Page 47 of GlitchBorn Heart

ONE ANOMALY HAS REAPPEARED

PLACING LOCATION ON SCREEN

A single point blooms on the city grid, pulsing out of rhythm, like it’s distressed. My jaw clinches as the map zooms in automatically, layers focusing in, until the coordinates resolve into datapoints that can’t possibly be correct.

VikkCorp. Here in my tower.

It’s not external. Internal.

I straighten slowly. “That’s not possible,” I mutter, fingers already flying as I pull up diagnostics and access logs, No breaches, no flagged entries, no unregistered users inside the system at this hour. So...not hacked.

ANOMALY STATUS: DESCENDING

LINK chimes back in.

Descending.

Whatever this is...it isn’t attacking. It’s falling deeper into the architecture of my own system, past my firewalls, slipping through layers that should have been sealed to intrusion.

My hand hovers over the command code, readying to terminate whatever it is. It’s protocol, I should terminate it, purge the anomaly before it spreads through the system. That’s what Vikktor would demand. That’s what I normally would do, but something tugs at my conscience. I remain still, a stark contrast to Ember’s incessant fluttering around trying to make sense of all this.

A strange sensation crawls through my veins and slithers up my spine then disappears as if it were a fire that water has extinguished. Calmness and clarity follow as I remember what happened in DreamNet.

LINK will contain it and destroy it.

“Shit! Lyra!” LINK is rewriting scripts to cure this infestation, so I shift my focus. I need to make sure she’s safe after being dropped out of DreamNet.

“LINK—call Ash. Now!” I yell into the air of the lab as I walk over to the DreamNet server. It’s back up and running, but alarm lights are flashing and blinking with fervor.

“Where are you, Little Taiyō?” I murmur. “Where did you go?” I pull the keyboard and begin typing to recover any dream data.

The DreamNet server pulses faintly in the background like a living organism, reacting to my commands, its hum returning to a low, ominous drone.

Static then a harsh click. Ash’s voice slices through the lab. “You seeing this, Lab Rat?” I can hear his computer pinging in the background, feeds running frantically. His voice is hoarse, drowned in shock.

“Kael! Fuck! What’s happening? I’m getting vibes off the chart. Every DreamNet user’s neural feed just blew out in white noise like a massive sensory overload. I’ve got U21s dropping in alleys, caught mid-dream or mid-game. Their minds don’t know where the hell to land.” I hear his fingers typing furiously.

He’s breathless, wired, even for him. “Chatter is coming in that TheKast was glowing purple static!”

I remain calm. Think, Kael, this is your playground, your toys. Surely Vikktor has been notified of the current status, so you’ll need to act quickly before he can counteract.

“It’s bad. Do you see anything about the lower sectors? Anything about the non-citizens in particular?” I push him for more information.

“No, nothing. What did they do now?” he asks. “Whatever it is, Corp’s smothering it like duct tape over a stab wound.”

Vikktor’s deceit turns my stomach sour. “It’s not just DreamNet. Streets are burning. Half the lower sectors are blacked out. People running out of their camps during curfew, civilians glitching out left and right.” I exhale loudly through my nose. “Vikktor rolled out an update that started a purge of the non-citizen sector.” I can’t believe the words as they spill from my mouth. “It’s a clean slaughter on paper,” I say bitterly. “He disabled mobility, scrambled their brains, then revoked their citizenship at the cellular level. No blood, no headlines. Just gone...while the city sleeps.”

Ash is never silent. The weight of the moment presses hard on both of us. “That’s mass murder, genocide even.” A long exhale follows his comment.

“It was,” I say. “But luckily someone disrupted the virus, not enough to stop it, but enough to corrupt the code and void it. Some U21 flared so brightly they saved lives tonight.”

“That’s messed up. One for our side, I guess,” he reckons. “The whole grid went sideways: DreamNet, GameNet, all of it. The boards are saying people dropped out of DreamNet so hard they were unconscious.”

“I know, I was in it.” The lab alarms begin to go silent but red text scrolls faster than I can comprehend, warnings coming in again as LINK tries to contain the anomaly bursting through my firewalls.

“There’s more that I can’t wrap my head around,” I continue to explain as I type. “LINK located one of the anomalies, where it landed.” My throat tightens. “It’s here in the VikkCorp building, internal systems. My system.”

“That’s not possible.” Ash’s voice lowers. “How could an anomaly drop inside your walls? You’re one of the most secure sites in the city, a hacker’s wet dream.”