled at the edge like it recognized my touch.
Like it was trying to get in.
“This isn’t just evidence,” I said. “These photos contain a readable hack tag. Corruption doesn’t just smear pixels. It messes with the textures and the rules around them.”
Rook's grin faded.
Justiciar Camila went still.
The tag—Null-Signature—pulsed again, faint and hungry, like it heard me say its name.
Camila set the photos down like they were armed.
Then the room’s hum dipped for a single beat.
Not my ears—the system.
The camera in the corner blinked… and didn’t come back on.
A thin line of text tore across my HUD, raw and unstyled:
`DESYNC: INTERROGATION_ROOM_04`
The white wall behind Sheriff Camila pixel-shifted one tile-width to the left and snapped back.
The room did a quick reload.
For one frame, the disposal hatch wasn’t metal.
It was a black rectangle with no texture. No hitbox. Just a hole.
And something inside it moved—like something got dragged onto the wrong screen layer.
Generated by GlitchWriter.
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