Location: Zone Null (The Glitch?Swamp)

  Time: 20:00 PM (Local Time)

  The rain stopped like someone flicked a switch.

  The metallic storm clouds peeled back in a single smooth motion, revealing a night sky that made Cameron’s vision swim. Stars hung above them in perfect, repeating grids — a tiled texture stretched across the heavens, looping every few degrees like a lazy copy?paste.

  The jungle didn’t darken.

  It activated.

  Bioluminescent fungi erupted along the trunks, harsh neon?blue, pulsing in uneven bursts. Not a glow — a flicker. Like dying streetlamps fighting for power, each one slightly out of sync, creating a strobing forest of glitch?light.

  “My calorie count is flashing,” Tony whispered. He leaned on his Piston?Club, staring at a cluster of glowing blue fruit dangling from a vine. “I’m at ten percent. I’m gonna debuff. I need to eat.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Arthur said instantly.

  He raised his thermometer toward the fruit. The needle jumped like it was startled.

  “It’s emitting low?level radiation,” Arthur said. “And it’s vibrating. Fruit shouldn’t vibrate.”

  “It looks like a blueberry,” Tony argued weakly. “A big one.”

  “It has a suspended polygon count,” Cameron said, crouching. The fruit’s edges weren’t curved — they were jagged, low?resolution facets pretending to be smooth. “It’s barely rendered. If you eat that, it might clip through your stomach.”

  Tony sagged against a tree. “So we starve. That’s the loop. Starve in a disco jungle.”

  Krr?zzzt.

  The sound sliced through the humidity.

  Static.

  Cameron felt it before he heard it — a vibration in his teeth, his staff warming in his palm like it recognized the frequency.

  Everyone froze.

  “What was that?” Cameron hissed.

  “Me,” Lenny said. He sat on a root, fiddling with the stolen walkie?talkie. He turned the dial slowly.

  Krr?zzzt… wub?wub… re?rewind…

  A beat.

  Then a warped bassline, muffled and underwater, like a pirate radio station drowning.

  UK Garage. Early?2000s. The kind of track that rattled hatchbacks in Croydon car parks.

  “Music?” Tony perked up. “That’s pirate radio. That’s London.”

  “No,” Cameron said. The loop skipped every four seconds, stuttering back to the start. “It’s not a broadcast. It’s a recording.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He stood.

  “It’s a beacon.”

  Lenny angled the antenna east. “Signal strength’s climbing.”

  “We move,” Cameron said. “Arthur, Geiger counter out. Tony — point. If anything moves, don’t hit it unless I say.”

  Tony gripped the club. “Roger.”

  ---

  The Recycle Bin

  They walked for nearly an hour.

  The jungle floor softened underfoot, turning into thick black mud that smelled of oil and stagnant water. The deeper they went, the less the terrain felt grown — and the more it felt dumped.

  Vegetation merged with debris.

  A red double?decker bus sat half?submerged in the swamp, headlights still on, casting twin yellow beams into the murk. Inside were no skeletons.

  Just mannequins.

  “Why are there mannequins?” Tony whispered.

  “Assets,” Cameron said. “When the System deletes a zone, it dumps what it doesn’t want here.”

  Further on, a phone box floated three feet above the ground, ignoring gravity. A flock of pixelated birds flew straight through it, clipping without collision.

  Arthur scribbled furiously on his clipboard. “This violates every building code in the manual. Floating structures. Unlit hazards. I’m going to run out of paper.”

  “Signal’s maxed,” Lenny said.

  The music was loud now — bass thumping against the swamp’s silence.

  When the crowd say Bo Selecta—

  They pushed through a curtain of rubbery vines and stepped into a clearing.

  A shack stood in the center.

  Small, but fortified. Server racks formed its walls, bound with fibre?optic cables. The roof was a patchwork of rusted satellite dishes and corrugated iron. Nearby, a generator hummed — a Frankenstein engine fused with glowing mana crystals.

  “Finally,” a voice croaked from inside. “Thought the patch was delayed.”

  Cameron raised his staff. “Who’s there?”

  The door creaked open.

  A man sat on the porch in a rocking chair welded from exhaust pipes. He wore a tattered CLOSED BETA 2024 shirt, armour hammered from Stop signs, and a VR headset pushed up like goggles.

  He ate beans straight from the tin with a screwdriver.

  “Gaz,” he said. “Beta Tester. Day One player.”

  He squinted at them.

  “You lot the new expansion content,” he asked, “or just bugged NPCs?”

  “We’re players,” Cameron said. “We clipped through the floor in the Brixton Sump.”

  Gaz laughed — a dry, rattling sound. “The Sump glitch. Classic. That’s how I got here.”

  “How long?” Tony asked.

  “Three years.”

  Tony choked. “Three years?”

  “Time’s funny in the code,” Gaz said, tossing the empty tin into the swamp. Neon ripples spread where it landed. “Sometimes it’s Tuesday for a week. Sometimes you skip a month. Bad optimisation.”

  His eyes scanned their gear.

  “Broken Pulse Gauntlets — trash tier,” he said to Tony.

  “Standard Healer robes — boring,” to Arthur.

  Then he paused at Cameron.

  “Staff of Metallurgy,” Gaz murmured. “That’s custom.”

  “We need food,” Cameron said. “And a way out.”

  Gaz leaned back, pipes creaking. “I have beans. Fresh spawn. High?tier loot.”

  “And the exit?”

  “There isn’t one.” Gaz smiled, tomato?stained teeth showing. “This is the Recycle Bin. You don’t leave. You just get overwritten.”

  “There’s always a backdoor,” Cameron said. “A debug console. Something.”

  Gaz tapped the VR headset.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve mapped a lot of this place. Seen seams that don’t line up.”

  “Tell us.”

  “Info isn’t free,” Gaz said. “Player?driven economy.”

  “We’ve got no money,” Lenny said.

  “I don’t want money.” Gaz stood — tall, wiry, movements jittering like dropped frames. “Credits are useless here. I want Patch Notes.”

  “Patch Notes?”

  “News,” Gaz said urgently. “I’ve been disconnected three years. I need the meta.”

  He stepped close to Cameron, eyes wide.

  “Who won the FA Cup in 2025?”

  “Did Half?Life 3 drop?”

  “Is the Northern Line still running?”

  Cameron hesitated.

  This wasn’t an NPC.

  This was a warning.

  “Palace won” Cameron said. “No Half?Life. And the Northern Line’s a lava dungeon.”

  Gaz exhaled, almost reverent. “Lava dungeon. Nice update.”

  He gestured to the shack.

  “Come in,” he said. “Before the framerate drops. You don’t want to be outside when the textures reload.”

  Behind them, the jungle stuttered.

  A leaf froze mid?fall, clipping halfway through a branch. The neon didn’t fade — it halted. The bassline cut out, leaving a hollow, ringing silence.

  “See?” Gaz slammed the door shut, locking it with a rebar bolt. “Server maintenance.”

  Inside, the shack was chaos — screens, wires, tins stacked like treasure.

  “Welcome to the Safe House,” Gaz said, tossing a tin of beans to Tony. “Don’t mind the lag.”

  ---