Chapter 9: The Debugging Protocols
The "Silent Sector" was growing, but it was a fragile growth.
Sixty people were living in a canyon that, according to the laws of the Empire, shouldn't exist. They were eating "Raw-Code" bread and drinking water filtered through layers of "Anti-Virus" sand. But as Elara walked through the camp, she saw the "Decay."
A young boy's hand was flickering, his fingers momentarily turning into long, grey needles before snapping back to flesh. An elderly woman was trapped in a "Speech Loop," repeating the same three syllables over and over until someone tapped her on the shoulder to "Reset" her.
"They are desynchronizing," Kaelen said, his binary eye whirring with a somber light. He was standing by the central fire, his charcoal arm working a piece of scrap metal into a makeshift blade. "The Barrens are an unstable environment, Elara. Without a 'Standardizing Signal' from the Loom, their bodies are starting to forget their own blueprints."
[ALERT: COMMUNITY STABILITY: 64%]
[TREND: DECLINING]
Elara felt the weight of her tattoos. Her vitality had returned to 40%, but she felt a different kind of exhaustion—the exhaustion of a leader. "I can't manually patch sixty people every day, Kaelen. It would kill me, and it wouldn't solve the problem."
"Then we teach them," Kaelen said, his charcoal blade glowing with a faint blue light. "We teach them the Debug Protocols."
The first "Training Session" was held in the shadow of a massive, cracked obsidian shard. Elara stood before twenty of the most stable survivors. Among them was the woman with the liquid gold hair, now looking dull and brittle, and a former temple guard whose armor was half-melted into his skin.
"The Empire taught you that magic is a gift from the gods," Elara began, her voice steady. "They taught you that if you follow the rituals, the world obeys. They lied."
She reached out and grabbed a handful of the "Silent Sector's" air. A small, flickering error-cube appeared in her palm—a localized glitch caused by their presence.
"The world is a machine," she continued. "And right now, that machine is trying to delete you because you don't 'fit' its current version. To survive, you must stop being 'Users' and start being 'Exceptions'."
She showed them how to breathe—not for air, but for "Resonance." She taught them to look not at the object, but at the "Wireframe" behind it.
"Kaelen, show them the First Protocol: [BUFFER_REDIRECTION]."
Kaelen stepped forward. He didn't use a spell. He focused on his charcoal arm. As it began to flicker and glitch, he didn't fight the error. He "guided" it. He moved the flickering energy from his arm down to his feet.
Whoosh.
For a split second, Kaelen moved at a speed that defied the physics of the canyon. He didn't run; he "teleported" five feet to the left, leaving a trail of black static behind him.
"He didn't move his body," Elara explained to the stunned crowd. "He moved his 'Position Data'. He took the error that was trying to dissolve his arm and used it as a shortcut through the world's geometry."
The training was brutal.
Unlike the Empire's magic, which felt like a warm flow of energy, "Debugging" felt like sticking your hand into a bag of broken glass. The former temple guard, Joran, screamed as he tried to redirect a glitch in his armor. His shoulder began to pixelate, a terrifying cloud of grey squares eating his flesh.
"Don't fight it, Joran!" Elara shouted, her eyes glowing with kaleidoscopic intensity. "If you resist, the System will 'Conflict-Resolve' your arm into nothingness! Accept the error! Tell the System it's a Feature!"
Joran gasped, his face contorting. He stopped fighting. He visualized the grey squares not as an injury, but as "Armor-Plating."
The pixels slowed. They solidified. Instead of a missing shoulder, Joran now had a shoulder guard made of indestructible, untextured grey void.
[NOTIFICATION: NEW CLASS DERIVATION DETECTED]
[PATH: THE GLITCH-KNIGHT]
Elara watched as, one by one, the survivors began to find their own "Workarounds." The woman with the gold hair learned to "Cache" her beauty, storing her stability in a small crystal so she wouldn't flicker. A young girl discovered she could "Mute" her own footsteps by creating a localized sound-void.
They weren't mages. They were Hacks.
That night, as the Silent Sector hummed with the sound of sixty "Exceptions" living in defiance of the world, Elara sat with Kaelen.
"We're creating something dangerous," Kaelen whispered, looking at Joran practicing with his void-shoulder. "If the High Church sees this... if they see humans who can rewrite their own damage... they won't just send Silencers. They'll initiate a System-Wide Format."
"They're already planning the Reset, Kaelen," Elara said, looking at the "Kernel Map" she had found. "We aren't the ones who started this war. We're just the ones who refuse to be deleted."
She looked at her own status screen.
[USER: ELARA]
[SYNCHRONIZATION: 0.21%]
[NEW SKILL: INSTRUCTIONAL_OVERLAY (Allows the user to see the 'Code-Potential' of others)]
But as she looked at the camp, a new, dark red notification appeared at the top of her vision. It wasn't a system message. It was a Broadcast.
[ADMIN_DIRECTIVE: 'THE VIRUS' HAS SPREAD.]
[PROTOCOL_ACTIVATED: 'THE BOUNTY'.]
[REWARD: FULL RESTORATION TO ANY OUTCAST WHO DELIVERS THE HEAD OF 'ELARA'.]
Elara's blood turned to ice. She looked around the camp. The people she had just taught to be powerful... the people she had just saved... were all looking at their own invisible screens.
The Librarian, the woman with the gold hair, even Joran.
The Silence in the "Silent Sector" suddenly felt very, very dangerous.
"Kaelen," Elara whispered, her hand moving toward the jagged Sound-Fruit she kept at her belt. "Do you think gratitude is a 'Stable' enough variable to withstand a bribe from a God?"
Kaelen didn't answer. He just tightened his grip on his charcoal blade.