The cavern was a symphony of sirens and digital screams. The violet shockwave had turned the Paladins into statues, their high-tech armor locked in a "System Freeze."
Jax stood over the Captain, his chest heaving, his bone-armor smoking. He reached down to rip the encryption key from the Captain's neck, but before his fingers could touch the metal, the Captain's visor flared with a cold, blinding gold.
It wasn't a reboot. It was a Remote Hijack.
"A 'Memory Leak,' Jaxon? Truly?"
The voice didn't come from the Captain. It was deeper, smoother, and pulsed with a terrifying authority. The Captain's head snapped up, his neck clicking unnaturally as Commander Valerius took control of the dying man's vocal processors from the High City above.
"You have your father's flair for the dramatic," Valerius said through the helmet speakers. "But you've only succeeded in corrupting a single terminal. I am the Network. I am the Firewall. And you... are just a fragment of code I forgot to delete."
[WARNING: TRACE-BACK INITIATED]
[VALERIUS IS SCANNING YOUR NEURAL-LINK]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO CORE-LOCATION: 60 SECONDS]
"He's tracking me through the rig!" Jax yelled, stumbling back.
"Let him try," Sledge shouted, running forward with a heavy-duty data-spike. "Jax, if he completes that trace, he'll send a 'Burn-Command' directly to your brain. You need to sever the connection now!"
"I can't just disconnect!" Jax grunted, his eyes flashing violet as he fought the Commander in the digital void. "If I break the link, I lose the data I just stole from the orb. I lose the map to the High City!"
Valerius laughed, a hollow sound echoing through the cavern. "Then stay, little prince. Stay and burn with your trash-heap."
From the ceiling, the Thermite Drill began to glow. It wasn't drilling anymore. It was charging a Thermal Purge—a "Format" bomb designed to glass the entire Under-Market to ensure the "virus" didn't spread.
[OBJECTIVE: THE 60-SECOND SURGE]
The Author's Note
This is a classic "Ticking Clock" scenario. In a webnovel, this is where you end a chapter to keep readers clicking "Next." It forces the hero to choose betw
een Information, Safety, or His Allies.