The legend of Zero was fun, and the Oracle business was paying the bills, but Alex was a realist. He knew that his first outing had been successful because he'd been lucky.
He had faced slow, predictable creatures in an environment with plenty of shadows to hide in. The steel pipe had worked because his targets were basically walking weak spots.
What would happen if he faced a faster opponent? Or an enemy with a ranged attack? His current strategy of "walk up and poke it" had some serious limitations.
He needed better mobility. He needed a way to close the distance between him and a target instantly. He needed a way to disappear not just into the shadows, but into thin air. He needed an upgrade.
With his Oracle earnings steadily climbing, Alex once again dove into the digital chaos of The Node.
He bypassed the usual markets for students and went deeper, into the junkyards and scrap heaps of the digital world.
He wasn't looking for a finished, polished product. He was looking for powerful, broken things. Things that other people saw as trash.
He found what he was looking for in a dusty corner of the marketplace run by a seller named ScrapHeapDreams. The item was listed with a blurry photo and a description that was practically a warning label.
FOR SALE: [Phase-Shift Drive] - PULLED FROM A SCRAPPED MILITARY STEALTH DRONE. CONDITION: UNSTABLE. Drains power like you wouldn't believe. Tends to teleport you into a wall if you look at it funny. Might also just explode. Sold AS-IS for scrap parts. NO REFUNDS, NO CRYING. 1200 Credits.
To any sane person, this was a 1200-credit paperweight that might kill you. To Alex, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"Unstable" just meant the software was buggy. "Drains power" was just an efficiency problem. These were exactly the kinds of problems he was born to solve. He bought it immediately.
The delivery was even stranger this time. The instructions led him to the academy's laundry facility at two in the morning.
Taped to the inside of a specific washing machine drum was a small, heavily padded envelope. Alex reached in, his hand brushing against someone's forgotten sock, and pulled out his prize.
Back in the safety of his closet workshop, with his one-armed golem, Scrappy, standing silently in the corner like a very patient coat rack, Alex opened the package.
The [Phase-Shift Drive] was not impressive. It was a dull, metal disc, about the size of a hockey puck, covered in scratches. A few wires stuck out of it at sad angles.
It looked less like a piece of advanced military hardware and more like something you'd find at the bottom of a lake.
He placed the sad little disc on his workbench and activated [The Debugger].
The sight was both horrifying and magnificent. The drive's code was a complete and utter mess. It was a tangled nightmare of conflicting commands and broken subroutines.
The power regulation code, in particular, was a disaster. Alex visualized it as a giant fire hose blasting an endless torrent of energy into a tiny teacup.
Of course it was unstable. The teacup would overflow and explode every time. The original designers had created a powerful engine but had completely failed to build any brakes.
"Okay," Alex said to Scrappy, who didn't respond. "This is going to be a fun week."
And it was. Every night, after his shift of cleaning and fixing, Alex would retreat to his closet, put on his Zero mask (it helped him focus), and get to work.
His first attempt was a simple patch to try and limit the power flow. He uploaded the code, and the drive immediately drew so much power from his workbench that the lights in his closet flickered and a nearby box of fuses blew with a sad pop.
"Note to self," he muttered in the dark. "Bigger fuses."
His next idea was more complex. The drive's own internal logic was too fried to fix directly. He couldn't repair the teacup. So, he would build a dam. He decided to use his [Stable Logic Processor] the brain of his operation as a go-between.
He would connect the Phase-Shift Drive to the Logic Core, and let the Core handle the insane power flow. The Logic Core, with its clean, stable programming, would act as a regulator, a smart valve that would take the fire hose of energy from the drive and release it in short, controlled bursts.
He spent hours writing the code, creating a perfect digital buffer. He designed it to store the excess energy and feed it to the drive only when needed.
He was essentially building a custom operating system for a device that most experts had declared dead and buried.
After nearly a week of work, countless lines of code, and one minor incident where he accidentally zapped himself and his hair stood on end for an hour, he was ready for a real test.
The drive was now wired into his Logic Core, which was connected to a portable power pack he'd built from old golem batteries. The whole setup was a mess of wires and clamps, but the code, in his vision, was beautiful. It was clean, stable, and elegant.
He stood up in the tiny closet. Scrappy was in one corner. A shelf full of cleaning supplies was in the other. He had about six feet of open space.
"Alright, Zero," he whispered to himself. "Let's see if this works. Destination: two feet to the left."
He focused his will, and through the Logic Core, sent a single, tiny pulse of energy and a simple command to the Phase-Shift Drive.
The world dissolved.
It wasn't like moving. It was like reality itself blinked. For a split second, everything he could see, the shelves, Scrappy, the concrete walls of his closet, deconstructed into a swirling blur of blue and white static.
There was a strange feeling of being pulled through a straw, and a faint sound like television static.
Then, just as quickly, the world reassembled itself.
He was now standing two feet to the left. He had stumbled slightly, his hand bumping against the shelf and knocking over a bottle of window cleaner with a clatter. His stomach felt like it had done a small flip. But he had done it. He had teleported.
He couldn't stop the giddy laugh that escaped from behind his blank mask. He tried again. "Three feet to the right."
Blink.
He was back where he started, this time managing to keep his balance. It was disorienting, but it worked flawlessly.
The power drain was minimal, a tiny sip from his battery pack instead of a massive gulp. The patch had worked. The dam was holding.
He now had a short-range teleportation ability.
He looked at his reflection in a small, cracked mirror he had propped up on the shelf. The blank, black mask stared back. He thought about the Aberrations, about a real fight.An enemy lunges. Blink.
Zero is no longer there. He's behind them. Tap. The fight is over. An enemy shoots a projectile. Blink. He's above them. Tap. The fight is over.
This changed everything. This elevated his "hit-and-run" tactics to a whole new level. He was no longer just a silent ghost who walked quietly. He was now a phantom who could step through reality itself.
His arsenal was growing. He had his brilliant mind, a versatile Logic Core, a loyal robot sidekick made of garbage, and now, the ability to be anywhere he wanted to be within the blink of an eye. The legend of Zero was about to get a lot more unbelievable.