WebNovels

Chapter 5 - Parking Garage of Perpetual Twilight (and Questionable Odors)

The air inside the parking garage ramp was thick and tasted faintly of cold concrete dust, stale exhaust fumes, and that sharp, electric tang of ozone that always set my teeth on edge. It felt like breathing inside a giant, dead machine that might twitch back to life at any moment. My flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, revealing peeling paint, cryptic graffiti scrawled by long-gone taggers (or possibly reality itself, hard to tell the difference sometimes), and the occasional skeletal remains of a pre-Glitch shopping cart. The low-grade headache from the NOC incident pulsed steadily behind my eyes, a constant reminder of my depleted reserves.

"Stay sharp," I whispered, my voice unnaturally loud in the sudden hush. We moved slowly down the concrete slope, boots crunching softly on loose gravel and unseen debris. The only other sound was Leo's ragged breathing just behind me and the distant, echoing drip… drip… drip… of water from some unseen leak. Standard creepy ambiance, check.

The first level opened up into a cavernous space punctuated by thick concrete pillars. Most parking spots were empty, monuments to a time when people actually had places to go. A few skeletal car frames remained, stripped bare, rusting peacefully in the gloom. My light swept across them, revealing hollowed-out engine bays and shattered windows like vacant eyes.

Overhead, emergency lights flickered sporadically. Not the standard emergency lighting, but rogue bursts of sickly green or buzzing orange light, casting distorted, lurching shadows. My [Perceive Glitch] skill registered them as minor, localized energy flux glitches – probably harmless, possibly prone to exploding if looked at funny. I made a mental note not to look at them funny, conserving the minimal SP required for even passive scanning. [Current SP: 30/80]. Still recovering, slowly but surely.

"See anything?" Leo whispered, his voice tight. He held his golf club ready, though what good it would do against a reality-warping car thief was debatable. Still, points for trying.

"Dust, decay, and disillusionment," I murmured back, sweeping the light methodically across the level. "No sign of our noisy friend yet. Tracks lead deeper."

The tire tracks were easy enough to follow in the thick dust coating the concrete floor. Wide, aggressive tread pattern. They curved around the central pillars, heading towards the ramp leading down to the next level.

As we approached the down-ramp, the ozone smell intensified. My flashlight beam caught something glinting near the wall – a scatter of spent energy cells, ejected casings glowing faintly with residual charge. Looked like standard high-capacity power cells, the kind used in industrial equipment or… heavily modified vehicles. Definitely recent.

We descended to the next level, the darkness pressing in, the dripping sound louder now. This level felt… different. Colder. The air hummed with a faint, almost subsonic vibration that resonated deep in my chest. The dust wasn't as thick here; sections of the floor looked almost… swept?

My beam caught movement near a pillar. I froze, holding my breath, hand instinctively hovering over the multi-tool on my belt. Leo bumped into me from behind with a stifled gasp.

The movement resolved itself. Not hostile. Just… weird. A section of concrete on the pillar seemed to be flowing slowly, like thick grey sludge, defying gravity as it oozed upwards before dripping back down again in a silent, continuous loop. A contained, stable-ish structural integrity glitch. Creepy, but probably harmless unless you decided to lean against it.

"Okay," I breathed out slowly. "Rule number three: Don't lick the architecture, don't lean on the architecture."

"Got it," Leo whispered shakily.

We continued following the tracks. They led towards the far corner of this level, disappearing behind a large, windowless maintenance enclosure built into the structure. The humming vibration seemed strongest near its closed metal door.

Approaching cautiously, I noticed more signs of activity. A discarded oil rag, smelling fresh. Scuff marks on the floor suggesting heavy equipment had been moved. Someone was definitely using this place as a workshop.

The metal door to the enclosure was thick, industrial grade. No obvious handle on this side. But there was a small, grimy keypad mounted beside it, its display dark. Pre-Glitch security. Probably dead.

Or maybe not. I focused [Perceive Glitch] on the keypad, the familiar mental exertion causing a slight throb in my temples. Faint tendrils of corrupted energy flickered around it, connected to a thin cable running into the wall. And behind the dark display… a whisper of active code. Not standard OS, but something… simpler. A basic loop monitoring for input. It wasn't dead, just dormant. And probably powered by whatever was causing the humming inside.

Could I interface with it? Maybe trigger the unlock sequence? It felt different from the glitches I'd dampened before – this was functional, albeit old, tech interfaced with potentially unstable power. Risky, especially given I wasn't at full strength.

But peeking inside seemed essential before deciding our next move. Bypassing security felt safer than trying to force the door and announcing our presence with loud noises.

"Okay, Leo. Stand back, watch our six," I instructed, placing my palm flat against the cool metal door, trying to sense any vibrations from within. "I'm going to try… persuading the lock."

Leo nodded nervously, scanning the dark parking level behind us.

Closing my eyes briefly, I focused entirely on the keypad. Visualized its internal circuitry, simple as it probably was. The connection to the humming power source felt… jagged. Unstable. Like hooking up sensitive electronics to a lightning storm. The code loop was basic: wait_for_input -> check_code -> grant_access/deny_access -> repeat. Standard stuff.

The trick wasn't brute-forcing the code. It was bypassing the check_code step entirely. Find the command flow that led directly to grant_access.

My mental [Logic Probe] extended, carefully navigating the unstable power fluctuations feeding the keypad. Touched the code loop. Found the branching pathway where the input check occurred. The path to grant_access was blocked, waiting for a successful validation signal.

Instead of trying to fake the signal, I targeted the branch condition itself. The if (code_valid == true) statement. What if… what if I temporarily corrupted the definition of 'true'? Just for a microsecond? Feed the system a paradox? Injecting garbage logic felt more my speed than sophisticated hacking.

It felt like trying to perform brain surgery with mental chopsticks, and the effort pulled noticeably on my limited reserves. Carefully, I focused my [Localized Data Glitch Dampening] skill, not to smooth, but to inject a tiny burst of contradictory data right at the conditional check. True = False? Does Not Compute!

The keypad emitted a faint buzz. My SP dipped. [-5 SP]. A wave of faint dizziness washed over me, a reminder of the cost. [Current SP: 25/80]. Still functional, but that small effort felt disproportionately taxing.

A heavy clunk echoed from behind the metal door. The sound of a mag-lock disengaging.

Success!

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[+10 XP Awarded!]

Reason: Non-Standard Security Protocol Circumvention (Hacking via Reality Tampering).

(You voided the warranty, though. Obviously.)

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I ignored the URE's commentary, the small victory momentarily overriding my fatigue. Gently pushed the heavy door inward. It swung open silently on well-oiled hinges, revealing the source of the hum, the ozone, and the tire tracks.

My flashlight beam played over the scene inside, and both Leo and I sucked in a breath.

It wasn't just a vehicle. It was a beast.

Parked in the center of the surprisingly clean, well-lit (via jury-rigged, humming light bars) maintenance bay was something that looked like it had started life as an armored transport truck, then been viciously cross-bred with a sci-fi pipe dream and a whole lot of salvaged scrap.

It was huge, easily twice the width of a standard truck. Thick, angled plating covered every surface, scarred and pitted from countless impacts. Instead of wheels, it rested on four massive, articulated track units, the kind you might see on a futuristic tank or lunar rover, capable of navigating almost any terrain. Mounted on the roof was a sensor array bristling with unfamiliar antennae and optical sensors. Dark, reinforced windows hinted at a protected cockpit.

But the strangest part was the engine housing. It wasn't a standard combustion engine. Glowing blue conduits snaked across its surface, converging on a central cylindrical core that hummed with barely contained power – the source of the vibration and ozone. Visible heat haze shimmered above it, distorting the air. It looked less like an engine, more like a captive physics experiment. A custom reality-drive? Something capable of punching through glitch-zones? No wonder it sounded so distinctive.

Tools lay scattered on workbenches lining the walls. Welding equipment sat cold. Empty ration packs littered a corner near a sleeping bag. The owner wasn't here right now, but they hadn't been gone long.

"Whoa," Leo breathed, echoing my own thoughts. "What is that thing?"

"That," I said, stepping fully into the bay, flashlight beam sweeping over the impossible machine, "is Option C."

Suddenly, a sharp click echoed from the entrance of the parking garage ramp, far above us. Followed by the distinct sound of something heavy scraping against concrete.

Leo spun around, golf club raised uselessly. "What was that?"

My blood ran cold. That wasn't a random noise. That sounded deliberate. Controlled. Like someone closing a very large, very heavy door.

Or blocking the only way out.

We weren't just visitors anymore. We might have just walked into a cage. And the owner, or something else, might be coming home.

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