The neon sky bled amber as Kai stumbled out of the vault corridor. His system interface flickered—white noise gnawed at the corners of his vision.
PING! New Objective: Survive the Data Sink.
"What the hell is a Data Sink?" Kai muttered, steadying himself against the cracked wall of an abandoned construct. He opened his status panel, only for it to glitch and auto-close again. He was being jammed. Something didn't want him seeing what was next.
The corridor behind him sealed shut with a hard clang. The hum of a magnetic field thickened the air. His instincts screamed trap.
Suddenly, the ground vanished.
A cascading fall—no warning, no gravity logic, just a downward plummet into something vast and black. The air shimmered around him as he fell through layers of broken firewalls and digital filaments, each one snapping like burnt-out neurons.
[ERROR] You are now entering: DATA SINK SECTOR 9-X9
He landed hard—no fall damage, oddly. The place smelled like metal and ozone, the air thick with corrupted files drifting like ash.
Before him stretched a junkyard of code—obsolete weapons, glitched-out AI husks, even remnants of old avatars long erased. This was where data came to die.
But it wasn't empty.
From the debris rose a figure—seven feet tall, shrouded in black, its code unreadable.
UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED.
Name: [REDACTED]
Class: Null Operator
Threat Level: LETHAL
The figure didn't move—yet Kai felt its presence press into his mind. Thoughts not his own slipped in, alien and cold.
"You shouldn't be here," it spoke without speaking. "Player Zero breaks balance."
Kai clenched his fists. "Then maybe balance is overrated."
The Null Operator raised one hand—and from the junk around them, a thousand blade-shards hovered, ready to strike.
Kai dove left, rolled, and summoned his interface. His menu barely responded—lagging, stuttering—until he forced it open by sheer will. His fingers scrambled across the cracked holographic buttons.
Weapon Slot: Active.
Loadout: Glitchblade Mk I.
A blade of corrupted light formed in his hand, shifting between shapes as if unsure of its own existence. It pulsed with unstable energy—dangerous to both enemies and himself.
The Null Operator attacked first—teleporting mid-air with a warping sound like a record scratch. Kai's blade intercepted a volley of razor shards just in time, sending sparks into the digital sand.
The fight wasn't fair.
It was poetry written in code—parries, dashes, glitches, near-deaths.
Kai was faster. Desperate. And desperate people don't follow rules.
He ducked beneath a slice, dove into a corrupted server pile, and overcharged the Glitchblade. The interface screamed warnings.
[WARNING] Blade instability at 97%. Overload imminent.
"Come on… come on…" Kai gritted through his teeth.
When the Null Operator descended for the killing blow, Kai hurled the blade like a spear—its code fragmenting mid-flight. It exploded on contact in a burst of white-hot code, erasing half the entity's body.
The rest of it flickered—and smiled.
"You've tasted deletion," it said, half its face gone. "You will taste betrayal next."
And then, it vanished.
Kai collapsed, breathing hard. The Data Sink was silent again, save for the low hum of residual code.
Quest Complete: Escape the Data Sink.
Reward: +1 Memory Key. (Encrypted)
New Objective: Return to the Network Core.
He pulled up the memory key, inspecting it. A simple icon—an eye with a broken iris.
Decrypting…
Decrypt Failed. Special Access Required.
"Figures."
Before he could rest, the air shifted again. A doorway formed—made of floating code cubes and ancient data—inviting him forward.
But not alone.
A familiar voice echoed in the static.
"Don't trust the system, Kai. Not everything that calls you player... is on your side."
It was her again.
The girl from the vault.
He stepped through the door—and into whatever nightmare lay ahead.