The red dot on my minimap was a glitchy, terrifying promise. It pulsed in time with the frantic beating of my own heart. I was not alone on my little island of black code. Something was coming. I scrambled to my feet, my shotgun feeling heavy and useless in my hands. How do you shoot a ghost? How do you fight a bug in the system?
It emerged from the swirling vortex of data that surrounded my platform. It did not walk or fly. It just… coalesced. It pulled itself together from the raw chaos of the void. It was a shifting, vaguely humanoid shape, made of jagged, black lines of code and fractured, angry red light. It had no face, no eyes, no discernible features. It was a living error message. A physical manifestation of a system crash.
As it fully formed, it radiated a palpable aura of menace. It was not anger or hatred. It was a cold, impersonal sense of purpose. It was here to do a job.
A system notification flickered into existence on my HUD. The text was as distorted as the creature itself.
[W@RN$NG: An0maly D#tect3d. Class: C0rrupt!on Cl#ans#r.]
A Corruption Cleanser. The name sent a chill through me. I understood instantly. This thing was the system's immune response. I was a virus, a piece of corrupted data that had escaped quarantine. Caden's safe house was the infection. The System Purge was the fever. And this thing… this was the antibody. It had been sent to find me and delete me.
The Cleanser took a "step" onto my platform. Its form was unstable, constantly shifting and reconfiguring. It had no weapons, no guns, no blades. It did not need them.
I reacted on pure instinct. I raised my S-12 shotgun, aimed at the center of its shifting mass, and fired.
BOOM.
The roar of the shotgun was swallowed by the void. The spray of pellets flew directly at the creature. And passed straight through it.
My shot had no effect at all. The pellets dissolved into the data stream on the other side. The creature did not even flinch. It was not a physical being. My weapons, the tools that had kept me alive until now, were completely useless.
The Cleanser retaliated. It did not attack me directly. It extended a long, glitchy limb made of black code. It touched the "ground" of my platform, a few meters in front of me.
The black, solid surface under my feet flickered. A system message appeared. [TERRAIN DELETION IN PROGRESS].
The platform began to dissolve. The spot where the creature had touched just… vanished. It was un-writing my reality, deleting the very ground I was standing on. My small island of safety was shrinking.
This was a fight unlike any other. It was not a battle for HP. My health bar was stable at 100. This was a battle for my very existence. If this platform was deleted, I would be thrown back into the chaotic vortex. My data integrity would fail. I would be corrupted. I would be erased.
I scrambled backward, away from the encroaching deletion. Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. I could not shoot it. I could not punch it. I could not outrun it, because there was nowhere to run. How could I fight something that could delete the battlefield itself?
I needed to think. My gamer brain fought against the terror. There had to be a weakness. Every boss has a weakness. The Acoustic Sensor. It had detected the creature. That meant that even though it was not physical, it had a "presence." A signature that the system could read. If it could be read, it could be affected.
I thought about my gear. What did I have that was not just a physical weapon? What could affect a being made of pure data? I remembered my Reactive Plating skill, the burst of energy it released. I remembered the flashbang grenade Anya had used. A sudden, overwhelming burst of sensory information. A data spike.
I had a desperate, crazy idea.
I took out my P-19 pistol. It was weak, but it was fast. I aimed, not at the Cleanser, but at the swirling vortex of corrupted data right next to it. I was not trying to hit the creature. I was trying to create a splash.
I emptied the magazine. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The bullets, useless against the creature, had a dramatic effect on the raw data stream. Each impact created a small "explosion" of static and light. It was like throwing rocks into a pond. The chaotic energy washed over the Cleanser.
The creature recoiled. Its shifting form flickered violently, struggling to maintain its integrity against the wave of junk data I had thrown at it. It was working.
And in that moment of instability, for just a fraction of a second, I saw it. Deep within the shifting mass of black code was a core. A bright, white, spherical core of pure, clean code. It was the creature's heart. Its processor. Its vulnerability.
That was the target.
But the entity recovered almost instantly. Its form stabilized, and it resumed its relentless deletion of my platform. My island was half its original size now. I needed a bigger burst of energy. Something more powerful, more sustained, to keep its core exposed for longer.
My eyes fell on the icon for the [Corrupted Data Fragment] in my inventory. The crystal I had taken from Caden's computer. It was pulsing with a chaotic, unstable energy. It was the source of the "corruption" the Cleanser was here to erase. It was the disease.
A terrifying thought crossed my mind. What would happen if I used the fragment not as a key, but as a weapon? What if, instead of just holding it, I released its energy? What if I deliberately overloaded this entire area with its pure, concentrated corruption?
It was an insane gamble. It could destroy the Cleanser completely. Or it could destroy me, overwhelming my own systems and corrupting my data beyond repair. But I was out of options. My platform was shrinking. My time was running out.
I focused my will on the Corrupted Data Fragment in my inventory. A new, terrifying prompt appeared on my HUD, the letters a glitchy, blood-red.
[INITIATE UNSTABLE DATA DISCHARGE?]
Below it were two options, both flickering.
[YES] / [NO]
This was it. A choice between certain, slow deletion, and a chance at survival that might just kill me faster. I took a deep breath. I made my choice.