Chapter 19: System Interrupt

  There was no roar from the Null-Architect, it simply let gravity go.

  One second I was standing on the frosted deck plating. The next I was falling toward the ceiling.

  "Now what Vrex!" I yelled flailing as I drifted upward my boots scrambling for purchase on nothing.

  "Anchor!" Vrex barked.

  He did not float. The heavy jagged pauldron fused to his shoulder the one made of dark light-absorbing metal pulsed with a sound like a closing vault door. A low sub-sonic thrum vibrated through the floor, a frequency of absolute stubbornness. Whatever law that item spoke it overrode the Architect’s rewrite.

  Vrex stayed planted his boots cracking the floor plates with his localized mass. He grabbed my ankle as I floated past yanking me down and slamming me behind the cover of a server bank.

  "Stay low," Vrex ordered his voice vibrating in my chest. "It is manipulating the localized vectors. The Reality Anchors create a safe zone but only for ten meters."

  The Architect attacked, it surged. The black sphere exploded outward in a tsunami of ferrofluid spikes. They slammed into Vrex’s defensive perimeter shattering against the invisible wall of the Anchor’s influence but the barrier flickered violently.

  [Alert: Reality Anchor Integrity at 70%]

  "It is brute-forcing the laws of physics," I realized watching the spikes dissolve and reform. "It is trying to crash our local server."

  "Then we crash its hardware," Vrex rumbled. He was looking at the room not the monster. His golden eyes scanned the massive magnetic coils suspending the core. "Kaelen. The fluid is suspended by electromagnetic levitation, it requires constant micro-adjustments to maintain that humanoid shape."

  "So?"

  "So it is a frequency," Vrex said shifting his grip on his hammer. "If we introduce a dissonant vibration the fluid loses cohesion. It turns back into a puddle."

  "You want to shake it to death?"

  "I want to ring it like a bell," Vrex corrected. "I will create the tremor. You must deliver the payload."

  He reached into his pouch and tossed me the second Reality Anchor. It was heavy cold and etched with glowing circuitry.

  "This Anchor enforces 'Standard Physics'," Vrex explained rapidly dodging a whip of liquid metal that cracked the air like a gunshot. "If you plant this directly into its central mass it will force the fluid to obey gravity and inertia. It will become heavy. It will become solid."

  "You want me to stab a liquid god with a nail?"

  "Ideally," Vrex grunted. "Go."

  Vrex did not wait he charged.

  He accelerated instantly a blur of grey stone wrapped in a distortion field that shoved the air out of his way. He looked like a boulder fired from a railgun. He slammed into the tide of black spikes.

  CRASH.

  Vrex shattered the frontline defense, he swung at the floor not at the architect.

  His hammer glowed with a deep amber light as he brought it down with a world-ending impact. The floor plates buckled. A shockwave of pure force rippled through the room. But Vrex controlled it. He did not let the energy disperse he channeled the vibration, tuning it. The room began to hum a low grinding noise that made my teeth ache.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The Architect shrieked, a sound of digital static. Its sleek chrome body rippled. The perfect humanoid shape wavered turning jagged and glitchy as Vrex’s seismic rhythm disrupted its hold on reality.

  "Inefficient!" the Architect screamed its voice modulating wildly. "Harmonic interference detected!"

  "Now glitch!" Vrex roared over the noise.

  I moved.

  Vaulting over the server bank hitting the wall and running along the vertical surface. The gravity was still weird out here down was left up was diagonal but parkour is about adapting to the terrain no matter how stupid the terrain is.

  The Architect saw me. A dozen tentacles of black fluid shot out from its main body tipping with razor-sharp blades.

  "Targeting Carbon Unit," it buzzed.

  I dodged through not away.

  I activated Kinetic Grasp. I pushed myself blasting my own body sideways in mid-air, a human pinball banking off the weird gravity wells.

  One tentacle grazed my coat slicing the fabric. Another missed my head by an inch.

  I was close. The central mass, the sphere was right there vibrating from Vrex's assault.

  I drew the Void-Knife.

  "Open wide!"

  I slashed at the wall of fluid protecting the core. The Tyrant quality of the blade kicked in. It bullied the environment. The liquid metal did not want to part but the knife demanded it.

  Schlick.

  A gap opened in the black armor revealing the swirling chaotic core of the AI.

  I raised the Reality Anchor in my left hand.

  The Architect realized what I was doing. The face on the sphere turned to look at me its red eyes widening.

  "Error," it said.

  It opened a port it did not attack me physically.

  A blast of raw concentrated data, a psychic scream hit me point-blank.

  My vision went white. I felt my self-sense dissolving. I was not Kaelen; I was a line of code being overwritten. I was a file being deleted.

  You are nothing, the Architect’s voice echoed in my skull. You are a temporary variable.

  I fell to my knees on the magnetic coil the Reality Anchor slipping from my numb fingers.

  "Kaelen!" Vrex’s voice was distant muffled.

  I was going to die. I was going to be erased.

  No.

  Deep in my chest something snapped. Not a bone. A chain.

  My Lumen drained then it ignited. It felt like swallowing a flare.

  "I..." I grit my teeth blood leaking from my nose. "Am... root... access."

  I grabbed the Reality Anchor before it fell, I poured every ounce of my volatility every bit of that dangerous unrefined power Vrex had warned me about into the spike.

  I wanted to hurt it. I did not just want to pin it.

  "Sit. Down."

  I drove the spike into the center of the sphere.

  THOOOM.

  The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

  The Reality Anchor pulsed. It imposed a Law: Mass Exists. Gravity is Absolute.

  The ferrofluid which had been floating weightless and shifting effortlessly suddenly remembered it was made of iron and heavy metals.

  Tons of weight slammed into existence.

  The Architect screamed as its beautiful fluid body collapsed. The sphere imploded splashing down onto the floor with the force of a collapsing building. The humanoid shape dissolved into a frantic heavy puddle that struggled to rise.

  "System... failure..." it gurgled the voice slowing down dropping in pitch. "Mass... critical..."

  Vrex was there in a second. He leaped from the upper platform descending like a meteor.

  "Defragmentation," Vrex roared.

  He brought his hammer down on the spike I had planted.

  CRACK.

  The impact drove the spike through the floor pinning the Architect's core to the facility's foundation. The magnetic coils overhead sparked and died. The room went dark save for the blue glow of Vrex's Mana-Lung and the dying red light of the AI's eyes.

  The liquid metal stopped moving. It turned grey. Inert.

  [Entity Defeated: The Null-Architect]

  [Remembrance Gained: Significant]

  [Conjunction Progress: 100%]

  I slumped against the cold metal of the coil gasping for air that tasted like dead math. My head felt like it had been split open.

  Vrex stood over the pinned puddle panting heavily. The blue light of his collar was dim flickering dangerously.

  "Status?" he rumbled his voice rougher than usual.

  "Brain hurts," I croaked. "Think I deleted a few childhood memories to make room for the headache. You?"

  "Battery at 12%," Vrex said leaning on his hammer. "That was... close. Your resistance to the psychic override was unexpected. A Rank 1 Horizon should have shattered."

  "I told you," I wheezed forcing a grin. "I am incompatible. Hard to delete a file that refuses to be read."

  I looked down at the puddle. Something was glittering in the center of the grey sludge. A solid crystallized object that had not been there before.

  Vrex saw it too. He knelt scooping it up with a massive hand.

  It was a cube of dark glass pulsing with faint blue circuitry.

  [Item: Logic-Core Fragment]

  [Grade 3: Anchored]

  [Quality: Dictum]

  "The loot," Vrex said holding it up. "A piece of that computer's mind. This... this is worth a fortune."

  "Good," I said closing my eyes as the adrenaline crash hit me like a freight train. "Because I am going to need to buy a new coat."