Ash still fell like snow.
But it wasn't the soft gray he'd grown used to. Here, it glittered like static shifting in midair, twitching as though rejecting the laws of gravity. Jaden lay on his side in a shattered, frozen field of broken code and concrete. Everything hummed with a low, constant buzz like a radio stuck between stations.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Pain roared back into his limbs like a late notification. His ribs were bruised, his legs scraped, and his hand was still clenched around the crowbar thankfully. He wasn't dead. Just displaced. Again.
"System interference…?" he whispered.
Nothing answered him. Not Silas. Not the system. Not even that weird tutorial voice that used to say "Inventory Full" every time he picked up a brick out of panic.
Jaden rolled onto his back and exhaled, watching the sky twitch above him. It was like someone had stretched reality into a JPEG and corrupted it. Black lines jittered through the clouds. Glitches spiraled out like veins.
He sat up slowly, cradling his side. "Great. Another zone. Another glitch. Another chance to die alone."
---
SYSTEM: SPONSOR DISCONNECTED.
The words flickered above his HUD. Red. Stark. Final.
He stared at them.
"...Of course he's gone. I fall one time and the drama queen rage-quits Heaven's VPN?"
Jaden stood, shaky. Dust rolled off him in slow motion, defying gravity. The ground beneath his feet crunched, but didn't echo. No birds. No wind. No sign of life, just a distant, mechanical moan like the world itself was in pain.
He took one step forward and paused.
There was a flickering corpse five feet away. Humanoid. Tall. Wrapped in ruined robes and circuit threaded armor. Its chest cavity was open like a dismantled machine. Inside it, something pulsed faintly like an organ, like a glitch.
Like it was still alive.
Jaden's body froze, instincts screaming.
But then… it spoke.
A voice, digitized and broken, spilled from the corpse like a skipped track:
"Va…riable…detected. Stabilizer... anomaly... connected… to Sponsor-class… error..."
Jaden stumbled back, raising the crowbar. "I didn't touch it!"
The corpse's chest emitted a brief shockwave then collapsed into nothing but ash and glass.
---
He didn't relax.
He didn't know how to anymore.
---
The world around him was broken in a new way. Buildings floated mid-air. Street signs looped the same two letters over and over. The air smelled like burning electricity.
There were no monsters. Not yet. Just glitching shadows that didn't move unless you looked away.
Jaden pushed forward. He needed shelter, something stable. Maybe a checkpoint. A signal. A whisper from Silas. Anything.
He didn't expect the flicker in the air ten meters ahead a warped streetlight blinking red-green-red-green over a shattered diner. A sign hovered glitchy above it:
LOADING SAFE ZONE... [ERROR]
Jaden stepped inside anyway.
---
The diner was half rendered. Tables floated. Plates jittered. The jukebox was playing a corrupted version of "Stayin' Alive," which would've been funny if he hadn't felt like dying.
He sat at the least unstable booth and laid his head back against the cracked vinyl seat. Let out a long, shaking breath.
"You're doing great," he muttered to himself. "So good. Five stars. No thoughts, just survival. Maybe hallucinations later."
He pulled out the only thing left in his pocket a small, bent photo. A snapshot Rowan took weeks ago, back when they found clean water and Kael tried to bathe in it "for morale." Aya had been laughing. Niko had made the cat wear sunglasses.
Silas had been in the corner. Not smiling. But looking at Jaden.
Like he was proud.
Jaden exhaled sharply. His throat closed up.
"Stupid angel. You better not be glitching out again."
---
Somewhere far behind him, in the shadow of the broken diner sign, a presence blinked into existence watching.
Its voice was soft. Glitched. Familiar.
"Stabilizer located… processing anomaly…"
---
End of Chapter 11
Author's note:
Jaden in his lonely era.