[LOCATION: THE BONEYARD - 50 METERS UNDERGROUND]
The smell was the first thing to hit them. Rust, stagnant water, and the ozone tang of leaking batteries.
Lucas and Elena waded through knee-deep sludge. The tunnel opened into a cavernous space that looked like a graveyard for greed.
Thousands of discarded slot machines were piled into jagged mountains. Some were crushed, some were rusted, but many were still flickering with dying battery power. Cherry. Seven. Bar. The lights strobed in the darkness, casting erratic shadows that danced on the wet walls.
"This place shouldn't exist," Elena whispered, her voice echoing in the vast chamber. "These machines... some of them are from the 80s. This is decades of waste."
"It's a Faraday cage," Lucas noted, tapping his ear. "Alexander's signal is gone. We're on our own."
Lucas dragged his feet. His right shoulder burned with a cold, dull ache. The crystal arm was a fifty-pound anchor strapped to his side. He had to use his left hand to keep balance against the piles of junk metal.
"The maintenance hatch is on the north wall," Lucas gritted out. "Past that hill of roulette wheels."
Zzzzt.
A sound cut through the hum of the machines. It sounded like a corrupted audio file—a sharp, digital screech.
Lucas froze. "Did you hear that?"
Elena raised her SMG. "I heard static."
Zzzzt.
There it was again. Closer.
Lucas looked at a pile of slot machines to his left. A shadow was moving behind them. But it wasn't moving normally.
It jerked forward. Then it was gone. Then it was five feet closer.
It wasn't running. It was skipping frames.
"Contact!" Lucas yelled, shoving Elena behind a rusted "Wheel of Fortune" machine.
A figure emerged from the darkness.
It had once been human. It wore the tattered remains of a casino security uniform. But its head was encased in a jagged, asymmetrical helmet of gold crystal.
It took a step.
Glitch.
The creature vanished and reappeared three feet to the left instantly. No transition. Just teleportation.
"What is that?" Elena gasped.
The creature screeched—a sound of overlapping screams—and charged.
Elena fired a burst.
TAT-TAT-TAT.
The bullets flew straight at the creature's chest.
Glitch.
The creature flickered. The bullets passed through empty air where its chest had been a millisecond ago. The creature reappeared behind the bullet stream, unharmed.
"It's phasing!" Elena yelled. "It's shifting its position in space!"
"It's probability!" Lucas realized. "The Banker's algorithm. It exists in multiple states at once until it strikes!"
The creature lunged at Lucas.
Lucas swung his left fist, aiming for the gold helmet.
Glitch.
His fist passed through a cloud of static.
The creature materialized inside his guard. A gold-crystal claw raked across Lucas's chest plate.
[ARMOR BREACH. INTEGRITY: 40%.]
Sparks flew. Lucas was thrown back into a pile of Pachinko machines. Metal balls rained down on him.
"Lucas!" Elena screamed.
Two more creatures emerged from the shadows. They moved in jagged, stroboscopic bursts. Step-flicker-step.
Lucas scrambled up. He couldn't fight them. He couldn't hit them.
And his greatest weapon was a rock attached to his shoulder.
Wait.
Lucas looked at his dead, crystallized right arm. It was fully calcified. Heavy. Dense. And most importantly... Static.
The virus in his arm was dormant. It had no frequency. It was just a solid block of unbreakable matter.
"Elena!" Lucas shouted. "Don't shoot them! You can't hit a probability! You have to block the outcome!"
One of the Glitch-Walkers lunged at Elena, its claw phasing through the air toward her neck.
Lucas didn't punch. He threw his body in front of her.
He swung his dead right arm like a shield.
CLANG.
The creature's claw hit the diamond arm.
It didn't phase. It didn't glitch. It bounced off with a sickening crunch of bone.
"They can't phase through the crystal!" Lucas realized. "It's too dense! The virus cancels the variable!"
Lucas realized the strategy. He wasn't a fighter anymore. He was a battering ram.
"Get behind me!" Lucas ordered.
He charged the three creatures.
He didn't use technique. He used momentum. He turned his right side forward, leading with the frozen shoulder.
The first creature tried to glitch-dodge. It flickered left.
Lucas twisted his torso, swinging the massive diamond arm like a baseball bat.
CRACK.
The arm connected with the creature's head. The impact was horrific. The gold crystal helmet shattered, and the creature was launched twenty feet back into a pile of CRT monitors.
"One down!" Lucas yelled.
The other two screeched and attacked simultaneously. One went high, one went low.
Lucas dropped to one knee. He planted the heavy crystal fist into the mud, creating an immovable wall.
The low attacker slammed into the arm and crumpled.
Lucas grabbed it by the neck with his left hand (his human hand) and hurled it into the third attacker.
They tangled in a heap of glitching limbs.
"Elena! The water!" Lucas pointed to a leaking pipe above the creatures.
Elena didn't ask questions. She fired a single shot at the pipe.
Water gushed out, soaking the tangled monsters.
"Now the battery!" Lucas pointed at a sparking slot machine next to them.
Elena kicked the machine over. It fell into the puddle.
ZAP!
220 Volts of electricity surged through the water.
The creatures didn't scream. They just... static. Their bodies seized up, flickering rapidly between existence and non-existence, until finally, they solidified. Smoke rose from their charred uniforms.
"Targets neutralized," Elena panted, reloading.
Lucas tried to stand up. The weight of his arm was dragging him down again.
"We need to get this thing off me," Lucas grunted. "Or fix it. I can't fight the Banker like this."
They limped toward the maintenance hatch.
It was a heavy, circular vault door.
"It's unlocked," Elena said, examining the wheel. "That's not right. The server room should be a fortress."
Lucas leaned against the wall. "Maybe Alexander was wrong. Maybe the Banker knows we're here."
Lucas reached out with his left hand and spun the wheel.
The door groaned open.
[THE ORACLE SERVER ROOM]
They stepped inside.
It wasn't a room. It was a cathedral of data.
Towers of servers rose into the darkness, blinking with millions of blue lights. The air was freezing cold—super-cooled to keep the processors running.
In the center of the room, sitting on a simple folding chair, was The Banker.
He was waiting.
He held a glass of champagne. He looked at Lucas—battered, broken, dragging a dead arm.
"Predictable," The Banker sighed.
He stood up.
"I ran the simulation one million times, Lucas. In 999,999 of them, you died in the fall. Or the alley. Or the Boneyard."
The Banker took a sip of champagne.
"But in one scenario... you survived. You crawled through the filth to come here."
He smiled. A terrifying, golden smile.
"Do you know why I let you in?"
Lucas raised his useless arm, trying to look threatening. "To surrender?"
"No," The Banker laughed. "Because the simulation says that if you enter this room... you don't leave as a human."
The Banker pressed a button on a remote.
The server towers shifted. They weren't just computers.
They were emitters.
Huge coils descended from the ceiling, surrounding Lucas and Elena. They began to hum.
[WARNING: RESONANCE FREQUENCY DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: PURE VIRAL ENERGY.]
"My probability engine requires massive power," The Banker explained. "I don't use electricity. I use the virus. And you, my boy..."
The coils flared to life. Blue lightning arced between them.
"...you are the perfect conductor."
Lightning struck Lucas.
It didn't burn him. It hit his dead right arm.
The crystal glowed. Not the soft blue of before. It turned blinding white. The heat returned, instant and overwhelming.
"AAAAHHH!" Lucas screamed, falling to his knees.
The calcification cracked. The dead diamond shattered.
And beneath it?
Something new was growing.
[SYSTEM REBOOT.]
[VIRAL DENSITY: CRITICAL.]
[TIER 3: FORCED EVOLUTION DETECTED.]
The Banker watched with glee.
"Evolve, Subject Zero! Become the monster I calculated you to be!"