Marble under my treads. Too clean.
Like someone pushed a sanitation patch and set every surface to default—no scuffs, no grime, no life.
Glass bridges link the towers overhead. You can see the drop through them.
People move below in the same NPC pathing loop—turn, pause, turn—wearing the same base skins like the wardrobe menu got disabled.
Core-lamps buzz at the same safe volume. Nothing spikes, nothing crackles—like the sensor clamps cut audio the second it gets interesting.
Like a place where the second anyone gets loud, somebody reports it.
Justiciar Camila walks half a step ahead.
Not escorting—screening. Keeping me inside her line of fire without looking like she is.
Her boots don't click. They land with a soft, measured thud—like doors would open for that sound on reflex.
"Stay close," she says, calm with that bored-on-duty tone.
"Upper wards don't tolerate… anomalies." The word lands like a report button getting hovered.
Anomalies. That's me.
A heavy assault-class unit, busted, trying to walk through Zenith without triggering a ping on every camera.
I catch my reflection in a polished wall—metal plates, [Mutagen Cannon] locked to my arm, joints built for lane pressure, not casual walking.
The city tags me like a pop-up warning: NOT ALLOWED.
Camila's eyes flick to my hands. Just once. Quick.
Like she's checking if I'm about to pull something—or if I'm about to desync and start falling apart.
One block in and the first symptom hits.
My minimap stutters—icons rubber-band, pings smear, lane lines redraw like the client can't decide where I am.
The world keeps moving but my overlay lags behind, leaving afterimages of pedestrians that are already somewhere else.
Pain follows the lag—late, mis-timed, like the hit confirm arrives after the damage number.
Like some bad patch routed damage feedback into my control layer—every hitch now comes with a sting.
[WARNING: DATA LEAK]
Integrity loss detected (passive drain)
Cause: Unknown wipe / client version mismatch
HP: 1508 / 1750
MP: 550 / 550
I try to fix it the way I used to.
In. Out. Count. Repeat. I run a fake reset in my head, trying to stomp panic the way you stomp a glitch.
It helps for exactly one breath.
Then my left hand twitches.
Fingers opening and closing—ghost inputs double-tapping commands I never sent.
My cannon arm jitters—tiny aim snaps, like an assist toggle stuck half-on.
Camila hears the motor whine. Her grip shifts on the rifle like she's counting shots without looking.
Her head turns a fraction, eyes cutting to my arm, then away.
She keeps walking like if she doesn't acknowledge the noise, the city will pretend it didn't hear it.
"Don't fight the pace," she says.
"Just… match me."
Match her. Blend in.
Like a Prime-class unit can pass for human if it stays in character and nobody checks too close.
We pass a plaza where the fountain runs in brochure-perfect arcs—every splash repeats on a loop like it's pre-rendered.
The air smells like polished stone and expensive perfume—until the smell glitches.
Burned circuitry. Sharp. Not supposed to be here.
Like a power unit overheating. Zenith doesn't allow anything that isn't whitelisted. The city doesn't argue—it just deletes permissions.
Tooltips start popping on strangers at the edge of my vision—wrong font, wrong spacing, labels I shouldn't have access to.
I blink hard. Nothing clears. The visual glitches split into more glitches.
I clench both fists and try to force a re-sync—lock inputs, steady camera, pray the overlay catches up. A habit from when I could still trust my own inputs.
Grip tight, stabilize, ride out the frame. The ground drops out beneath me.
The system slaps me for trying.
[-19 HP]
Camila stops at the end of the glass bridge. The panels under us show open air and a long drop—no privacy, no hiding a stumble.
Her face stays composed. Justicicar mode on.
But her eyes do that tiny flick again—hands to chest plating—watching for fractures.
"We're almost there," she says.
"Professor Tock can stabilize… whatever this is."
"Whatever this is," I echo, and it comes out stiff—like I'm reading a system message out loud.
We reach a building with gold trim and a Core-Tech seal sunk into the door. The stamp wakes up as we get close, light crawling over the frame like it's reading us.
No guards. No signage. Just institutional confidence that doesn't bother with proof.
The seal glows as we approach. The light sticks to my plates a beat too long.
Not scanning—marking.
[NOTICE: ACCESS SEAL CHECK]
Target: Prof_Tock_Lab_Door
Scan Result: THREAT FLAG (UNREGISTERED ASSET)
Status: Pending decision...
HP: 1470 / 1750
MP: 550 / 550
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
[NOTICE: ACCESS SEAL OVERRIDE]
Authorizer: Justiciar_Camila
Result: GRANTED (ESCORT EXCEPTION)
The door hesitates—half a second where nothing happens and my whole body expects a forced logout.
Then the gold light unlocks. The door slides inward with a soft hiss.
Warm air hits my faceplate—filtered, dry, the kind that makes everything smell approved and nothing smell real.
Like stepping into a backroom you're not supposed to be in.
My filters catch most of it—still, I register the warmth as pressure on my plating.
The lab feels like a tutorial instance—clean lanes, marked zones, everything placed so you can't pretend you didn't see it. Brass ribs. Glass panels seated in frames with a hairline gap.
Every surface wiped until it looks legally sterile.
Something under the floor keeps snapping everything back—chairs square themselves, cables pull taut, dust disappears mid-fall.
My pathing keeps dragging me straight down the middle, like invisible lane proxies are body-blocking me into a script.
I fight it anyway. Just a little.
That "little" costs me more than it should.
[-18 HP]
[-20 MP]
A compact figure's voice pops from behind a column of copper tubing.
"Oh! Oh, wonderful timing!"
The Professor's half-buried in an open frame, goggles up, gloves inside a brass rig that ticks too fast and never misses a beat.
He looks up cheerful—
—and the moment his gaze lands on me, he hard-switches to clinical. Friendly face off. Triage face on.
Camila clears her throat.
"Professor. This is the unit I told you about."
"Mmhm. Yes. The… minion."
He circles me once. Not predatory—just doing a fast item-check with his eyes, like I'm loot with a warning tag.
"Symptoms," he says.
"And any recent patches."
"Permanent debuff," I say. "No source. No icon I recognize. It just sits on me and eats."
"Data Leak. Like my memory's getting wiped while I'm still using it."
My hands tremble. Fear's there, but it feels like lag—stuttery, uneven.
The Professor's smile drops. Triage mode.
"Quick scan. I want to see it myself."
He snaps his fingers.
Instruments slide out of seams in the workbench—panels pop, drawers unfold, tools locking into place like a loadout menu made real.
A metronome on little legs ticks near my chest.
It isn't listening for a heartbeat. It's checking if my timing is slipping.
[DEBUG: DIAGNOSTIC LINK]
External Device: Metronome_ClockDrift_v2
Measured Drift: +0.84%
Status: Unstable cadence detected
HP: 1571 / 1750
MP: 530 / 550
Then the Core-tech Visualizer rolls out: brass rings, stacked lenses, cables cinched tight so the unit hums like it expects everything in the room to behave.
The Professor points at a containment circle on the floor. The circle's etched deep enough to catch dirt, but it's been scrubbed clean—like it gets used a lot.
"In here. Sit. Don't move unless you must."
My pathing tugs me forward.
The Justiciar watches from the edge, rifle low but ready, jaw tight like she's negotiating with her own instincts.
I step into the ring.
The Professor dims the room. Amber. Dead quiet.
"Now," he says, voice dropping, "let's see what's leaking."
He throws the switch.
The Visualizer answers with a low whump—like a power unit that stops clicking and either works or dies.
Rings spin. Lenses ratchet inward.
The containment circle under me warms—not heat. Drag. My moves come out heavy, like I just walked into a slow field and my inputs are getting chewed. The sensation builds—grinding my command threads together until my HUD starts throwing warnings.
It drags on me. On my HUD. On the part of me that used to have a name.
[DEBUG: CORE-TECH-VISUALIZER ONLINE]
Scan Mode: Deep Scan (UNSAFE)
Data Leak: ACTIVE (Rate: +0.7%/min)
MP Drain: -60
HP: 1564 / 1750
MP: 470 / 550
Light cuts through me—thin grid lines that snap to my plates and joints, tracing hitboxes I didn't know I had.
It maps my outline, then keeps going, digging into whatever the game was never meant to show.
A model spins up above the rune ring.
It should've been clean: boxes, arrows—the kind of training overlay that tells you what button to press.
Instead it's a snarl—loops stacked on loops until the visualizer can't keep the lines straight.
Scripts calling themselves, retrying, retrying—grabbing at missing data and pretending it found something.
The world runs anyway, like the game forced it through even though it's broken.
The Professor inhales sharp. Camila steps closer, controlled.
"What am I looking at, Professor?" she asks.
"Logic," the Professor says.
"But not… sanctioned logic."
The projection twitches.
One line straightens like it's about to resolve—then it curls back into the mess the moment the scan focuses on it.
The containment circle crackles. Static snaps up my legs—tiny shocks, one after another.
[WARNING: CONTAINMENT CIRCLE INTERFERENCE]
Containment Stability: 62% ↓
Pain Feedback: ENABLED
HP: 1548 / 1750
MP: 470 / 550
Pain hits like a hard crash—no wind-up, no grace period. It stacks, and there's no dismiss button.
The Visualizer highlights a thick bundle in the center.
`ALEX`
Corporate-gray font. Default UI. The kind of text you only see when the system stops pretending you're a person.
Then it splits: `GLITCH`, `MINION_BEHAVIOR`, `SURVIVAL`, `COMPLIANCE`, `PANIC_LOOP`.
Some tags make my gut drop—panic that keeps running even if you try to look away.
`emotion_fear [DEPRECATED]`
`emotion_shame [LEGACY_SUPPORT]`
"I thought I chose things," I whisper.
The model answers by highlighting a clean script box:
`IF THREAT NEARBY: FALL BACK`
Right beside it: a messy pile of manual overrides.
My "choices." Me fighting bot routine for half a second at a time and calling it human.
The Professor leans closer. Then he freezes.
There's a hole in the model.
Not missing data. Something tore a hole through the model—clean edges, like it was cut out on purpose.
Strands drift too close, stretch thin, then vanish—clipped clean out of the render.
I feel it tug at me. Not a metaphor. A real pull.
Like someone's got a hook in my chest and keeps testing the line with small, curious tugs.
[CRITICAL ERROR: MISSING ANCHOR]
Anomaly: "VOID_PTR" (Missing Link)
Effect: Integrity Drain Accelerating
HP: 1519 / 1750
MP: 470 / 550
TEXT APPEARS: "That's your leak. A missing link—an open hole the system keeps pulling at."
Justiciar Camila’s voice stays level. “What happens if it isn’t fixed?”
"Cleanup. Reclaim. The system despawns what doesn't belong." He doesn’t say it like a threat—more like a scheduled task.
My fear spikes hard enough to jitter my camera and smear the edges of the room.
[DATA EXPUNGED]
“We install a Core Node Stabilizer. Strap him to a clean timing source so the drift can’t keep eating him.”
The rings stutter. The logic ring spits white noise.
The projection shivers like it’s about to refuse reality.
Then the Visualizer hard-cuts to black.
[SYSTEM FAILURE: PROJECTION COLLAPSE]
Deep Logic Projection: TERMINATED
Containment Stability: 41%
Intervention Proposed: Core Node Stabilizer (UNINSTALLED)
HP: 1508 / 1750
MP: 470 / 550
In the sudden dark, I’m just a minion again—no overlays, no excuses.
And I can still feel the hole, even without the light to prove it’s there.
Generated by GlitchWriter.
::: SYSTEM NOTIFICATION :::
If you are enjoying the glitch, please help keep the process running!
A Follow and a Rating (?????) feeds the algorithm.
ADVANCED CACHE DETECTED
Discuss builds, check the math & join the dev log.