The elevator doors slid open with a heavy hiss, as if opening a morgue's cold storage unit. But from inside, out, not the expected sterile air or the smell of burnt circuits, an unsettlingly familiar scent wafted: Fresh floor polish and cheap lavender air freshener.
Jester and Kaelen waited, weapons raised, barrels locked onto unseen targets. But at the end of their barrels stood St. Jude Orphanage, as it was in 1989. That metallic behemoth reaching into Nova-Veridia's sky, the 150th floor of the Syndicate Tower, was gone. In its place was the darkest corridor of Jester's childhood. With one difference; the damp, crumbling ruin from Sector 9 was gone, replaced by a pristine, terrifyingly perfect replica.
"This is impossible," Kaelen said, his voice catching in his throat. He resisted lowering his weapon, but his logic rejected what he saw. He touched the wall with his left hand. His fingertips glided over the smooth paint. "This paint... it's not wet, but it's real. This texture... It's not a hologram."
"No, Detective," Jester said. He stomped his metal leg hard on the parquet floor. A dull, wooden thud echoed. This sound belonged not to the building's reinforced concrete skeleton, but to the underside of a theater stage. "This is an aquarium. And we're the stupid goldfish behind the glass."
Jester began to move down the corridor. The beige wallpaper on the walls, with its tiny floral patterns, made his stomach churn. As a child, he would try not to go insane by counting every single flower in that pattern. Now, those flowers seemed to be watching him. The mini-reactor in his chest sputtered with an irregular rhythm. *Thump-clunk. Thump-clunk.* This wasn't just an arrhythmia; it was the clash of the place's memory with his own corrupted code.
At the end of the corridor, the door to the infamous "Director's Office" was ajar. Yellow light seeping from within illuminated dust motes.
"Are you ready?" Jester asked, his voice unusually serious. His jocular tone had given way to a metallic coldness.
Kaelen nodded. "I'm right behind you, freak."
As they approached the door, a mechanical chime rose from within. A music box. The melody playing was a broken *Brahms' Lullaby*. Every third note, a gear would catch, and the melody would be slightly out of tune.
Jester didn't kick the door. Not because he lacked the strength, but because he didn't want to break the spell of the scene. He slowly lowered the doorknob. The creak echoed like a scream in the silence.
Inside, it was furnished not like a crime lord's office, but like the dining room of a 1950s suburban home. A long mahogany table was placed in the center of the room. On the table sat silver candelabras, a cooled bowl of soup, and a half-empty bottle of red wine.
At the head of the table sat the Emissary.
His infamous, featureless chrome mask was gone. His face was like a map of years and probably countless radiation burns. His skin was taut and mottled like parchment. But his eyes... Those hazel eyes were the exact same ones Jester saw in the mirror every morning.
And at the other end of the table, a silhouette was confined to a wheelchair. Countless IV tubes were embedded in the woman's frail arms like a spiderweb. She couldn't hold her head up, but her presence weighed heavily on the air in the room.
**Elena Richert.**
"Welcome, my son," said the Emissary. His voice, stripped of the digital timbre from the elevator speaker, was that of a weary human. He raised his wine glass. The red liquid swirled within the glass like blood. "And welcome, Detective. You're late, the soup has gone cold. But delays happen at family dinners."
Jester aimed his modified plasma rifle at the Emissary's forehead. His knuckles were white. "Who are you?"
The Emissary smiled. It wasn't a warm smile, but the satisfaction of a surgeon holding a scalpel. "I am your architect. I am your teacher. And if we're going to be biologically reductionist... I am your father."
Kaelen's barrel trembled. He turned to Jester in astonishment. "Your father?"
"He's lying!" Jester shouted. His voice cracked. "I don't have a father! I'm laboratory waste! I'm an experiment!"
"Yes, you are an experiment," the Emissary said calmly. He stood up. His movements were graceful yet mechanical. "Dr. Julian Vane. A pleasure. Every experiment has a donor, Jester. Your DNA chain is a fusion of my genius and Elena's... unique resilience, with 'Chronos Particles'. You are our masterpiece. You are the Static Age's first and only hybrid."
The woman in the wheelchair groaned softly. She struggled to lift her head. Her eyes, like looking through foggy glass, focused on Jester. Her lips trembled, forming a silent word: *"Run..."*
Jester couldn't bear his mother's dilapidated state. His logic disengaged. Without lowering his weapon, he took a step towards her. "Mother?"
The Emissary touched a small remote control on the table.
*VZZZT.*
Around Elena's chair, a transparent energy shield made of hexagonal cells appeared. Jester was thrown back as if he had hit an invisible wall. The stitches in his shoulder throbbed.
"You cannot touch her," said the Emissary, his voice now more authoritative. "She is not just your mother. She is the system's processor. Her mind has been integrated into the room behind, into the Chronos Machine. As long as she sleeps, Nova-Veridia breathes. If she wakes... the city drowns."
The Emissary sharply pulled back the velvet curtain behind him.
Behind the glass partition stood a colossal mass of metal, defying the building's architecture. Copper pipes, rotating magnetic rings, and at its center, a sphere of pure white light glowing like a beating heart. **The Chronos Machine.** Far more complex, far more deadly than the primitive prototypes in the Data Mines.
XXXQUOTEXXX "The past is not a corpse we bury under concrete; it is a gas that seeps through the cracks of that concrete and poisons us."
The Emissary stood before the glass, looking at his reflection as he began to speak. The atmosphere of the room had changed; the nostalgic warmth had given way to an icy fanaticism.
"Tonight," Julian Vane said, spreading his hands wide. "We will not just stop time. We will rewind time. To 1989. To those cursed 12 seconds when the Frequency Shift occurred. We will correct that moment. The Static will never have existed. Anomalies, monsters, this endless rain... All will be erased."
Jester's eyes narrowed. "What about the others? Kaelen? Titan fighting below? Echo? Billions of people?"
"They are merely data loss," said the Emissary, as if speaking of formatting a corrupted disk. "A small, insignificant price to pay for a perfect world. I, Elena, and you... we will be a happy family in that new world. You will have a normal life, my son. You won't need the clown mask."
The Emissary extended his hand to Jester. His palm was calloused. "Join me, Jester. Take off that wretched costume. Be your father's son. Don't you want to save your mother?"
The silence in the room grew heavy. Kaelen watched Jester, holding his breath. This was an attack more dangerous than a bullet from a gun. It attacked Jester's weakest point, the sense of 'belonging' he had never possessed.
Jester slowly lowered his weapon. He bowed his head. His shoulders slumped.
"Jester, don't!" Kaelen shouted. "He's manipulating you!"
Jester walked towards the Emissary as if he hadn't heard Kaelen. He circled the table and stood before his father.
"You're right, father," Jester said, his voice a whisper. "This world is too noisy. Too painful. And I... I am so tired."
A twisted smile, brought on by the victory he had awaited for years, appeared on the Emissary's face. "Well done, my son. Welcome home."
Jester took the Emissary's outstretched hand.
In that millisecond when skin touched skin, time froze.
Jester raised his head. His hazel eyes were gone. In place of his pupils, the deadly, glowing **BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH** of Windows 95 flickered. On his lips, the wildest grin beneath his clown makeup appeared.
"But you forgot one thing, old man," Jester said. His voice was no longer human; it was like thousands of broken radio channels speaking at once, crackling and multi-layered. "I am not my father's son. I am my mother's 'Glitch'."
**GLITCH: SYSTEM CRASH.**
From the hand he held, Jester injected pure chaos into the Emissary's nervous system. This wasn't a biological virus; this was the raw form of the madness, the white noise, that had accumulated in Jester's mind for years.
The Emissary's eyes rolled back. He began to scream, foaming at the mouth, but no sound came out. His body stiffened. Jester had entered his father's mind like a Trojan Horse, burning his neurons.
"Kaelen!" Jester roared, emitting blue lights. "Blow up the machine! Target my mother's chair! Hit the cooling tanks!"
Kaelen froze. His weapon was aimed at Elena, but his finger wouldn't go to the trigger. "What? Are you crazy? Your mother will die!"
"She's already dead, Kaelen! She died years ago! They just didn't pull the plug! Do it!"
A grey liquid – a mixture of cerebrospinal fluid and melted nanobots – began to flow from Jester's nose. The Emissary resisted. Julian Vane's mind was strong, pushing Jester back.
With a superhuman effort, the Emissary swung his arm and kicked Jester away from his chest. Jester crashed onto the dining table; plates and glasses scattered to the floor with a loud clatter.
"You ungrateful dog!" the Emissary roared. He staggered and drew the energy pistol from his belt.
Kaelen made his decision that second. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
*BAM! BAM! BAM!*
The bullets struck not Elena's chair, but the liquid nitrogen tanks of the Chronos Machine directly behind it.
The tanks hissed and exploded. A dense, white fog instantly filled the room. The freezing cold cracked the glass. The machine began to flash with a deadly red light.
**WARNING: CORE MELTDOWN. EVACUATION PROTOCOL DISABLED.**
The moment the system's power was cut, the protective shield around Elena flickered and died. The old woman gently raised her head amidst the chaos. Her eyes found her son lying on the floor. For the first time in years, a peaceful expression settled on her face. She took one last breath, her lungs tasting freedom, and closed her eyes forever.
"NO!" cried the Emissary. His voice was the lament of the last king of a fallen empire. He ran towards the machine, trying to stop the leaking gas with his hands. "You've ruined everything! Years of work!"
The building began to shake. Not just this floor, but the colossal 150-story tower trembled as if its spine had been broken. Plaster fell from the ceilings, the "Perfect Home" decor shattering to reveal the cold steel beneath.
Jester straightened up in pain. Kaelen ran and grabbed him by the arm. "We're going! Now!"
"But your father... the Emissary?"
Jester took one last look at the man, engulfed in flames, clinging to his machine amidst the smoke, awaiting oblivion. "He chose his own hell, Detective. He'll be buried with the machine."
They ran to the office's massive panoramic window. Outside, Nova-Veridia's eternal storm battered the glass. Below, miles down, the fires lit by Titan and the resistance fighters looked like tiny sparks in the darkness.
Jester pulled out the steel rope he had stolen from the elevator shaft from his waist. He quickly tied one end to one of the building's main support columns. He wrapped the other end around himself and Kaelen's waist.
"Hold tight, Detective," Jester said, wiping blood from his face. His eyes had regained their old, mischievous glint. "This descent is going to be a bit rough. We don't have elevator music, so you'll have to make do."
Before Kaelen could answer, Jester launched himself and him into the void.
The glass shattered with a loud crash.
They plunged from the 150th floor into Nova-Veridia's wet, grey, and merciless void. Behind them, the Syndicate's "Perfect World" dream collapsed, spewing fireballs; they fell towards gravity, rain, and an uncertain future. The wind howled in their ears, but this time there was no Static in that howl. Only the wild sound of freedom.