Volume 1 – Shadow Initialization
"If the system can't read you, it fears you. If it fears you, it tries to shut the world around you down."
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Outside the Mainframe Tower, the sky was no longer sky.
It was gridlines.
Blank code.
A shimmering ocean of system maintenance threads — all of them trying, and failing, to reconstruct reality around Jake Lagon.
Every step he took now erased more than footprints. It erased certainty.
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> [SYSTEM ALERT: CODE REJECTION FIELD DETECTED]
[LEVEL: OMEGA]
[STATUS: EXPANDING]
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Jake didn't cause it.
He was it.
Wherever he moved, the environment warped. Physics became hesitant.
Time slowed — not to dramatize him, but because it didn't know how fast he was supposed to be.
Even cause-and-effect had started stuttering.
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He reached a quiet alley. No cameras. No drones.
Yet the moment he stepped into it, every building on both sides began to fracture. Not from damage — but from incompatibility.
They were part of a system script.
Jake wasn't.
And so… they rejected themselves.
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He crouched, touched the concrete wall. It pulsed like skin under pressure.
> "The world's folding in on itself," he said softly.
"Not because I'm dangerous. But because I can't be described."
---
In a simulation like this, description was power.
If you could describe it, you could control it.
Jake had no defined class. No elemental type. No skill set. No origin path.
He was beyond name, beyond stats, beyond indexing.
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And that made him one thing:
A glitch that gained sentience.
Not born from chaos.
But from exclusion.
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The alley began to collapse into raw data threads. The world couldn't handle his presence anymore.
In the distance, across the skyline, a new tower emerged. Tall. Black. Rooted in unreality.
> CODE ENFORCER HALL
[Final Override Location]
Jake's eyes locked onto it.
> "They're bringing in the last failsafe," he muttered.
"Someone they haven't deployed in centuries."
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He turned his back to the alley. The buildings behind him no longer existed.
He looked ahead — at the impossible tower in the distance.
> "So… we're finally here," he whispered.
"You tried silence. You tried deletion. You tried rewriting. Now you'll try something worse."
He clenched his fist.
The atmosphere rippled.
A digital quake spread through the skies.
The Code Rejection Field expanded again — covering nearly half the city. Screens failed. Systems crashed. Communication blacked out.
And Jake?
Jake just walked.
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> [ENFORCER UNIT 0-A IS BEING ACTIVATED]
[LEVEL: TERMINUS]
[ASSIGNMENT: ERASE JAKE LAGON FROM ALL NARRATIVE THREADS]
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Far above, in the black tower… someone opened their eyes.
A being who had once erased universes for speaking out of line.
Someone who had never failed.
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Jake smiled to himself.
> "Come down then," he said.
"Let's see if even gods break inside my rejection field."
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End of Chapter 9