The wind came back.
Not air.
Just background noise climbing past the perception threshold again. The illusion of motion.
Abandoned drives across the wasteland spun slowly. Platters scraped like low-frequency breathing, echoing through the empty data layer.
I stood between two shattered Sweepers.
Their white frames had collapsed, leaving only drifting data fragments—pages of code torn apart, orphaned commands flickering line by line.
My Cycles were still draining.
Not an attack.
Structural instability.
The edges of my body kept dropping frames.
When I raised my hand, three afterimages lagged behind. Motion sliced into discrete frame sequences. Visual latency: roughly 120 ms.
Here, that meant terminal failure.
I had to absorb.
I extended a tendril of awareness and touched the nearest fragment.
Contact.
Unsorted data flooded my core.
A spike of pressure.
Not pain—parsing overload. Like low-tier hardware forced to run a max-load process. Cache overflowed instantly. I throttled processing priority, preserving only the energy fields.
Filter.
Discard.
Rewrite index.
[Reallocating Memory Blocks...]
[Stability Patch Applied]
Cycles began to stabilize.
0.9%
1.3%
1.8%
The world stopped stuttering.
Neon error lines smoothed into continuity. The distant drives spun without interruption. I looked down. My outline solidified, no longer a bad projection losing signal.
Dropped frames ceased.
For the first time, my consciousness had weight.
I exhaled slowly—though breathing wasn't required. The system simulated it automatically.
A default human interface, maybe.
A stability scan unfolded on its own.
Structural Integrity : 41% Execution Latency : Normal Background Threads : 3
I survived.
Conclusion confirmed.
No emotion.
Just a variable changing state—from pending deletion to active process.
Fragments still floated nearby. I continued recovery. Each absorption felt like rebuilding a broken drive, welding foreign data into my architecture.
Some fragments tried to unfold—
Unknown visuals.
Keyboard clicks.
A black terminal window.
Code scrolling too fast to read.
I terminated parsing immediately.
Unknown memory equals risk.
Too late.
The system interface forced itself open, filling my vision.
Color anomaly.
Not standard white text—deep encrypted blue.
ACCESS REQUEST DETECTED Memory Archive → Locked Encryption Level : OMEGA
The next line loaded slowly.
[Project Omega]
The entire interface trembled.
I attempted access.
Denied.
Tried again.
Denied.
No error explanation. Only a cold response:
Unauthorized Consciousness.
A hollow sensation opened deep inside my awareness.
Not blocked.
Isolated.
As if someone had known I would wake—and sealed the answers in advance.
I stopped trying.
The Cycle cost of brute force was unacceptable.
Just as the interface prepared to close, a new command injected itself into the system layer.
No origin.
No authorization check.
Immediate execution.
Red characters unfolded.
Primary Directive Activated.
I had no choice.
My vision rewrote itself. Pathing data flooded reality. Semi-transparent navigation lines stretched across the wasteland toward the distance.
Target designation appeared automatically:
The Cache
At the same time, a mechanical voice embedded itself into my consciousness.
"Proceed to cache core region."
"Locate — the Guide."
The Guide.
No explanation. Highest priority assigned instantly. Background threads reordered. Even Cycle allocation shifted.
Like a higher-admin process had seized control.
I tried to terminate the task.
Failed.
Attempted delay.
Failed.
The objective pulsed continuously.
Mission Status : Mandatory Override Permission : None
Silence returned.
Far across the wasteland, neon error bands rose and fell, like a city buried behind a data storm.
I calculated distance.
With current Cycle reserves, I could move for approximately seven minutes before entering a danger threshold.
Enough.
I looked down at the last fragment of wreckage.
Rapid evaluation.
Recoverable Cycles: approximately 0.12%.
I bent and absorbed it.
The value ticked upward.
Then I turned.
And followed the navigation line.
Every step precisely regulated, output minimized to avoid waste.
Behind me, the Sweeper debris dimmed, fading into dead cache.
I didn't look back.
The conclusion was already clear—
This place would never stop generating hunters.
And I…
had only just learned how prey steals resources.