"Hey, champ. You forgot to reload."
Kazien's eyes snapped open, just in time to watch a rusted steel toe arc toward his face.
He rolled.
Not gracefully. Not tactically. He flopped like a hungover cat dodging a boot. His ribs hit concrete. His shoulder cracked against a bent railing. Something in his brain said this isn't the real world.
Which made sense, because the guy trying to cave in his skull had a plasma halberd for a spine and "K1LLR00T.EXE" tattooed across his jaw in scrolling green code.
"Welcome back to SYNDROME," the man hissed, voice layered in glitch-static. "Any last words, relic?"
Kazien coughed. "Yeah. Two."
He lifted his hands.
The guns were already there.
BANG. BANG.
One to the kneecap, one to the eye socket.
The man folded like a broken lawn chair.
Kazien stood, panting, staring down at his own hands. The pistols were fused to his skinobsidian black, veined with pulsing code. One glowed cold blue. The other, burning red. They weren't just weapons. They were part of him.
And one of them was laughing.
"That was a terrible shot." The red one FURY had a voice like a hot mic in a riot. "Next time aim for the heart. Make it sing."
The blue one SAGE sighed. "Center mass would have been efficient. Recalibrate your muscle memory."
Kazien blinked. "My… what?"
SAGE: "Reflex lag: 0.12 seconds. Below average. You'll die in minutes."
FURY: "He just woke up! Let him shoot someone first, then call him garbage."
"Shoot someone? I just shot someone!"
"Not well." they both said.
HUD: OFFLINE. CLASS: NULL. SYNC: 0%
Kazien stumbled forward. His boots slapped the wet, broken street beneath a shattered skybox. Billboards blinked neon static. Drones zipped overhead like angry fireflies. Everything smelled like ozone, gun oil, and betrayal.
"What the hell is this?" he muttered.
"Tutorial," FURY purred. "Except, oops you skipped it. Again."
A shriek cut through the fog.
Six figures dropped from the rooftops like cyberpunk ninjas, each with glowing swords and faces blurred by error masks. One had a speaker blaring out old killfeed announcements.
> "KAZIEN VALE PERMADEATH CONFIRMED. GHOSTRUN LEADERBOARD: PURGED."
Kazien froze. "Did that just say"
"You're famous," SAGE said. "Or were."
FURY: "Six targets. Let's kill 'em all and teabag their shadows."
Kazien didn't wait. He moved.
What followed was not elegance.
It was survival.
He ducked a glowing blade, snapped a counterpunch, jammed the red gun into someone's mouth, and fired. The head exploded in pixels. He twisted left, pulled the blue one into a downward spin, and shot through an enemy's thigh.
The guns responded. Shifted. Synced.
[KILL +1 | BulletSync: Activated]
[New Skill Unlocked: Recoil Dash]
Suddenly, Kazien launched backwards mid-air, the world slowing around him as his boots slid across cracked asphalt. A blade passed just inches from his throat.
"Okay," he panted. "This might be fun."
Then the world froze.
Everything turned grayscale.
A voice smooth, lethal, digital whispered from above:
> "Anomaly detected."
Kazien looked up. A figure hovered above the city on wings of fractured code. Female silhouette. Red veil. Dozens of system warnings spiraled behind her.
Riven.
He staggered back like he'd seen a ghost.
Because he had.
"Long time," she said coldly. "You still die like a drama queen?"
Kazien's throat dried. "You're dead."
"No. You were." She raised a modified mag-blade. "Let's fix that."
They collided.
Gunshots and blade strikes sang in violent harmony. Her movements were precise, surgical she still knew his timing. He still knew hers. Sparks flew as FURY screamed with joy and SAGE tried to interrupt them both.
Kazien's boots skidded back. "Riven, wait! I don't know what happened! I woke up with guns in my hands"
"Oh, poor baby." She slashed the air. "Still lying like it's foreplay."
She believes Kazien betrayed their squad during Ghostrun and got her brother killed.
"Whatever this is" He ducked a killshot. "I didn't do it!"
"You locked us in for leaderboard bonuses," she snapped. "I saw the logs. You saved your record, not us."
"I don't even remember that run!"
"And I don't forget." She pointed the blade at his chest. "But I do reload."
She fired.
BANG.
SAGE activated mid-air, deflecting the shot with a burst-shield module Kazien hadn't even unlocked.
FURY screamed: "She shot you! Again! Just like before! Wanna kiss her or kill her? PICK ONE!"
Kazien was about to respond when a red beam cut through the sky.
The system shuddered.
A new figure appeared. Bigger. Glitched. Wrong.
> "TARGET: KAZIEN VALE.
KILLSTREAK ANOMALY.
DELETION INITIATED."
A Patch Enforcer dropped from the sky. Half-dev, half-system admin, glowing with anti-cheat fire. It charged a railshot aimed at both of them.
"Move!" Riven shouted. She grabbed Kazien by the collar, and the world blurred
[BulletSync: Level 2 Achieved 2 Kills]
[New Ability: Dual Trigger Chainfire]
Kazien spun in midair, both guns flaring.
Twelve shots. No misses. One second.
The Enforcer exploded.
Time snapped back.
They landed together in a ruined alley, panting. Guns cooling. Heart racing.
Riven's eyes met his. "We're not friends."
Kazien grinned. "You're holding my shirt."
She let go like it burned.
Kazien's killfeed is still live and someone is streaming him globally.
Across the broken city, hundreds of players and something else were watching.
"Dead man walking," one whispered.
Another?
"Or maybe… god reborn."
[KILLFEED ACTIVE: KAZIEN VALE | STATUS: ALIVE]
[GLOBAL EVENT TRIGGERED: BULLETSYNC INITIATED]
"You're trending," SAGE said dryly.
Kazien blinked at the flickering HUD in his peripheral vision. A new killfeed overlay had gone live, semi-transparent and pulsing across every building surface. A news-style alert bar scrolled beneath it, glitching in and out like a corrupted Twitch stream.
> LIVE FEED: KAZIEN VALE – STATUS: ANOMALY
Viewers: 382,022 and rising
Comments:
"Wait didn't this guy DIE?"
"THE GOAT IS BACK??"
"Where's Riven? She's still hot?"
"Plot twist: this whole thing is a dev stunt."
"Lmao he's still using pistols 💀"
Kazien squinted. "Wait. Are they… watching us?"
"Congratulations," SAGE intoned. "Your trauma has gone viral."
FURY snickered. "That kiss was trending for 0.3 seconds. Then you got punched in the face."
"I didn't kiss her."
"You wanted to."
"I also wanted to live."
"So needy."
Riven paced ahead of him, blade humming at her side. Her hair was pulled back in a tight braid tighter than he remembered and her movements had that same sniper-clean precision they used to mock other squads for not having.
She hadn't looked at him since they landed.
"You gonna stab me again?" he called.
"No," she said. "I'm thinking about throwing you off a server cliff instead. Cleaner."
"That's fair. But less satisfying."
She finally turned, eyes narrowed. "You really don't remember what happened?"
Kazien hesitated. Then shook his head. "Only pieces. Flashes. You. Screaming. Blood. The leaderboard burning. Then nothing."
Riven looked away.
He added, quieter: "Your brother."
She didn't answer.
> The killfeed reacts to emotional spikes and begins revealing hidden data.
Without warning, Riven's blade blinked and a holographic window snapped open in the air between them.
> UNLOCKED MEMORY FILE – [GHOSTRUN: FINAL 6:44]
VIEWING NOW…
(Footage buffering…)
"No" Riven reached to close it, but it was already playing.
Kazien saw himself, helmet cam feed. Squad running. Heavy fire. Yelling. He and Riven, screaming for her brother to move. The exit point was seconds away. Countdown ticking.
Then it hit.
His voice his old voice cold, calm:
"Override evac window. Securing leaderboard bonus."
Riven's brother:
"What?! Kaze, I'm pinned"
Kazien's voice again:
"Play to win."
The screen flickered, froze, ended.
Riven turned to him, eyes burning.
"I told you I saw the logs."
Kazien stepped back. "That… wasn't me. I wouldn't have"
"You did."
FURY whispered in his ear:
"Or… someone used your killstream. Someone rewrote your logs."
SAGE replied instantly:
"Unlikely. That was you. The system does not lie."
Kazien's grip on his guns tightened.
"What the hell am I?" he whispered.
[SYNC RATE INCREASED – BULLETSYNC LEVEL 3]
[New Passive: Kill/Emotion Feedback Loop Unlocked]
Suddenly, the world shuddered. The air cracked. The killfeed reacted echoing the footage, over and over feeding off it.
"Turn it off," Kazien said.
"It's not me," Riven whispered.
Across the city, everyone saw the same feed. The betrayal. The decision. The face of the man who let his squad die for a top score.
And for the first time in five years…
Kazien Vale was back on the leaderboard.
[KILLSTREAK RECORD: REACTIVATED]
[NEW TAG: SYSTEM GLITCH – OBSERVE AND CONTAIN]
From the rooftops, movement stirred.
Dozens, maybe hundreds of new red reticles locked onto his position. Snipers. Runners. Bounty hunters. Killstreamers. All of them tuned into the feed.
"Congratulations," Riven muttered. "You just invited the whole game."
Kazien checked his guns.
Both glowed hot.
SAGE: "We leave. Now."
FURY: "Or stay and turn this into a party."
He looked at Riven. "You still trying to kill me?"
She hesitated.
"No," she said, eyes sharp. "But I'm not trying to save you either."
From above, a voice rang out modulated, loud, taunting.
"KAZIEN VALE. YOU'RE WORTH TEN THOUSAND IN HARDCOIN. DEAD OR GLITCHED."
The first shot fired.