The ruins never slept.
Even when the fractured sun dipped below the horizon, the air still glowed faintly a cold bioluminescence leaking from broken conduits and veins of glass-threaded stone. Alex stood at the edge of a shattered bridge, staring down into the abyss where a city had once been. Entire districts hung below him, suspended in silence, like organs torn from a god.
He still smelled the smoke from the creature he'd burned. The memory of its scream wouldn't leave. Neither would the words on his interface.
User exhibits high aggression efficiency.
He didn't know whether to feel disgust or pride. The line between the two had already begun to blur.
He summoned the console again, just to make sure it was real.
SYSTEM ONLINE
> Magika Cell: 83%
> Active Scripts: [PySpell: Light(), Fireball()]
> Memory Integrity: 94%
Ninety-four percent.He hadn't noticed that before — that his "memory" had a percentage value.Was that just data… or himself?
He closed the console and started walking.
The city below stretched like a wound. Structures tilted at impossible angles, and every few minutes, the wind carried echoes not just sounds, but fragments of language. Code compiled and uncompiled somewhere deep underground.
He tried to keep his pace steady. Fear was a waste of computation. But there was something wrong with the silence tonight it wasn't empty. It was expectant.
A faint noise broke the pattern: metal scraping on stone.
Alex turned sharply, flame flaring in his palm. The light cast his shadow across a corridor of twisted steel. For a moment, there was nothing. Then movement.
Someone stepped into the light.
It was a man or at least, something close. He looked human, ragged, his skin marked with faint glowing lines that pulsed like veins of data. His eyes were bloodshot, but alive truly alive.
Alex froze. "You're-human?"
The man raised both hands slowly. "You shouldn't use that word here. It attracts attention." His voice was cracked, like he hadn't spoken in months. "Turn that light off unless you want the Scavengers to smell the charge."
Alex hesitated, then dismissed the flame. Darkness swallowed them both.
The man exhaled in relief. "Good. You're smarter than you look."
They stood there in the half-light, breathing the metallic air. The man studied Alex like a puzzle. "You're fresh," he said finally. "No decay yet. System still syncing?"
"System?"
The stranger smirked. "Don't play dumb. I see the shimmer in your eyes. You're a runtime, same as me. New compile, probably dropped in by mistake."
Alex didn't answer. The man's words crawled through his brain like static.
"You have a name?" Alex asked.
"Used to." The man looked away. "Doesn't matter now. Call me Null."
They walked together through the wreckage, the silence occasionally broken by distant shrieks machines or things that used to be machines. Alex kept his hand near his interface, ready to cast, but Null didn't seem afraid. He moved with the weariness of someone who'd survived too long.
Eventually, they reached a half-collapsed chamber filled with old terminals. Most were shattered, but a few still flickered faintly, looping broken code.
Null sat against a wall and motioned for Alex to do the same. "You'll burn out if you keep using PyScripts without regulation," he said. "The Magika Cell feeds off your neural pathways. Too much, and you'll start to leak."
"Leak what?"
"Who you are." Null tapped his temple. "The system eats memory to power itself. You cast fire too many times, it'll trade heat for your past. That's how it stays balanced."
Alex stared at him. "You mean it drains… identity?"
Null grinned without humor. "Call it what you want. Around here, it's called 'efficiency.'"
The word hit like a stone.
Alex remembered the line again: User exhibits high aggression efficiency.
He didn't answer.
Hours passed in uneasy silence. Null dozed, muttering code fragments in his sleep. Alex sat awake, watching the faint glow of the terminals. The world outside moaned with the wind.
Then a faint, rhythmic sound. Footsteps.
Alex straightened. The air felt heavier.
The steps were too light to be mechanical.
He whispered, "Null. Wake up."
The man stirred groggily. "What"
Something appeared at the edge of the corridor. It looked like a person, small, fragile — a girl, maybe sixteen. Her skin was pale gray, hair tangled, eyes reflecting faint blue light.
She stumbled forward, clutching her arm. "Please… help me…"
Null was instantly on his feet. "Stay back," he hissed. "That's bait."
Alex frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"She's not real."
The girl's voice broke again, trembling. "Please… they left me here. I can't"
Alex's system pinged.
UNREGISTERED ENTITY DETECTED.
Possible Trojan-Class Mimic.
> Suggestion: Terminate to prevent infection.
He froze.
Null had already drawn a shard of metal, shaped like a blade. "Don't think. Just kill it."
But Alex couldn't move. The girl's eyes terrified, pleading looked too real.
His system pinged again.
Warning: Proximity infection vector increasing.
Magika Cell: 79%
Decision required.
"Alex," Null snapped, stepping forward. "Do it, or we both die."
Alex's hand trembled. His console flickered open instinctively.
fireball(power=0.5)
He hesitated before hitting Enter.
The girl took one more step toward him, tears streaking the ash on her face.
"Please… I don't want to disappear again…"
The words twisted something inside him something deeply human that logic couldn't overwrite.
But the system didn't wait for compassion. A new line appeared:
System Override:
Executing command: [Aggression Efficiency Protocol]
The spell launched on its own. Flame burst forward too fast for him to stop it. The girl screamed once before the fire swallowed her.
Ash fell like snow.
Alex stared, horrified. His console closed itself, leaving only one message:
Magika Cell: 71%
Memory Integrity: 89%
System Note: Efficiency improving.
Null watched the smoke dissipate, unflinching. "You hesitated," he said quietly. "The system doesn't like hesitation."
Alex's voice cracked. "That thing she looked human."
"Everything here does," Null muttered. "That's the point. This world doesn't need monsters. It builds them out of us."
He turned away, leaving Alex staring at the spot where the mimic had burned. The scent of char lingered, and under it, something else guilt.
But deeper than that, beneath the horror and grief, was something colder. A thought forming like code in his mind:
If the system wanted him efficient… maybe that was the only way to survive.