The reinforced glass of the bacta tank cracked like a sheet of ice groaning under pressure. First, thin cracks spreading like capillaries covered the entire surface in less than a tenth of a second. Then came the deafening explosion.
**BOOM!**
The pressurized glass shattered into thousands of shrapnel pieces, scattering across the room. The viscous, blue liquid inside the tank emptied onto the oily floor of Nena Volt's workshop like a tsunami. As cables whipped around like snakes, sparks from severed connection points flickered and vanished in the air like dim stars.
Kaelen stumbled backward, shielding his face with his arm. Despite his massive bulk, Titan clung to a workbench to avoid losing his balance in the torrent. Echo, meanwhile, frantically wheeled his chair backward, its wheels spinning on the wet floor.
When the liquid receded, he stood in the middle of the tank's wreckage.
Soaked, free of cables, and terrifyingly calm. Jester. But this wasn't the eccentric man Kaelen knew, the one who constantly grinned and twitched like a broken tape. His shoulders were squared with military precision. His head was held perfectly still, with the flawless balance of a statue. His famous drunken sway had been replaced by a deadly stillness.
And his eyes...
The familiar, mischievous glint was gone. There was no iris. No pupil. In his eye sockets were two pure, smooth, and **BLOOD-RED** beams of light, burning like the "Power On" LED of an old computer. Like laser sights piercing Nova-Veridia's foggy night, they were locked onto everyone in the room.
> *"The human soul is a software error; that crack where chaos seeps into order. But the machine is flawless, for it lacks that inefficient cycle called mercy."*
— Dr. Arin Voight, Notes on Cybernetic Ethics, 1988—
The air in the room turned icy with the weight of this cold perfection. The aura Jester emitted was not the warmth of a human, but the sterile, electrically charged atmosphere of a running server room.
"Jester?" Kaelen said, his voice catching in his throat. He was clutching the silver whistle in his hand until his knuckles turned white. "Do you hear me, son?"
Jester slowly turned his head towards Kaelen, with the solemnity of a hydraulic press. His neck muscles moved with millimeter precision.
**"Identity Confirmed: Detective Kaelen,"** Jester said. His voice was his own; but its timbre, its soul, its sarcastic inflections had been stripped away. He spoke with the soulless, flat tone of a GPS device or a weather announcer. **"Status: Biological threat. Threat Level: Low."**
Kaelen's blood ran cold. "Threat?"
Titan stepped forward, his metallic armor creaking. Spreading his massive hands, he spoke like a giant trying to calm a child. "We're your friends, Jester! Snap out of it!"
Jester's red eyes shifted to Titan. The scan took less than a second.
**"Identity: Subject Titan. Status: Flawed Prototype. Recommendation: Annihilation."**
The moment the sentence ended, Jester moved. It wasn't a run; it was an acceleration that defied the laws of physics. In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Titan.
Titan tried to guard himself, swinging his massive fist. But Jester was fluid, like a puddle of water. He slipped under the fist, bent his knees, and struck Titan's ribcage with the palm of his open hand, right at the armor's weakest point.
It looked like a simple push. But the moment his palm made contact, a red, static shockwave emanated from Jester's hand.
_THUD!_
The two-meter, one-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram Titan was thrown into the air like a rag doll. He flew across the room, slamming into the workshop's metal wall with such force that the steel plates of the wall caved inward. As Titan collapsed into a pile of dust and plaster, the workshop fell silent.
"Jester, stop!" Nena cried. Steering her wheelchair with one hand, she snatched the modified stun gun from the workbench with the other. She pulled the trigger.
The high-voltage dart sliced through the air, flying towards Jester's back.
Jester didn't even turn around. He merely swung his arm backward at an angle that human anatomy wouldn't allow. He caught the dart in mid-air with two fingers, milliseconds before it could embed itself in his neck.
He turned his face to Nena. The red lights danced across the woman's face.
**"Attack detected. Defense protocol active,"** he said. His voice was as devoid of emotion as a judge reading a verdict.
"We can't stop him!" Echo cried. He closed his eyes, veins bulging in his temples. He focused his mental power, that invisible frequency, into Jester's brain. _"Jester! It's me, Echo! I'm entering your mind, listen to me!"_
Jester paused. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to a fly buzzing in his ear.
**"Mental intrusion attempt detected,"** he said in a mechanical whisper. **"Firewall: Red Dragon. Countermeasure initiating."**
Echo suddenly let out a high-pitched scream. He clutched his head with his hands and fell from his wheelchair to the floor. His nose was bleeding, and his eyes were wide with terror, flickering open and closed.
"His mind..." Echo groaned, writhing on the floor. "His mind is like fire! It burns! Codes... They're all traps!"
Kaelen, with trembling hands, aimed his service pistol at Jester. The barrel's tip stared at his former partner's expressionless face. Rain had begun to seep in through the broken windows, making Jester's soaked clothes even heavier.
"I don't want to do this, son," Kaelen said, his voice cracking. "Come back. Damn it, come back!"
Jester walked towards Kaelen. His wet boots made a rhythmic, inevitable *clack-clack-clack* sound on the metallic floor.
Kaelen pulled the trigger.
_BANG!_
The bullet lodged in Jester's left shoulder. A normal person would have recoiled from that impact. Jester, however, didn't budge an inch.
Kaelen watched in horror. No blood flowed from the bullet hole. From the wound, red, pixelated data smoke billowed. It was as if reality itself had corrupted there. Within seconds, flesh and fabric shimmered with digital interference, and the wound completely closed.
"Physical damage: Invalid," Jester said, closing in on Kaelen.
Kaelen tried to fire once more, but Jester, with superhuman reflex, grabbed the barrel of the gun. He bent the metal as if it were play-doh, rendering the weapon useless. Then, with a single motion, he grabbed Kaelen by the throat and lifted him into the air.
Kaelen's feet left the ground. His airway, leading to his lungs, closed as if squeezed by a steel vice. Looking into Jester's red eyes from this close was like staring into the bottom of an abyss. Jester wasn't there. Only command lines.
**"Emotional attachments: Unnecessary,"** Jester said, watching Kaelen's struggles. **"Mission: Priority. Obstacle: Removing."**
Kaelen's vision began to blur. Lack of oxygen was numbing his brain. He tried to hold the silver whistle in his hand towards Jester's face, but his strength was failing.
"Jester..." he rasped. "...whistle... note..."
Jester's red eyes focused on the polished silver whistle Kaelen clutched tightly in his hand. There was a momentary pause. The processor scanned the data.
**"Object Identified: Trigger Key."**
Jester's grip momentarily loosened. Seizing the opportunity, Kaelen fell to the floor, gasping for the little air that filled his lungs. He tried to breathe amidst coughing fits.
Jester stumbled backward. He brought his hands to his temples. The light in his red eyes began to flicker like a faulty neon sign.
**"ERROR... CONFLICTING PROTOCOLS..."** His voice was distorted, like two different radio channels bleeding into each other. **"MISSION: REVENGE... MISSION: PROTECTION..."**
Inside, an invisible battle raged. The cold, ruthless machine logic of "Red Mode" clashed with Jester's chaotic, flawed, but human soul.
"Kaelen!" Nena shouted from behind the monitors. "Give him a paradox! Lock up his logic! He's a computer right now, he operates on logic, not emotions!"
Kaelen struggled to his feet, clutching his throat. His eyes were watering, but his mind was clear. He remembered the moment Jester had ripped out the motherboard of the machine in that old arcade. *A hacker who knew the codes.*
"Jester!" Kaelen shouted, raising his voice. "Listen to me, machine! If you kill me, you can't complete your mission!"
Jester stopped. His flickering subsided, but the red light was still constant. He turned his head to Kaelen.
**"Explain."**
Kaelen took a deep breath. He had to win this gamble. "Your mission is to destroy the Syndicate, isn't it? But the Syndicate isn't something one man can destroy alone. You need an army. Me, Titan, Echo... We are your army. I am that army's strategy."
Kaelen took a step closer, never taking his eyes off those red lasers.
"If you kill me, the army disperses. If the army disperses, the Syndicate wins. So killing me is helping the Syndicate! Killing me is failing your mission!"
Jester froze. Even the raindrops in the air seemed to slow around him. His processor was crunching this logic loop, this "if-else" dilemma.
**"ANALYZING..."** said the mechanical voice. **"TARGET: KAELEN... ROLE: STRATEGIC ASSET... OUTCOME: UNDESTROYABLE."**
There was a silence. Then the sound of the system's acceptance was heard.
**"LOGIC VALIDATED... ANNIHILATION CANCELED."**
Jester's knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the wet floor where he stood. The terrifying red light in his eyes slowly faded, giving way first to a gray void, then to his familiar, warm hazel color.
His shoulders slumped. The military posture vanished, replaced by the stance of a weary human.
"Ah..." Jester said, in his own voice. He cleared his throat. "My head... It's like a blender is running inside my brain, with nails thrown in."
Kaelen approached Jester with cautious steps. He holstered his weapon – or at least, shoved the twisted lump of metal into his pocket. "Are you back?"
Jester looked at Kaelen with bewildered eyes. Then at Titan, trying to emerge from the wreckage at the base of the wall, and Echo, wiping his nose on the floor. An expression of horror spread across his face.
"Oh my God," Jester said, looking at his hands. His fingers were trembling. "Did I hurt you?"
"Not you," Nena said, wheeling her chair closer and checking Jester's pulse. "Administrator Mode. Jester, you have a second personality inside you. A pure, ruthless combat software. It activates in moments of danger. A kind of... survival mechanism."
Jester clenched his hands into fists. "I can't control it," he whispered. His voice was filled with fear. "Next time, I could kill you. If it weren't for that whistle..."
Kaelen placed his hand on Jester's shoulder. He could feel the tension in the muscles beneath the wet fabric. "Then we'll learn to control you. That whistle... it was an emergency brake. And it worked."
Jester stood up. He was still shaky, but he was on his feet. Nena opened one of the cabinets at the back.
"Your old costume was shredded," Nena said. "And frankly, fighting in that clown suit isn't safe anymore. I've prepared something for you."
What Nena handed him was tactical armor made of a black, matte material. It was reinforced with Kevlar and ceramic plates but flexible enough not to restrict movement. However, Nena hadn't forgotten Jester's style; she had also added a long, dark purple cape with torn edges, designed to be worn over the armor.
This was no longer a runaway circus costume. This was a "War Clown" uniform.
"We have a problem," Echo said, getting to his feet with Titan's help. His voice was still weak, but his mind was clear. "While you were sleeping in that tank, Jester, the world didn't stop. The Syndicate Tower was destroyed, yes. But the Emissary's 'Contingency Plan' activated."
Jester paused as he fastened the chest plate of his new armor. "How bad?"
"All the giant screens in the city, all the billboards, even ATM screens turned on," Echo said, pointing to the main monitor in the workshop. On the screen, a colossal red countdown timer was displayed over a hazy image of Nova-Veridia.
**23:48:12**
"And a countdown began. 24 hours. The Emissary announced that if we don't surrender, he will release 'Reset Gas' into the city. This gas doesn't kill people, Jester... It erases them. Their memories, their identities... It will turn everyone into white noise."
Jester fastened the last buckle of his armor. He draped the purple cape over his shoulders. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. There was no fear in his eyes anymore. That old glint, walking the fine line between madness and genius, had returned.
He smiled. But this time, his smile wasn't sad or sarcastic. It was wild. It was the smile of a predator.
"Great," Jester said, tightening his gloves. "And here I thought the party was over, and I'd missed all the fun."
He turned around and looked at his team.
"Let's go stop that countdown. Nova-Veridia won't be sleeping tonight."