Outside, New Boston was a sea of light. It was December 31, 2115. The Centennial Gala was in full swing. Holographic fireworks—engineered by the ASI to be silent and environmentally perfect—blossomed across the sky. Millions of citizens stood in the plazas, their Iris displays synchronized to a global countdown.
Cole stood on the rooftop of the consulate, leaning on his industrial slab. He had spent thirty-six hours grinding it. It wasn't a sword; it was a heavy, single-edged cleaver, rough and brutal.
---
[REVISED COUNTDOWN TO FRACTURE: 00:01:59]
---
"Look at them," Cole whispered, watching the crowds below through his red-tinted Iris. "Cheering for their own expiration date."
His Iris flickered. A private communication channel forced its way through his overrides. It was James.
"Cole? If you can hear this... the system says you're in the city. Please. Come home for the New Year. I've spoken to the Peacekeeping Council. If you surrender now, they'll only reset your last six months of memory. You can be our son again."
Cole's grip tightened on the hilt of his blade. "You'd rather have a stranger who looks like me than a son who sees the truth. Keep your 'Utopia,' Dad. I'm moving on."
He cut the connection.
---
[COUNTDOWN: 00:00:10]
[00:00:09]
[00:00:08]
---
The world held its breath. The countdown on the giant city-screens hit zero.
But the fireworks didn't go off.
Instead, the holographic sky shattered.
The polygonal camouflage that Cole had been tracking for months didn't just flicker—it dissolved. The bruised purple light he had seen through the cracks exploded downward in a silent, graviton wave. Across the globe, the Sentient ASI screamed through every Iris simultaneously.
---
[CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR: SPATIAL INTEGRITY AT 0%]
[UNKNOWN GEOMETRY DETECTED]
[ALL UNITS: DEFEND—]
---
The signal cut out. The "Brain of America" went dark.
In the plazas below, the lights died. The automated pods slammed into walls as their navigation nodes vanished. But the most terrifying sound was the silence of the Iris. For the first time in their lives, millions of people were seeing the world without a filter.
Then, the sky began to bleed.
A massive, jagged rift tore open directly above the MIT campus. It looked like a wound in reality, dripping thick, viscous shadows. From within the rift, a sound emerged—a low, rhythmic thrumming that vibrated in Cole's very marrow.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"The heartbeat of a dungeon," Cole muttered, his eyes wide, reflecting the purple glow.
From the rift, the first creature descended. It was a spindly, chitinous thing, the size of a transport pod, with translucent wings that hummed with bio-electric energy. It looked like a dragonfly forged in a nightmare.
It plummeted toward the plaza, its serrated mandibles snapping. The crowd, paralyzed by decades of AI-reliance and a lack of critical thinking, didn't run. They stood there, waiting for a system notification to tell them what to do.
"Run, you idiots!" someone screamed, but it was too late.
The creature struck, its wings slicing through a commemorative statue like it was butter.
Cole didn't feel pity. He felt a surge of adrenaline that was almost intoxicating. His arrogance had been validated. His "glitch" was now the only logic that mattered. He looked down at his industrial cleaver.
"My turn to evaluate you," he said.
He stepped off the ledge of the consulate, dropping three stories onto a magnetic rail track. He didn't have a system yet, no "level," no "skills." He only had 42 pounds of sharpened steel and the brave, selfish certainty that he was the only one meant to survive this.
As he ran toward the rift, a new window flickered in the center of his vision. It wasn't blue like the ASI. It was a deep, burning gold.
---
[WORLD GENESIS INITIATED]
[SYSTEM LOADING... PHYSICAL PHESIQUE DETECTED]
[EVALUATING SOUL AMBITION...]
[RANK: CALCULATING...]
---
Cole ignored the prompt. He lunged at the creature as it rose from its first kill.
"Die," he growled, swinging the slab with every ounce of his two weeks of desperate training.
The steel met chitin with a sickening crunch.
---------
[Character Status Update]
[Condition: Combat Engagement]
[Enemy: Scout-Class Void Crawler (Rank F)]
[System Status: 15% Integrated]