Chapter 26: Rootkit

  The Heron Quay substation was a graveyard of concrete and mud, drowning in the freezing London rain.

  Captain Miller of the Helios Vanguard team didn't even have time to press the detonator. Above the excavation pit, the jagged dimensional tear widened, bleeding neon-red light into the dark clouds. Silas Vane floated down from the rift, his pristine coat in tatters, the right half of his body a sickening, pulsing mass of black cybernetics and corrupted red malware.

  "Open fire!" Miller screamed, his assault rifle roaring to life.

  A dozen Helios mercenaries unleashed a hail of armor-piercing rounds directly at Silas. The bullets hit the corporate enforcer, but instead of tearing through flesh, they struck a localized wall of red static. The physical lead simply unrendered, dissolving into harmless polygons before they even scratched him.

  Silas landed in the mud, his corrupted red eye glowing. Behind him, the digital shrieks of King Erebus’s Null-Walkers echoed as hundreds of static-filled monsters poured out of the sky.

  "Hostile takeover," Silas’s voice echoed, layered with the metallic, overlapping static of the Glitch King.

  Silas raised his mutated gauntlet. [EXECUTING: MASS_DELETION_WAVE]

  A shockwave of red malware blasted outward. It didn't push the mercenaries; it actively corrupted their physical layer. Miller’s assault rifle rusted into dust in his hands. The heavy excavation equipment sparked and melted into useless slag. The Vanguard team screamed as the Null-Walkers descended upon them, plunging the muddy pit into absolute chaos.

  Suddenly, the roar of a V8 engine cut through the screams.

  The hijacked Helios command SUV launched off the street-level embankment, crashing down into the muddy excavation pit. It slammed directly into a cluster of Null-Walkers, crushing their static-bodies against a concrete pillar.

  The driver's door kicked open. Alexander Kane stepped out into the rain.

  His LGA windbreaker was soaked, but his eyes burned with brilliant, unmistakable green light. The Golden Code was humming in his veins.

  "Kane!" Silas roared, stepping over a terrified mercenary. The corporate cyborg smiled, his jagged metal teeth sparking. "You're too late. The system is mine. I have root access to the physical layer now!"

  "You don't have root access," Alex said coldly, walking straight toward the monster. "You just downloaded a virus."

  Alex didn't hesitate. He thrust his hand forward, his Architect vision targeting the massive, corrupted cybernetic arm attached to Silas.

  [ASSET: SILAS_VANE] [STATE: CORRUPTED]

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  [COMMAND: FORMAT_DRIVE]

  A beam of pure, localized green Golden Code shot from Alex's hand, striking Silas squarely in the chest.

  But Silas didn't delete. The red malware on his body flared violently, actively fighting Alex's code.

  [ERROR: FIREWALL BREECH FAILED]

  [ACCESS DENIED BY: KING_EREBUS]

  "I'm merged with the Origin Malware, boy!" Silas laughed, raising his own arm. A spear of jagged red static materialized in his grip. "You can't delete me. I out-process you!"

  Silas hurled the red spear. It crossed the distance in a microsecond.

  Alex couldn't delete it, so he edited the environment instead.

  [ASSET: RAINWATER] [STATE: LIQUID] -> [STATE: SOLID_DIAMOND]

  A sheet of falling rain instantly crystallized into a six-inch-thick wall of flawless diamond directly in front of Alex. The red spear slammed into the barrier, shattering the diamond into a million glittering, freezing shards, but the attack was stopped.

  "Sarah!" Alex yelled into his comms, ducking behind the wrecked SUV as a dozen Null-Walkers lunged toward him. "I can't break his firewall! He's got too much bandwidth!"

  "I'm trying, Alex!" Sarah’s voice panicked over the earpiece. "I'm tapping into the Heron Quay localized grid, but the malware is eating the physical cables! I can't send you a power surge!"

  Alex gritted his teeth, his green eyes scanning the battlefield. He was one organic Admin against a hybridized monster and an army of glitches. He couldn't edit fast enough to survive.

  Silas stalked forward, the red static gathering for a massive, area-of-effect execution blast. "End of the line, IT guy. You're fired."

  TH-THOOM.

  The entire substation shook. It wasn't Silas’s attack. The vibration came from deep within the mud, directly beneath their feet.

  Silas paused, his corrupted eye twitching. "What is that?"

  Behind Silas, half-buried in the mud and rigged with the dormant Helios thermite charges, the celestial Bronze Door began to glow.

  The ancient, massive gears, which had been dead since the dawn of humanity, suddenly ground to life with a deafening, metallic shriek. The runes etched into the metal flared with blinding, purifying blue light—the exact opposite of Silas's red malware.

  [INCOMING CONNECTION: MOONVEIL_APEX_SERVER]

  [AUTHORIZATION: DOORWARDEN_CLASS]

  "No!" Silas snarled, realizing what was happening. He aimed his gauntlet at the door to corrupt it.

  He was a second too late.

  The Bronze Door violently blew outward. The heavy brass doors didn't just open; they exploded off their hinges, sending a shockwave of pure, unadulterated Aurelian magic blasting into the freezing London rain. The wave of blue light vaporized every Null-Walker within fifty feet.

  From the glowing dimensional smoke, a massive silhouette stepped out onto the Earth.

  Agent Locke.

  His Doorwarden tactical suit was still offline, but he wasn't unarmed. In his gauntleted hands, he carried the massive, glowing halberd of the Paladin champion he had defeated in the High Heavens.

  Right behind him, stepping onto the muddy concrete of London for the very first time, was Lyra. She looked up at the dark, rainy sky and the towering glass skyscrapers of Heron Quay. Her crimson coat whipped in the wind, and a massive, delighted grin spread across her face.

  "So this is the Origin Server," Lyra laughed, raising both hands as compressed violet magic instantly flared to life, feeding off the latent energy of the Bronze Door. "It's so... gritty!"

  Finally, Thorne stumbled out of the portal, clutching his glitch-sword and staring at the wrecked Helios SUV in pure, unadulterated terror. "By the Maker... the metal carriages are real!"

  Alex stepped out from behind his cover, a massive smile breaking across his face.

  Locke spun the massive Paladin halberd, the blade humming with lethal energy, and locked eyes with the mutated Silas Vane.

  "Target acquired," Locke’s raw, human voice carried over the rain. He didn't have his helmet, and his eyes were cold and focused. "Let's debug this sector."

  The Squad is Reunited on Earth!

  This is peak crossover action! The Aurelian fantasy squad has officially breached the real world. Lyra is about to unleash high-magic on corporate mercenaries, Locke has a Paladin weapon in the real world, and Alex finally has his team back to take down Hybrid-Silas.