The screams from the tablet were gone, but they lingered. Phantom echoes in the damp, quiet air of the tunnel. No one spoke for a long time. They were trapped in the afterimage of the massacre, the grainy, flickering footage of the gym seared into their minds. Twenty people. Gone. Wiped out while they were down here, safe in their bubble of light.
The hum of the floodlight felt different now. Less like a comfort, more like an accusation.
Ben was the first to move. He stared at the blank tablet screen, his knuckles white where he gripped it. "I… I could have looked sooner," he whispered, his voice cracking. "If I hadn't been so… so focused on the power draw…"
"Don't," Chloe said, her voice low but firm. She put a hand on his shoulder. "You can't think like that. You can't. We would've been too late anyway." Her words were meant to be a comfort, but they sounded hollow. Leo glanced at her, and for a split second, he thought he saw her flinch, as if she'd felt the spike of Ben's guilt like a physical blow. Her new skill… it was going to be a heavy burden.
"She's right," Maya said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She was all cold, hard tactics now. "Regret is a luxury. We have new intel. The enemy has a command structure. That's a weakness we can exploit. Eventually." She turned her keen, assessing gaze on Ben. "The network. What else can you see?"
Ben swallowed hard, nodding. He was a tech, a tinkerer. Data was his refuge. He wiped a hand across his face and turned back to the tablet. "Right. The network." His fingers flew across the screen, pulling up the clunky security interface again. "Most of the internal cameras are still dead. But… the external ones. The ones on the building's perimeter. They're on a different circuit. They're… they're active."
He tapped the screen. The image that appeared was a nightmare of a different kind. It was a high-angle shot from a camera on the roof, looking down at the street in front of their building. Night had fallen. The city was a patchwork of profound darkness and the flickering, hellish orange glow of distant fires. The street below wasn't empty. It was teeming.
Hundreds of goblins. A slow, shambling, endless river of them, all moving in the same direction, away from their building and deeper into the downtown core. Among them were the larger, hulking shapes of Brutes, their heavy footsteps silent on the grainy footage.
"They're… they're migrating," Leo breathed, the scale of it staggering. This wasn't a random infestation. It was an invasion.
"Or a patrol," Maya corrected, her eyes narrowed. "They're organized. Look." She pointed to the edge of the screen. A group of goblins had stopped, sniffing the air around a burned-out bus. They moved with a jerky, unnatural purpose.
Ben switched the camera angle, showing the back alley. Same story. More goblins. A steady, flowing stream of them. He switched again. A side street. More. It was like watching an anthill that had been kicked over.
"Okay… okay, this is interesting," Ben muttered, his fear being slowly replaced by his innate, analytical curiosity. He was typing commands into a pop-up window on the tablet. "The building's network is… it's not just a network anymore. It's been… co-opted. There's another layer of data here. Something piggybacking on the old infrastructure."
"The System," Leo said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah," Ben confirmed, his voice hollow. "It's like… it's like a mesh network. Every monster, every… every System-generated object, it's a node. They're all broadcasting a low-level signal. I can't read the data, it's encrypted to hell and back, but I can see the signals. I can map them."
He pulled up a blueprint of their building. It was a familiar, boring schematic of office layouts and utility lines. Then, with a tap, he overlaid the new data. The blueprint lit up. Dozens of tiny, red dots pulsed on the floors above them, clustered thickest on the fifth floor. The goblins. A single, larger, brighter red dot pulsed among them. The Taskmaster. And down in the sub-basement, their own little group appeared as four, faint, green dots.
"We're on their map," Chloe said, her voice a horrified whisper.
"No," Ben said, shaking his head. "They can't see us. Our signal is… different. We're not part of their network. We're unauthorized users. We're just… noise. But this…" He tapped the screen, his excitement returning. "This is a game-changer. I can track them. I can see where they are, where they're moving. In real-time."
They had a map. A live-action, real-time map of every monster in the building. The tactical advantage was immense. Staggering.
"Can you see anything else?" Maya asked, her voice sharp with a new intensity. "Other signals? Green ones, like ours?"
Ben's fingers flew across the screen. He zoomed out, the blueprint of their building shrinking to a small square in a larger grid of the downtown core. The map was mostly dark. But it wasn't empty. Here and there, scattered across the city, were other, faint, green dots. Sometimes a single dot. Sometimes a small cluster of three or four.
Other survivors.
They weren't alone. The knowledge was a spark of warmth in the cold, oppressive dark.
"There are others," Chloe breathed, a fragile, unbelievable hope in her voice.
"Not for long, if they stay put," Leo murmured, his own grim theory solidifying into fact.
Ben zoomed in on the closest cluster of green dots. It was about four blocks away. A small office building, much like their own. Three green dots, huddled together on the top floor. And surrounding the building, a sea of red dots. Dozens of them. They were closing in, a tightening noose.
"They're being hunted," Maya stated, her voice flat. "Just like the people in the gym. The System is sweeping the area. Clearing out the idle processes."
They watched the map, transfixed. They could see the red dots moving, flowing up the stairwells of the other building. They could imagine the scene. The desperate, futile defense. The screams. Three more green dots, about to be extinguished.
"We could warn them," Chloe said, her voice tight.
"How?" Maya countered. "We have no way to communicate. And even if we did, what would we tell them? 'Run'?"
"The network," Ben said suddenly, his eyes glued to the screen. "I can't send a message. But the System… it's a two-way street. It's not just broadcasting. It's receiving. It's processing data." He looked up at Leo, a wild, terrifying idea dawning in his eyes. "Leo… your skill. You don't just edit things. You write to the System. You force an update."
Leo felt a chill that had nothing to do with the damp air. He knew what Ben was suggesting.
"What if…" Ben's voice was barely a whisper. "What if you could write something… bigger? Not just unlocking a bolt. What if you could edit the network itself? Create a vulnerability? A glitch?"
The idea was insane. Monumental. The last time he'd done a major edit, on the golem, he'd been knocked unconscious. The pain had been… indescribable. To try and hack the entire local network… what would that do to him?
He looked at the map. At the three green dots, about to be snuffed out. He thought of the journal. Of the gym. Of his own grim pronouncement.
We have to be players.
"What kind of glitch?" Leo asked, his voice a dry rasp.