The neon green mist moved not just like a mass of gas, but like a living organism. The moment Jester stepped into the tank, his connection to the rest of the world was severed. Nova-Veridia's familiar, gloomy rain had given way to the suffocating silence of a chemical furnace. The acidic air, attempting to seep through the microscopic cracks in his armor, created the sensation of thousands of needles piercing his skin.
His vision was blurry. Data streaming across his helmet's visor changed rapidly, like a panicked heartbeat.
**[WARNING: ARMOR INTEGRITY 60%... FILTER CAPACITY 45%...]**
**[CRITICAL ERROR: EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE TOLERANCE EXCEEDED.]**
"Shut up," Jester growled, startled by the metallic echo of his own breath inside the helmet.
Every step weighed a ton. The gas exerted physical resistance, pushing him back, seeking an opportunity to fill his lungs. Ahead, in the heart of the dense mist, he saw that damned thing: a colossal, rust-red manual valve. A crude and primitive mechanism, a relic from the old industrial era.
Jester, gathering his last strength, reached the valve. He clasped his gloved hands onto the cold metal.
"Alright, you rusty old man," he said, gritting his teeth. "Let's dance."
He hung on, putting his full body weight into it. But the wheel didn't budge an inch, as if welded to the tank's hull. His muscles trembled, mechanical groans rising from the joints of his armor.
"Stuck," he panted. Despair grew in his stomach like a cold knot.
Just then, the HUD screen inside his helmet crackled. First Nena's, then Kaelen's anxious voices were cut off by a wave of static. The display went dark. A pitch-black void. And from within that darkness, a voice was heard, not in his ears, but seeping directly into the folds of his brain. Mechanical, cold, and judgmental.
**"DON'T STRUGGLE, SON. THERE'S NO WAY OUT."**
The green mist suddenly dispersed. The acidic burning sensation vanished. Jester blinked.
He was no longer inside the tank.
He stood in the middle of an infinite, sterile white expanse. There was no ground, no sky. Just a smooth, dazzling nothingness. But he wasn't alone.
Facing him stood *him*. The figure he had chased, feared, and hated for years. But this wasn't the monster, that heap of flesh and metal, he had just fought. His white lab coat was ironed to a crisp, his hair slicked back, and on his face was that familiar, paternal yet unsettling smile.
Dr. Julian Vane. Or, as he was also known: The Emissary.
"This is my kingdom, Jester," Vane said, spreading his arms wide. His voice resonated directly in Jester's consciousness, without echoing in the void. "Your body is currently melting in that tank from acid and heat. But your mind... your mind is here, safe. With me."
Jester clenched his fists. His purple suit shone like a stain in this whiteness. "Get out of my head!" he yelled. "You're just corrupted data!"
Vane tilted his head slightly, as if looking at a naughty child. "Why should I leave? Outside is full of pain. But here..." He waved his hand with an elegant gesture. "Here is much more beautiful. Look."
The white void shimmered like static on a television screen, and the image changed.
Jester gasped.
He found himself in a sunny park. The smell of the grass was so real it made his head spin. On a bench ahead, a woman with hair shining like gold under the sunlight was reading a book. Elena. His mother. On her face was that peaceful expression Jester had forgotten for years. Right next to the bench, a small child—Jester's childhood self—was playing with a plastic ball.
And a man entered the scene. A young Julian Vane, walking towards them with three ice cream cones in his hand.
"This could have been real," Vane's voice said, blending with the whisper of the wind. "If you don't turn that valve, the gas will put the city to sleep. A painless death. And everyone... everyone will see this dream in their final moments. The Static Age will end. People will be happy forever."
Jester looked at his mother. He could touch her if he reached out. She was so warm, so inviting... All he had to do was let go. Let go of the struggle, the pain, that endless noise.
"Lie," Jester said, his voice trembling. He didn't take his eyes off that perfect tableau, but his gaze hardened. "Happiness isn't the absence of pain, doctor. Happiness is being able to eat that ice cream despite the pain, and laugh at how terrible it tastes."
The smile on Vane's face froze. The park scene began to flicker like a corrupted VHS tape, its colors bleeding. The sky turned purple.
"A philosophical error!" Vane roared.
The human form shattered. Pixels flew through the air, and Vane transformed into a colossal, digital serpent. Its body was composed of thousands of lines of code. Jester tried to flee, but in this virtual world, gravity was at Vane's command. The serpent coiled around Jester in seconds. Its digital scales began to crush Jester's mental avatar. He felt not his bones, but the codes that formed his existence, cracking.
**IN THE REAL WORLD:**
The scene inside the tank was horrifying. Jester's body had gone rigid. The outer layer of his armor had melted, the circuits and skin beneath beginning to burn, emitting black smoke.
Kaelen pounded his fists against the thick glass. "Jester! Come on, damn it! Turn that valve!"
**IN THE DIGITAL WORLD:**
Jester couldn't breathe. His consciousness was dimming like an old monitor about to shut down. The serpent's pressure was unbearable.
"Surrender," hissed Serpent Vane. Its voice was a combination of thousands of different frequencies. "You are merely a systemic 'Error'. A Glitch. You need to be corrected."
Jester's eyes closed. Darkness called to him. *Perhaps he's right,* he thought. *Perhaps I just need to be erased.*
But in that absolute silence, from far away, from the dustiest shelves of his memory, he heard a sound.
A whistle.
Kaelen's quiet, mocking, defiant whistle. Then Echo's laughter. Titan's heavy footsteps.
> *"I'm not just an error... I'm a virus."
— The Nameless Jester—
When Jester opened his eyes, his irises were neither blue nor green. His eyes burned with the color of pure chaos, a **purple** flame.
The rules of the virtual world trembled before this new variable.
**[GLITCH DETECTED: SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES ACTIVE.]**
Jester gripped the scales of the digital serpent constricting his throat with his bare hands. The purple energy radiating from his fingertips began to corrupt the serpent's pristine code.
"You might own the system, father," Jester said, his voice no longer his own; it was like a chorus formed by thousands of corrupted radio frequencies. "But I'm the hacker."
The purple corruption spreading from where he touched advanced like a cancer through the serpent's body. Vane's pixels began to shed, 1s and 0s merging into each other.
"NO! STOP!" Vane screamed. His voice was filled with fear. In the world where he was God, he had met the devil.
"Formatting," Jester said, and snapped his fingers.
Vane's digital body exploded, shattering into millions of fragments of light. The white void cracked like glass and collapsed.
***
**THE REAL WORLD**
Jester, inside the gas tank, regained consciousness with a breath that seared his lungs.
The red counter flashing inside his helmet screamed how close death was.
**COUNTDOWN: 00:00:10...**
Every fiber of his body burned. His armor was breached, his skin seared by acid. But his mind was clearer than ever. Pain was now the fuel that kept him alive.
He clasped his hands onto that red valve again. His metal leg scraped against the tank's floor, groaning. He could hear the sound of tearing muscle fibers.
"Turn!" Jester roared, his voice hoarse and savage. "Turn, you damned thing!"
**00:00:03...**
The adrenaline in his veins and the Static in his veins exploded simultaneously.
*SCREEEEECH!*
The metal, unmoving for years, bowed to his will. The valve groaned and turned half a rotation.
*HISSSSSSS!*
The pressure inside the tank suddenly dropped. The green gas was drawn from the pipes leading to the city and redirected to emergency exhaust vents. It mingled with the sky as a harmless cloud of vapor.
**[DANGER PASSED. SYSTEM STABLE.]**
Jester collapsed at the base of the valve. His helmet was fogged up. "Party's over," he whispered. His voice was so faint he could barely hear it himself.
The sound of the airlock blasting open was heard.
Kaelen, gas mask on his face, crowbar in hand, burst in. He slung Jester over his shoulder like a sack and dragged him out of that hell.
When he laid him on the cool floor of the corridor, Jester was motionless. His armor had turned into melted plastic, fused to his skin. Titan and Echo rushed into the room. Titan's colossal shadow fell over them.
"Nena," Kaelen said into the comms, his voice trembling. He pressed his fingers to Jester's neck. "Critical condition. Pulse very weak. We need immediate extraction!"
Jester's eyes fluttered open. The purple glow had faded, replaced by a tired, human gaze. He tried to focus on Kaelen.
"Detective..." he said with difficulty. Each word seemed to tear a piece from his lungs.
"Don't talk, you idiot. Save your energy." Kaelen's hands trembled as he tried to remove Jester's helmet.
"Detective... The Emissary... was in my head. I deleted him. But..."
Jester coughed. Blood seeped from his mouth, trickling down his chin.
"...but as he left, he showed me something. A file."
Kaelen paused. "What file?"
Jester tried to raise his trembling hand but couldn't. "A coordinate. Outside the city. 'Zero Zone'. The real machine is there, Kaelen. This was just... just a remote control."
His eyes glazed over. His consciousness closed, sinking like into dark water.
Kaelen slammed his fist on the ground. A dull thud echoed on the metal floor. "It's not over. This damned thing never ends."
Titan cradled Jester's unconscious body. The massive man was surprised by the lightness of the burden in his arms. Inside a clown costume, there was a broken man carrying the world on his shoulders.
"We'll keep him alive," Titan said, his voice hard as rock. "And then we'll bring that Zero Zone crashing down on them."
As dawn broke, the first lights seeping through Nova-Veridia's grey skyscrapers illuminated the team leaving the facility with their gravely wounded hero. The city was saved; people hadn't died in their sleep.
But the war... the war was just beginning.