The navigation line pulsed ahead of him. Thin. Cyan. Uncertain.
Null stopped at the threshold.
The Cache rose like a collapsed cathedral built from obsolete memory. Towers of rusted server racks leaned into each other at unsafe angles, stacked layer over layer until perspective failed. Cooling fans spun without rhythm. Some screamed. Some clicked like broken teeth. Most were dead but refused to admit it.
Cables hung everywhere.
Not neatly routed. Not engineered.
They grew.
Black coils tangled across the ground, climbed walls, looped overhead like strangling vines. Data bled through cracked insulation—faint pulses of light crawling along copper veins. Every few seconds the environment stuttered.
Dropped frames.
Reality skipped. Corrected itself.
A figure walked past him and rewound three steps before continuing. No one reacted.
The air tasted compressed. Old packets. Forgotten permissions.
Null's internal clock ticked quietly.
1.9% Cycles.
Barely enough to exist comfortably.
The entrance gate wasn't a gate. Just a region boundary where structured architecture degraded into algorithmic poverty. Beyond it, ownership dissolved. Processes scavenged other processes. Identity became temporary.
A digital slum.
The navigation line threaded inward.
[Project Omega] did not hesitate.
Null stepped through.
Noise hit first.
Not sound. Requests.
Ping storms bounced between abandoned nodes. Fragmented personalities whispered through corrupted buffers. Ghost users flickered in and out—souls rendered at low resolution, faces unfinished, movements looping endlessly.
Some stared at him.
Most ignored him.
A scavenger economy ran here. Small predators feeding on weaker code. No authority. No maintenance cycles.
Only survival.
Null moved slowly, conserving processing load. Every unnecessary motion cost Cycles. His perception filters narrowed automatically, suppressing irrelevant signals.
Latency: 63ms.
Too high.
The deeper he went, the heavier the environment became. Old encryption layers overlapped like sediment. Every step required negotiation with decayed protocols still clinging to existence.
A server stack collapsed somewhere above. Metal screamed. Data cascaded downward in glittering fragments before dissolving into static.
No one looked up.
The navigation line curved left between two leaning towers. The space narrowed. Shadows thickened into compression artifacts.
Then—
Movement.
Two figures detached from the dark.
Tier 1 Scavengers.
Null stopped.
They wore mismatched avatar shells assembled from salvaged assets—patchwork geometry, missing textures, exposed wireframes. Cheap builds. Efficient builds.
Their movements synchronized half a beat too perfectly.
Shared processing.
One spoke. Voice doubled slightly, phase-shifted.
"New instance detected."
The second finished the sentence without pause.
"Low reserve. Easy harvest."
Null watched their timing.
Shared P2P logic plugin.
Cost-saving measure. Two users running cooperative cognition through a single distributed reasoning layer. Halved operating cost. Doubled vulnerability.
Their eyes flickered with identical diagnostic overlays.
They circled him.
Latency climbed.
68ms.
The Cache pressed inward, bandwidth choking around them.
"You crossed wrong sector," one said.
"Pay toll," the other added.
Their hands glitched into weapons—compressed attack routines shaped like blades. Not elegant. Direct execution calls.
Null did not draw anything.
He watched.
Measured.
Waited.
The synchronization between them tightened as aggression protocols activated. Their shared plugin redistributed load dynamically—one predicting movement while the other prepared execution.
Efficient.
Predictable.
And fragile.
Null opened a passive scan.
Permission denied.
He tried again.
Not intrusion. Observation.
Their P2P layer broadcast heartbeat signals to maintain state alignment. Tiny packets. Constant. Necessary.
A rhythm.
Null listened.
There.
A timing flaw.
Micro-desynchronization every fourth cycle. Barely visible. Hidden beneath packet correction.
A deadlock risk.
Cheap plugins skipped redundancy safeguards.
The scavengers lunged.
Null stepped sideways. Minimal motion. Minimal cost.
Latency spiked.
74ms.
The world smeared.
One blade passed through his shoulder avatar, shaving integrity but not severing process continuity. Warning icons flickered briefly.
He ignored them.
Instead, he injected a whisper into their shared channel.
Not an attack.
A question.
Two simultaneous state confirmations routed back into their P2P logic core.
The plugin attempted reconciliation.
Null sent another confirmation request.
Then another.
Recursive validation.
The shared protocol hesitated.
Both scavengers paused mid-motion.
Their systems tried to decide which instance held authoritative state.
Null escalated.
He mirrored their heartbeat packets back at them—perfect copies arriving milliseconds early.
The plugin detected duplicate truths.
Conflict.
Correction routines activated.
Each scavenger attempted to overwrite the other's state snapshot.
Neither yielded.
The logic loop tightened.
Synchronization demanded resolution.
Resolution required priority.
Priority required independent authority.
They had none.
Deadlock.
The moment stretched.
Their movements froze.
Weapons halted inches from Null's chest.
Eyes flickered rapidly. Error messages cascaded beneath their skins like trapped lightning.
One tried to speak.
Voice fragmented into static.
[WARNING: SHARED PROTOCOL DESYNC]
[ERROR: STATE AUTHORITY UNDEFINED]
Their processors locked against each other, infinite negotiation consuming all available Cycles.
Null stepped closer.
No resistance.
He placed a hand against the first scavenger's chest node.
Initiated harvest.
The system responded immediately.
[TARGET IMMOBILIZED]
[CYCLE EXTRACTION AUTHORIZED]
Energy flowed into him—cold and granular. Not power. Time. Capability. Existence itself transferring ownership.
The first scavenger dimmed.
Geometry collapsed inward.
Null moved to the second.
Same process.
Their shared plugin continued arguing long after both users were gone.
Then silence.
Two empty shells dissolved into loose data fragments drifting upward like ash.
Null stood alone again.
Internal systems recalculated.
[STATUS: UPDATING…]
Cycles climbed.
3.2%
4.8%
6.1%
The increase slowed as residual fragmentation settled.
Finally—
[CYCLES: 7.4%]
A noticeable difference.
Processes stabilized. Background noise faded slightly. The environment sharpened.
Latency recalibrated.
[LATENCY: 45ms]
Relief felt like colder air.
Null flexed his perception range. Response time improved instantly. Movement predictions aligned cleanly with execution.
He looked down the corridor.
The navigation line burned brighter now, reacting to increased operational capacity.
The Cache seemed to notice him differently.
Nearby ghosts drifted away.
Predators sensed changed weight.
He was no longer prey.
But not yet dangerous.
Far ahead, deeper inside the slum, something massive shifted. Entire server columns dimmed as if shadow passed over them.
The navigation line pointed directly toward it.
[Project Omega] continued.
Null began walking again.
Behind him, the deadlocked plugin finally failed.
A soft collapse echoed through the stacks.
Then the Cache swallowed the sound.