It started with a whisper in the code.
Not a voice.
Not data.
Just… a presence.
Inside the Arc-System Mainframe — a fortress of logic orbiting the upper stratosphere — every monitor glitched. Blue. Then red. Then black.
> "This isn't corruption," a system priest muttered.
"It's... perception break."
And then, the central display stopped flickering.
Two words appeared on the screen:
> "STILL HERE."
---
Below, Jake Lagon stood beneath a collapsed highway bridge.
No traffic.
No wind.
No sound.
Just concrete silence — and him.
He placed his hand on the cracked wall.
It didn't resist.
It didn't respond.
It simply accepted him — because the laws here knew better than to deny an error with a heartbeat.
---
Suddenly, from thin air, a new figure appeared.
A childlike form.
White robes. Hollow eyes filled with scrolling code. Floating slightly above ground.
"I was told," the boy said, "you are a bug."
Jake looked over calmly.
"Then why send a child?"
"I am not a child. I am Zero — patch update in physical form."
Jake's voice dropped into a smirk.
"They made you human. Cute."
"I'm mercy with a heartbeat," Zero said flatly.
Jake smiled wider. "No. You're a fail-safe in denial."
---
Zero lifted his hand.
The world froze.
Birds stopped mid-flight.
Time stopped breathing.
The air turned to static.
Only Jake moved.
"You paused the simulation," he observed.
Zero stepped forward. "Now you're isolated."
Jake walked calmly through the stillness, brushing frozen dust off his hoodie.
"No," he said. "You're paused in my tolerance."
---
The boy raised both arms. A halo of golden system-code formed behind him.
> "INITIATING CORE CLEANSING: DELETE ENTITY — JAKE LAGON"
Light engulfed everything.
The bridge vaporized.
The sky rebooted.
The timeline hiccuped in a loop.
And Jake stood right in the center.
Unmoved.
Unaltered.
Unwritten.
---
He didn't raise a hand.
He didn't fight back.
He simply blinked.
Zero stumbled, confused.
> "I… I can't feel the system," he muttered.
"My connection—it's gone. I'm not... I'm not running—"
Jake stepped forward.
"You were made to repair the world," he whispered. "But they never asked what happens… when the world doesn't want to be fixed."
Then he leaned in.
> "You can't delete what was never saved."
---
Zero's body shimmered, flickered, then vanished — not into death.
Into non-classification.
---
In the Arc-System Core, alerts failed to activate.
Not because there was no danger —
But because nothing was detected.
> No spike in data.
No energy field.
No trace.
Just a single file path in the main server that now returned:
> 404: Subject Never Existed
---
Jake sat down under the ruins of the bridge.
He looked up at the stars —
Not for guidance.
But to warn them.
"They know now," he murmured.
"They know I'm not a glitch."
He cracked his knuckles slowly, feeling the air shift around his presence.
"Good."
The darkness beneath him didn't just follow him.
It obeyed.
---
End of Chapter 4: The Error That Watches Back