The red alert on the datapad pulsed like a angry heartbeat. Quarantine Protocol. The system had flagged me. It knew I was carrying something it considered a virus—Caden's data fragment. The server room was not just a location anymore; it was a baited trap.
"Anya, look," I said, showing her the screen. "The system is waiting for us."
She looked at the pulsing red icon, and her face hardened. "Of course it is," she muttered. "It was never going to be that easy." She looked out at the raging blizzard, towards the central tower where the sounds of a massive firefight were echoing. "This is still our best chance. The system might be waiting for us, but every other player on this map is distracted. Let's go before they get bored of the hill."
She was right. It was now or never.
We ignored the main battle completely. We turned away from the control tower and followed the path laid out on the diagnostic tool's blueprint. It led us to a small, unassuming service entrance on the side of the mountain facility. The door was unlocked. We slipped inside, the roar of the blizzard replaced by the low, humming drone of a massive industrial complex.
We were in a network of maintenance tunnels. The corridors were narrow, lit by cold, white emergency lights. Pipes and thick bundles of cables ran along the walls and ceiling. It was a maze, but the datapad in my hand was our guide, showing us every turn, every junction.
We were not alone for long. This was a free-for-all match. Not every player was foolish enough to rush straight into the meat grinder at the central hill. The smarter ones, the scavengers, were prowling the outskirts, looking for better gear and easy kills.
We rounded a corner and came face-to-face with another player. He was rooting through a supply crate. He looked up, surprised, his hands full of ammo magazines. We all froze for a second. Then, his training took over. He dropped the ammo and raised his submachine gun.
He was fast, but I was faster. The hours I had spent in deathmatches, the muscle memory that was now as natural as breathing, it all kicked in. I raised the assault rifle I had grabbed in the armory and fired a short, controlled burst. The bullets hit him in the chest. He stumbled back, his own shots going wide, and collapsed to the floor. [PLAYER ELIMINATED]. My Adrenaline Rush skill activated, a familiar surge of speed tingling through my limbs.
"Move," Anya said, already pushing past the body. "That gunfire will attract more of them."
We ran. The diagnostic tool guided us deeper into the facility. We faced two more players in the winding tunnels. Each encounter was a short, brutal firefight. We were not fighting for objectives or for glory. We were fighting just to get through. Each fight drained our precious, limited ammunition.
As we got closer to the server room's location on the map, the facility itself began to fight back. We reached a long corridor, and with a loud clang, a heavy metal blast door slammed shut in front of us, blocking our path. At the same time, sections of the wall slid open, and sleek, white automated defense turrets unfolded.
Red targeting lasers swept across the corridor. These were not players. They were not corrupted glitches. They were clean, efficient, system-level defenses. They were machines, and they had perfect aim.
"Get down!" I yelled, pulling Anya behind a thick support pillar just as the turrets opened fire. The sound was a high-pitched, terrifying shriek as they unleashed a hail of plasma bolts. The air sizzled. The pillar we were hiding behind began to glow red hot from the impacts.
"They're blocking the main path!" Anya shouted over the noise. "We have to take them out!"
"I've only got two grenades!" I yelled back.
"Then make them count!"
We worked together, our movements now perfectly in sync. I peeked out and threw a grenade. It landed right between two of the turrets. The explosion tore them from their mountings in a shower of sparks. But there were still three more.
Anya laid down suppressing fire with her own rifle, forcing the remaining turrets to focus on her position. It gave me the opening I needed. I sprinted from our cover to a new position, my Adrenaline Rush giving me the burst of speed I needed to avoid the plasma fire. From my new angle, I had a clear shot at the turrets' exposed power cells. I fired, taking out another one.
Anya finished off the last two. The corridor fell silent. The air was thick with the smell of burnt metal. We had survived, but our resources were dwindling fast. My grenades were gone. Our ammo was half-depleted. The system was wearing us down.
We finally reached our destination. A massive, circular blast door, twice as tall as me. The words "PRIMARY SERVER CORE" were stenciled on it in bold, white letters. This was it.
"It's sealed tight," Anya said, examining the door.
I brought out the diagnostic tool. "Not for long." I found an access panel next to the door and interfaced the datapad with it. The screen lit up. [ACCESS DENIED. ADMINISTRATIVE LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT.].
I initiated a bypass command. A new window appeared on my HUD, a timed minigame. It was a code-breaking puzzle. A series of rotating rings with symbols on them. I had to align the correct symbols before the timer ran out.
"Buy me some time," I said to Anya, my eyes locked on the puzzle. "The fight out here will have drawn attention."
"Always do," she replied, taking up a defensive position at the end of the corridor.
I focused on the puzzle. The symbols were complex, but I could see the pattern. My fingers flew across the datapad's screen. The rings spun. I heard the sound of footsteps approaching down the hallway, followed by the sound of Anya's rifle firing. She was holding them off. I ignored it. I had to focus.
I aligned the final ring. The puzzle flashed green. [ACCESS GRANTED].
With a loud hiss of hydraulics, the massive blast door began to grind open. I grabbed my rifle, ready to help Anya.
But the fight in the hallway was over. She had taken care of the other players. We looked at each other and nodded. It was time.
We stepped into the server room. It was a large, cold space, bathed in the soft, blue light emanating from hundreds of humming server racks. In the very center of the room stood the main server core, a massive, cylindrical pillar of glowing, crystalline energy that reached from the floor to the ceiling.
But we were not alone.
Standing silently in front of the server core were two figures. They were the same shifting, humanoid shapes of jagged black code and fractured light that I had fought in the void. Two Corruption Cleansers.
The system had deployed its antibodies to protect its heart.
The moment we stepped fully into the room, the blast door slammed shut behind us with a deafening boom. It locked, trapping us inside with the two silent, terrifying entities.
I knew my guns were useless against them. I looked at the server core. I had to get to it. I had to plug in the Data Spike.
One of the Cleansers lunged. It did not make a sound. It just moved, a blur of black code, its arm outstretched, ready to delete me.
Anya moved faster. She threw herself directly in its path, putting her body between me and the creature. She raised her assault rifle and opened fire, the useless bullets passing straight through the entity's form.
"Leo, do it now!" she screamed, her voice filled with desperate resolve. "I'll buy you time!"
She was preparing to sacrifice herself, to be erased from existence, just to give me a chance to complete our mission.