Nova-Veridia's sky was trembling like a shattered television screen.
The collapse of the Syndicate Tower was not merely physical destruction; it had disrupted the city's frequency. That colossal monument to hubris, one hundred and fifty stories tall, had knelt before gravity and Jester's theory of chaos. All that remained now was the dense, acrid concrete dust and the smell of expanded metal that covered Chronos Square. What rained from the sky was no longer just rain; cooling fluids leaking from the building's veins and burnt insulation materials poured down onto the city as an acidic sludge.
Kaelen came to with a cough that tore at his lungs. His left shoulder was dislocated, and with every breath, a sharp knife twisted in his ribs. His vision was blurry; dust clouds danced like ghosts in the faint light of the streetlamps.
"Jester..." he rasped. His voice sounded muffled even to his own ears.
A few meters away, a splash of color lay on a pile of gray rubble. Jester's purple suit was in tatters. The fabric that once defiantly shone against the city's grayness was now covered in blood and oil. Kaelen gritted his teeth against the pain and crawled towards him.
The Clown was in a bad way. A very bad way.
The metal prosthesis on his left leg was bent like the hood of a car involved in a traffic accident. The mini-reactor in his chest emitted a flickering, arrhythmic light, like a dying firefly. That gray fluid, a mixture of nanobots and biological tissue, seeped from the corners of his lips.
Kaelen grabbed Jester with his good arm and began to drag him behind a more sheltered concrete block.
"Hang on, you damn clown," Kaelen said, his voice trembling. "I called Nena. The signal's intermittent, but they'll find a way to get here. Don't... Don't you dare close your eyes."
Jester opened his eyes. His pupils couldn't focus; his irises spun like a radio dial searching for a broken channel. His bloody lips tried to mimic that familiar crooked smile.
"Father..." Jester whispered. His voice was like a crackling audio recording on a magnetic tape. "He... he invited me to dinner, Detective. But do you see? He ran off without paying the bill. A typical Syndicate move."
A coughing fit cut his sentence short. Metallic creaks and gurgling sounds came from his chest.
"Don't talk," Kaelen said, resting Jester's head on his knee. "Conserve your energy."
"Energy?" Jester chuckled, but there was no joy in his voice. Only a mournful static. "My battery's dying, Kaelen. My pixels are fading."
Just then, at the center of the dust cloud, a ripple violating the laws of physics occurred.
> *"The past is never dead; it's not even past. It is merely a nightmare whose frequency has not yet been tuned."*
>
> *— Dr. Aris Thorne, 'Static Resonance Theory', Page 404*
The air suddenly grew cold. But this was not the natural chill brought by winter. This was the absolute zero point where time stood still, where molecules ceased to vibrate. Concrete blocks atop the rubble pile began to levitate, defying gravity. It was as if an invisible hand was rewinding the destruction.
A column of purple energy erupted from the heart of the wreckage, shooting into the sky. What emerged from that light was no longer Julian Vane.
**The Emissary** had been reborn.
The machine's explosion had fused his flesh and technology in a horrific symbiosis. Reaching three meters in height, molten metal beams had welded to his bones, data cables replacing his veins. Where his face should have been, there was a constantly collapsing, swirling void. Not a man, but a walking pile of "Glitch".
**"THIS... ISN'T OVER..."**
His voice did not come from a single throat. It was cacophonous and piercing, like thousands of different radio channels broadcasting simultaneously.
**"IF I CANNOT REWIND TIME..."** The Emissary extended his claw of metal and flesh towards them. **"I WILL CONSUME TIME!"**
The purple wave emanating from the Emissary's palm struck everything in its path. Dust motes suspended in the air froze. Syndicate soldiers trying to escape began to move in slow motion where they stood, their voices deepening into an unintelligible hum.
"He's sucking up time!" a voice roared.
Titan burst through the smoke in his colossal armor. He raised the shield made of scrap metal in his hand, sheltering Kaelen and Jester.
"I won't let you!" the giant man shouted.
But when the entropy wave emanating from the Emissary struck Titan, the metal screamed. Titan's unyielding, gleaming armor dulled in seconds. Rust spots spread across the metal like a cancer. The armor's joints corroded, screws turned to dust and fell away. Titan fell to his knees. Not only his armor but he himself was aging. Those powerful shoulders slumped, his breath became a wheeze. He was losing decades in seconds.
"Fall back!" Kaelen shouted, grabbing Titan's arm and trying to pull him. But Titan had grown heavy, like a statue.
Jester watched this apocalyptic scene with hazy eyes. His father had become a black hole devouring the world. His mother's sacrifice, his friends' resistance... All of it was being erased under this purple light.
"Enough," Jester said. His voice was barely a whisper, yet strangely, it was heard clearly amidst the noise.
He pushed himself up onto his crooked leg, rising with a painful groan.
"Kaelen," he said, without taking his eyes off the Emissary. "Give me that 'Glitch Stabilizer'."
Kaelen looked at him in astonishment. "Nena's? It's already on your wrist, you fool!"
"No," Jester said. With his good hand, he ripped the device from his wrist and tossed it aside like trash. The device sparked as it hit the ground. "Not that. Give me your weapon's power cell. That old-type, ionized battery."
"What are you going to do?" Kaelen hesitated, drawing his weapon from its holster.
Jester turned to Kaelen. The paint on his face had run, revealing the pale, scarred skin beneath. But in his eyes, there was that old, dangerous glint.
"I won't use the stabilizer, but the *accelerator*," he said. "I'm going to overload myself, Detective. Overclock."
"You'll die, Jester! This isn't just dying... You'll be erased! Completely wiped from the database!"
Jester snatched the power cell from Kaelen's hand.
"I was never meant to exist, Detective," he said, as he forcefully pushed the battery into the reactor slot in his chest. "This story's code was written this way. I am a glitch."
*BOOM!*
The moment the power cell clicked into place, a shockwave emanated from Jester's body. A blue flame began to course through his veins. His eyes turned an iris-less, blinding white. Gravity lost its hold on him. His feet lifted from the ground.
The Emissary turned his attention to him. The void on his face began to spin faster.
**"YOU... LITTLE... GLITCH..."** The Emissary's voice was filled with static noise. **"PERISH."**
As Jester rose into the air, the reality around him corrupted pixel by pixel.
**"I am not a glitch,"** Jester said. His voice was no longer human; it was digital, multi-layered, and echoed with a divine tone. **"I am the update package."**
And Jester flew at the Emissary like a bullet.
This was not flesh colliding with metal. This was two different realities, two different timelines, crashing head-on. Jester embraced his father's monstrous form. Blue and purple energy intertwined.
Jester unleashed a paradox too great for the system to handle.
**GLITCH: SYSTEM RESET.**
The square was rocked by a silent explosion. There was no sound. No color. Only a blinding, pure, clean whiteness swallowed the world. Nova-Veridia's grime, rust, sins, and that endless rain, melted away within this whiteness.
Kaelen closed his eyes, shielded himself against Titan's rusted body, and thought his end had come. This whiteness, he thought, must be the color of death.
Then, the light receded.
It was as if someone had pulled the plug on a television.
The square was plunged into a deadly silence. Even the howl of the wind had ceased.
The Emissary was gone. That colossal tower of flesh and cable had been erased as if it had never existed.
Kaelen parted his dusty eyelashes. The flow of time had returned to normal; dust motes in the air slowly settled. Titan, lying beside him, was breathing, but his hair had turned stark white, and his face was etched with deep wrinkles. He was alive, but he had paid the price.
Kaelen stumbled to his feet and ran to where Jester lay, to the center of that burnt crater.
"Jester!"
There, in the middle of the melted asphalt, lay the Clown.
He was motionless. The reactor in his chest was completely blackened, turned into a hollow mass of metal. His colorful, chaotic clothes had turned gray. The paint on his face was entirely gone, leaving behind only the face of a peaceful, young man.
Kaelen fell to his knees. With trembling fingers, he searched for a pulse in his neck.
There was none. He was cold. So very cold.
"No..." Kaelen said, grabbing Jester by the shoulders and shaking him. His voice cracked. "No, you can't do this! Get up! Play a stupid trick on me! Pull a rabbit out of your pocket, squirt water in my face! Come on!"
There was no answer.
In the depths of his mind, Echo's voice echoed. The telepathic link was weak and mournful: *"His mind... his mind is empty, Kaelen. The data stream has ceased. He... he's gone."*
Rebels and survivors began to gather around the crater. No one spoke. Nova-Veridia's famous noise had given way to a respectful silence.
Kaelen embraced Jester's lifeless body. Everything he had held inside for years, hidden beneath that tough detective's shell, overflowed like a broken dam. Tears dripped onto Jester's grayed jacket.
But just then...
A faint, metallic sound was heard.
*Click.*
Kaelen lifted his head. The sound wasn't coming from Jester's chest. It was coming from inside his jacket pocket.
Kaelen wiped his tear-filled eyes and reached into Jester's pocket. And his fingers brushed against cold metal.
He pulled out that old, rusty **spoon**.
The spoon was trembling. Not from the wind, but as if from an energy within itself, vibrating with a magnetic resonance.
And then, something happened that made Kaelen hold his breath.
Jester's little finger twitched.
Just once. A small, involuntary contraction. But it was there. Like a signal within the static.
"Nena!" Kaelen shouted, his voice bursting with a mixture of hope and fear. "Get over here! Now! Bring the damn medkit!"
When Kaelen lifted his head, he couldn't believe his eyes.
On the horizon, behind the jagged, smoky silhouette of the skyscrapers, a light was rising. But it wasn't neon. It wasn't the light of a police helicopter.
The clouds had torn open. That eternally gray sky had parted as if it were a curtain. And through the clouds, something legendary, something Nova-Veridia hadn't seen in years, was seeping through.
Real, warm, yellow sunlight.
The first ray of light struck the wreckage, hitting the spoon in Jester's trembling hand.
The city was saved. The nightmare was over. But the price of awakening was heavy, and the new day had only just begun.