The notifications lingered in Leo's vision, a stark verdict against the swirling chaos of his corrupted sight. A scheduled execution.
User-Class: CORRUPTED.Status: System T-Virus Detected. Quarantine Protocol Initiated.Time until full system purge: 72:00:00
Seventy-two hours. He was malware, a corrupted file flagged for deletion, and the system clock was ticking. The irony coated his tongue with a bitter, metallic taste. He had spent his life cleaning viruses off other people's machines. Now, he was one.
A groan from nearby pulled him from his internal error log. Sarah stirred, her face pale as bone, a dark, smeared line of blood under her nose. Elias, the doctor, was already at her side, his movements brisk and efficient.
"She's stable," he announced. "Severe cognitive strain. Same as him." He gestured with his head toward Leo. "Whatever you two did, it pushed you both to the absolute limit. She needs rest. Lots of it."
Chloe knelt beside Leo, her hand on his arm, her grip a small, grounding pressure in the chaotic aftermath. He could see the frantic script of her thoughts playing out in the subtle tension of her jaw, the way her eyes darted from his face to the grim notifications only he could see. Her [Read Intent] skill was probably screaming at her.
"Leo… what is it?" she whispered, her voice tight. "What's wrong?"
He didn't have to answer. A new voice, hard and cold as the concrete around them, cut through the air. "Report."
Valerie stood before them, a towering, intimidating silhouette against the harsh, yellow glare of the Junction's lights. Her face was a mask of grim, weary authority, but her eyes were sharp, analytical, missing nothing. She had seen the notifications reflected in his own wide, unfocused gaze.
"I've been… reclassified," Leo rasped, the words feeling alien in his own mouth. He pushed himself into a sitting position, muscles screaming in protest. The world tilted as corrupted code scrolled past his vision, and he braced himself with a hand on the grimy floor. "The System has flagged me as a… a threat. A virus. It initiated a purge protocol. I have seventy-two hours until…" He didn't need to finish.
The subsequent silence felt heavy, suffocating, broken only by the low, guttural roars of the Ogres outside the gate, a sound of frustrated, impotent fury.
"So you're a ticking time bomb," Valerie stated flatly. Not an accusation. A tactical assessment.
"The probability of a System-level purge event targeting the Junction as a result of his corrupted status is…" Arthur's voice trailed off, his face ashen. He didn't need to give the number.
"One hundred percent," Leo finished for him, a bitter, hollow laugh escaping his lips. "As long as I'm here, this place, all of you… you're collateral damage. The programs on a hard drive that's about to be wiped."
The weight of his words settled over the small group. He wasn't just a liability. He was a contagion. A walking apocalypse.
Maya, a silent, watchful presence until now, moved to stand beside Chloe. Her hand rested on the hilt of her knife, her gaze fixed not on Leo, but on Valerie. A silent, deadly promise. A firewall of flesh and steel.
Ben scrambled over, tablet in hand, his expression a mixture of horror and scientific curiosity. "A T-Virus…" he breathed, his eyes wide. "A classic quarantine protocol. A Trojan Virus. A self-deleting executable that corrupts associated files before it's purged. The System isn't just trying to delete you, Leo. It's trying to use you to delete us."
Great, Leo thought, the cynical helpdesk tech in his head making a final, grim appearance. Not just malware. I'm ransomware.
"So what's the solution?" Valerie demanded, her voice a low, dangerous growl. She looked from Leo's pale, sweat-slicked face to the determined, protective stances of his team. "Do we cut out the cancer before it spreads?"
"You're not touching him," Maya whispered, her hand now gripping the handle of her knife.
"This is not a debate," Valerie snapped back, her own hand dropping to the revolver strapped to her thigh.
The standoff fractured the fragile alliance, a spark away from a civil war in the middle of a siege.
"Stop." Leo's voice was a raw, commanding crack that surprised even him. He forced himself to his feet, his body trembling, his vision a shimmering, chaotic mess. But his voice was steady. An Administrator's voice. "She's right. This is a technical problem. It requires a technical solution."
He looked at Ben. "The quarantine. A firewall, right? It's locked me out of the main network. But I'm still running. In a sandbox."
"Theoretically, yes," Ben stammered, his eyes darting between Maya's knife and Valerie's gun.
"So find me an exploit," Leo commanded, his mind racing, the familiar, comforting logic of troubleshooting pushing back the pain and the fear. "Find me a back door. Find root access to my own damn code. We have a 72-hour maintenance window. Let's use it."
He was a problem. A ticket in the system. And he knew only one way to solve a problem like that.
You didn't run from the error. You dug in, opened the command line, and debugged the hell out of it.