The cursor blinked steadily at the edge of the code—taunting me.
I'd been staring at the same section for over an hour, tracing the loops, trying to decipher the true purpose of the failsafe. It was sophisticated—no, elegant—a masterpiece of digital engineering buried so deep inside the system it had taken an emergency to even reveal its existence.
I wasn't sure what scared me more: that it was there at all, or that I still didn't know who had put it there.
Claire hovered near the desk, her arms crossed. "You're still in one piece. That a good sign?"
I shook my head slowly. "The failsafe isn't just a tracker. It's… reactive. Adaptive. The moment I tried to cut it off completely, it rerouted itself through another subroutine."
Reed leaned forward from where he sat across the room, elbows on his knees. "So it's learning from you."
"More like it's watching," I muttered.
There was a cold weight in my chest. Whoever built this didn't just want to monitor me—they wanted to anticipate me.
And that meant someone, or something, was watching my every decision.
Claire frowned. "Can you isolate it?"
"I can try." My fingers tapped rapidly against the holographic interface, summoning the deepest admin panel I'd ever dared enter. "But if I do, I think we might find out who really holds the leash."
A low chime echoed through the air.
📩 [Admin Access Extended: Root Level Decryption Authorized]
I blinked. That… wasn't me.
"Was that you?" Claire asked, instantly alert.
I shook my head, staring at the screen as a new window opened on its own.
Text scrolled across it—white on black.
**> Override Signal Detected.
Root-Admin Access Acknowledged.
System Observation Reinstated.**
And then one final line that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up:
> "You weren't supposed to see this."
The interface flickered violently, then snapped back to normal.
Claire swore under her breath. "Tell me that was the system glitching."
Reed stood slowly, his hand inching toward his gun. "Someone's watching us. And they just spoke to you."
I stared at the screen.
They hadn't tried to stop me.
They hadn't even shut the system down.
They'd just reminded me—they could.
"I think I pissed off whoever built this thing," I said.
Reed gave a humorless snort. "Good. Means we're getting somewhere."
I wasn't so sure.
The system had just responded like it was alive.
And that meant I wasn't just dealing with a machine anymore—I was dealing with a mind behind it.
Someone had designed this to bait me.
And I had taken the bait.
I needed answers.
But more urgently—we needed a plan.
Because now that I had touched that failsafe, I had no doubt they'd send someone new.
Knox stared at the broken holo-screen, her jaw tense, eyes narrowed as the last of Evelyn's signal faded into static.
She hated when things went quiet.
The girl had vanished from the grid.
But Knox wasn't the type to panic. She thrived on control. On patience.
Ezekiel stood beside her, completely still as data ran across his own device. Unlike Knox, his expression betrayed nothing.
"She did something," he said flatly. "Cut the tether."
Knox clicked her tongue. "She's smarter than she looks."
"No." Ezekiel turned to face her. "She's being coached."
Knox raised a brow. "By who? The slime? The spider?"
"Something older," Ezekiel said. "There was an admin-level interference logged. Not her doing."
That got her attention.
Knox leaned forward slightly, eyes gleaming. "So someone's finally blinking from the shadows, huh?"
Ezekiel nodded once. "Which means she's more important than we thought."
Knox grinned. "Good. I was getting bored."
He tapped a few commands into his device. "We'll need a different approach."
"Careful," Knox said, voice almost playful. "If you upgrade too fast, you might break her before we get any real answers."
Ezekiel looked at her. "We don't need answers."
Knox's grin widened. "No. But I do."
She looked back at the blackened holo-screen, the image of Evelyn's last known location frozen in grainy blue light.
"She's going to poke at the system again. Curious types always do."
"And when she does?" Ezekiel asked.
Knox stood up, stretching her shoulders. "I'll be there. This time, she doesn't get to run."
We moved deeper into the city's underbelly, shifting our base of operations from the old maintenance hideout to a forgotten data center Claire had once helped raid back in her darker days.
It wasn't perfect—some equipment was fried, and dust caked most of the old servers—but the EMP shielding and isolation from any public network made it perfect.
They couldn't track us here.
I was hunched over the console, tapping through diagnostic scans of my system's integrity. The failsafe was still dormant. But I could feel it, pulsing at the edge of the interface like a wound that hadn't fully healed.
"Any updates from the chat group?" Claire asked.
I nodded, opening the group window with a thought.
The others had been suspiciously quiet since the override message. Maybe they sensed something was off.
Peter was the first to ping.
🕷️ Peter Parker: You okay? The signal dropped like a stone.
💀 I'm Not a Bad Slime: You disappeared off our radar.
⚔️ The Lone Wolf: We thought you were dead.
👾 Administrator (Me): I'm alive. Barely. I touched the failsafe. Someone responded.
🕷️ Peter Parker: Someone?
👾 Administrator (Me): Root-level access. Not me. They spoke directly through the system.
💀 I'm Not a Bad Slime: Oh, that's bad. That's R.O.B-level bad.
⚔️ The Lone Wolf: You need to leave your current universe. Now.
That last message made me freeze.
I looked up at Reed and Claire, who were busy fortifying the entrance.
If I left… I'd be abandoning them.
And I wasn't ready to run again.
👾 Administrator (Me): No. Not yet. I need to finish this.
⚔️ The Lone Wolf: Then you better be ready to fight something you don't understand.
I already was.
I closed the chat and stood up, facing the terminal. I still didn't know who had created the failsafe—but now I knew one thing with certainty.
They didn't want me to win.
Which meant I absolutely had to.