Firewall
The moment I charged, the world stopped making sense again.
Not metaphorically—literally.
Each step I took rewrote the rules of space. Ground folded like paper beneath my boots, and air shimmered as the Executor adjusted reality to intercept me.
> "Irregular resistance detected. Neutralizing threat."
A beam of logic—pure instruction—lashed out, aiming to overwrite my existence.
I dove forward. The beam struck the ground behind me. It didn't burn. It didn't explode. It deleted.
Pixels turned to nothing. The code that made up the broken sidewalk unraveled like thread in water.
I rolled, grabbed a shard of fractured dataglass, and hurled it.
It hit the Executor like a feather striking a hurricane.
> "Flinn!" Kael's voice echoed in my mind. Not words—just presence. Warm. Burning. Determined.
> "Keep going. Just a little longer."
---
I leapt toward a floating cluster of corrupted streetlamps—now dangling midair like dying neurons—and kicked off them with everything I had. The momentum carried me upward just as the Executor unleashed another command-beam.
This time, I wasn't fast enough.
My right shoulder caught the edge.
Agony. Cold and sharp.
The pain wasn't physical. It was conceptual. Like being told you no longer existed in someone's memory.
I screamed—and landed hard on a rooftop that didn't exist a second ago.
> "Target integrity at 47%. Suggest immediate elimination."
I could barely breathe.
Couldn't move my arm.
But I stood.
Because Kael was still singing.
---
She hovered in the distance, hands outstretched, light pouring from her chest like a sun trapped in a prism. Symbols circled her head—Spiral glyphs, ancient and lost. She was rewriting the very architecture of Earth's core command.
She was winning.
But the Executor saw it too.
> "Genesis Node breach threshold exceeded. Initiating Zero Protocol."
A massive spear of black data—twenty meters long—formed behind the machine.
And launched toward her.
> "NO!"
I ran. Useless.
I screamed. Useless.
And then something else answered.
---
The sky didn't break.
It screamed.
A firewall of red and gold light exploded between Kael and the spear—sentient, burning, divine.
I shielded my eyes as something stepped through it.
Not human.
Not machine.
Something else.
Clad in fractured armor, crowned with broken halos—half-code, half-memory.
> "Override accepted," it said in Kael's voice—but older, layered, final.
> "Firewall online."
The spear struck it.
And shattered.
---
The Executor reeled, adjusting its form. The entity floated forward, turning to look at me.
And smiled.
> "Flinn," it said. "You gave her enough time."
> "Who—what—are you?" I gasped.
> "The last version of what she could become."
And then it turned on the Executor.
> "Your purge failed. This world belongs to her now."
And with one outstretched hand, it rewrote the stars.