"Don't look back!" Jake shouted, vaulting over a pile of rusted typewriters.
Behind them, the island of trash groaned.
BWAAAAHM.
The sound vibrated in Jake's chest, rattling his ribs. It wasn't just noise; it was data corruption made audible.
"It's gaining on us!" Menzhinsky screamed, his voice cracking. He was sprinting in his tattered suit, clutching a briefcase he refused to drop.
Jake glanced over his shoulder. He shouldn't have.
Rising from the abyss at the edge of the island was a hand.
It was the size of a skyscraper. It was made of black static, writhing and glitching. Fingers the length of freight trains clawed at the debris, crushing cars and trees into pixel dust.
ENTITY: GARBAGE COLLECTOR.
FUNCTION: PERMANENT DELETION.
"Run faster!" Taranov bellowed. He was carrying the glass coffin on his shoulder like a bazooka. Veins bulged in his neck.
"The data-stream!" Valentina pointed ahead.
A swirling vortex of blue code spiraled up into the black sky about five hundred meters away. It looked like a tornado made of math.
"That's the exit?" Oppenheimer panted, stumbling over a loose polygon. "It looks like a buffer overflow!"
"It's a memory leak!" Yuri's voice buzzed from Jake's wrist. "It connects the Recycle Bin to the Mainframe. If we jump in, the updraft will carry us."
"If we don't get eaten first," Jake gritted his teeth.
The ground beneath them shook violently.
The black hand slammed down onto the path ahead.
CRASH.
Debris flew everywhere. A shockwave of static knocked Jake off his feet.
He rolled, tasting copper. His HUD flickered.
HEALTH: 95%.
WARNING: CORRUPTION DETECTED.
The hand blocked the way to the vortex. It was a wall of writhing darkness.
"We're cut off!" Valentina skidded to a halt, raising her pistol. She fired three shots at the hand.
The bullets hit the static and vanished. No damage numbers. Just absorption.
"It eats code," Oppenheimer shrieked. "You can't shoot it! It deletes projectiles!"
The hand began to sweep sideways. It was scooping up the trash—and them with it.
"We need a bridge!" Taranov looked around wildly. "Something to climb over!"
Jake looked at the landscape. Just junk. Broken taxis. Shattered statues. A mountain of old newspapers.
"Nothing big enough," Jake realized.
The hand was closing in. Fifty meters.
"Yuri," Jake scrambled up. "Do we have any heavy assets in the local cache?"
"Negative," the boy said. "Only what is physically present."
Jake looked at the coffin. Nadya slept inside, peaceful, oblivious to the apocalypse.
"We can't lose her," Jake whispered.
Then he saw it.
Sticking out of a pile of rubble near the edge of the island was a familiar shape.
It was a tank turret. The one Taranov had landed on earlier.
But not just any tank. It was an Object 279—the saucer-shaped heavy tank from the swamp.
"Taranov!" Jake pointed. "The tank! Is the engine intact?"
Taranov squinted. "It's buried in garbage! The tracks are gone!"
"I don't need tracks," Jake sprinted toward the wreck. "I need the cannon!"
"You said we can't shoot it!" Oppenheimer yelled, running after him.
"We're not shooting it," Jake slid down the rubble pile to the tank. "We're shooting ourselves."
"What?" Valentina stared at him.
"Recoil!" Jake slammed his admin hand onto the tank's hatch. "Newton's Third Law! If we fire a 130mm shell while floating in zero-G, the kickback will launch us!"
"This isn't zero-G!" Oppenheimer argued. "There's gravity!"
"Not if I delete the ground under the tank," Jake grinned maniacally.
The black hand was thirty meters away. It was scooping up a row of houses.
"Get in!" Jake ordered. "Everyone on the hull! Hold onto the turret!"
Taranov threw the coffin onto the flat, saucer-shaped hull of the tank. He strapped it down with a rusted cable he ripped from the ground.
"Strap in!" Taranov yelled at Menzhinsky.
Menzhinsky wept but obeyed, clinging to the gun barrel.
"Valentina, get in the gunner's seat!" Jake commanded. "Aim away from the vortex!"
"This is suicide!" Valentina dove into the hatch.
"It's physics!" Jake jumped onto the hull next to the coffin.
The hand was ten meters away. The roar of deletion was deafening. The air smelled of ozone and void.
"Ready!" Valentina screamed from inside the turret.
Jake looked at the ground beneath the tank. It was a mess of concrete and rebar.
"Yuri," Jake raised his glowing white hand. "SELECT AREA: 10x10 METERS."
A blue grid appeared on the ground.
"COMMAND: CUT."
ZAP.
The ground vanished.
The tank fell.
For a split second, they were floating in the void below the island.
The black hand swiped through the space where they had just been, grabbing nothing but air.
"Fire!" Jake screamed.
BOOM.
The 130mm cannon fired.
A massive shell exploded into the darkness, illuminating the void for a heartbeat.
The recoil was brutal.
The tank wasn't designed to fly. But in the weird, floaty physics of the Recycle Bin, the force of the blast kicked the 60-ton metal saucer backward like a hockey puck.
"Hold on!" Taranov roared, wrapping one arm around the coffin and the other around Jake.
They rocketed through the air.
The G-force crushed Jake against the hull. His vision blurred.
They flew over the black hand.
They flew over the island of trash.
They were heading straight for the blue tornado.
"We're going to miss!" Oppenheimer screamed, pointing. " trajectory is too low!"
They were falling short. The gravity of the abyss was pulling them down.
"We need more thrust!" Jake looked at the cannon.
"Reload!" Jake banged on the hatch. "Valentina! Again!"
"Auto-loader is jammed!" she shouted back.
"Manual load!" Taranov let go of Jake. "I'll do it!"
"No!" Jake grabbed him. "If you let go, you fall!"
They were arcing down. The vortex was tantalizingly close, but they were going to hit the rim of the abyss instead.
"Jake," Yuri's voice was calm. "I have a solution."
"What?"
"The shell casing," Yuri said. "Eject the propellant charge."
"That's not enough mass!"
"Not mass," Yuri said. "Ignition."
Jake understood.
"Vent the fuel line!" Jake shouted at the hatch. "Valentina! Dump the diesel!"
"On the hot barrel?"
"Do it!"
A hiss of liquid sprayed from the back of the tank. Diesel fuel hit the red-hot cannon barrel.
WHOOSH.
A fireball erupted behind them.
It wasn't a rocket engine. It was an explosion.
The shockwave hit the tank. It spun wildly.
Jake lost his grip.
He slid across the hull.
"Boss!" Taranov lunged.
He caught Jake's ankle.
Jake dangled over the edge of the spinning tank. Below him, the infinite drop. Above him, the spinning blue light of the vortex.
"Pull him up!" Menzhinsky screamed, clutching the barrel.
The tank hit the edge of the vortex.
SLAM.
The updraft caught them.
It was like hitting a wall of wind. The tank stopped spinning and started rising. Fast.
"We're in!" Valentina yelled from inside.
They were shooting up the data-stream. Blue code rushed past them like water in a pipe.
ASCENDING... LAYER 4... LAYER 3...
Jake scrambled back onto the hull. Taranov hauled him up.
"That was too close," Taranov panted.
"Look," Jake pointed down.
Below them, the Garbage Collector was shrinking. The black hand reached up, clawing at the bottom of the vortex, but it couldn't enter. The data-stream burned it.
The monster let out a final, frustrated BWAAAAHM and sank back into the trash.
"We beat the trash can," Jake laughed. It was a hysterical, jagged laugh.
"Don't celebrate yet," Oppenheimer wiped vomit from his chin. "Where does this pipe go?"
"The CPU," Jake looked up. "The Brain."
The blue light intensified.
WARNING: HIGH SECURITY ZONE.
AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED.
A red laser grid appeared above them, blocking the tunnel.
"Lasers!" Menzhinsky shrieked. "We're going to be sliced!"
"Yuri!" Jake yelled. "Hack it!"
"I cannot," Yuri said. "Encryption level: Director Only."
The tank was rising straight into the grid. Ten seconds to impact.
"We need a pass!" Valentina shouted.
Jake looked at the coffin.
Nadya.
"Wait," Jake said. "The coffin. It has the upload bar. 'Subject: Hope'."
"So?" Taranov asked.
"Hope isn't just data," Jake realized. "It's a priority file. The system needs it to run the simulation."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning she's a VIP pass."
Jake scrambled to the coffin. He placed his admin hand on the glass.
"Yuri, bridge the connection! Broadcast her ID signature!"
"Broadcasting..."
The red grid was five seconds away.
ID DETECTED: ASSET 001 (HOPE).
PRIORITY: CRITICAL.
The red lasers turned green.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The grid opened.
The tank shot through the hole.
They burst out of the data-stream.
Gravity returned instantly.
They were falling again. But not into a void.
They were in a room. A white, sterile, infinite room.
The tank crashed onto a floor of pristine white marble. It bounced once, screeched, and slid to a halt.
Silence.
Jake lay on the hull, breathing hard.
"We're here," he whispered.
He sat up.
The room was vast. Endless white pillars stretched into the distance.
In the center of the room, floating in mid-air, was a massive crystal. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic light.
Inside the crystal, images flickered.
A child playing with a dog.
A soldier crying in the rain.
A couple kissing on a park bench.
"The Core Memory," Oppenheimer breathed, climbing out of the hatch. "The source of the simulation."
"And look who's guarding it," Taranov pointed.
Standing beneath the crystal, waiting for them, was a figure.
It wasn't a monster. It wasn't a glitch.
It was a woman.
She wore a white lab coat. She held a clipboard. She looked bored.
She looked exactly like Nadya.
But her eyes were blue LEDs.
"Welcome to the Kernel," the woman said. Her voice was flat. Robotic. "Please wipe your feet. This is a sterile environment."
Jake stared at her. He looked at the coffin next to him, where the real Nadya slept. Then back at the woman.
"Who are you?" Jake demanded, sliding off the tank.
The woman adjusted her glasses.
"I am the Anti-Virus," she said. "And you are trespassing."
She tapped her clipboard.
The white floor around the tank turned black.
"Prepare for deletion," she said.
Jake clenched his fist. The golden apple's energy still hummed in his veins.
"Not today," Jake said.
He stepped forward.
The final boss fight had begun.