The transition through the shimmering Gate at the edge of Sector Four hit Will with the crushing pressure of a collapsed lung. Being violently squeezed through a rusted pipe was the only way to describe the entry, followed immediately by a jarring explosion of color and wet heat.
They stepped into a cavernous ruined corporate lobby. The air lacked the familiar scent of old dust. Instead the heavy stench of ozone, burning clutch fluid, and concentrated gastric acid coated the back of his throat.
"Gate mutation," Zeraya hissed, drawing her matte-black trench knives. "This isn't a standard server farm. It's a bio-dome. The Gate is actively digesting the simulation."
Will said nothing. He knew what a digesting room felt like from the inside. He filed the confirmation and kept moving.
The squad stepped out into a nightmare. They were standing on the sheer vertical exterior windows of a massive rusted skyscraper hanging suspended in an infinite slate-grey void. Bizarre corrupted architecture covered the structure — pagodas built from twisted server racks and heavy copper wiring clung directly to the glass.
Gravity pulled entirely sideways. The vertical glass facade acted as the firm ground beneath their boots.
Fiber-optic cherry blossoms drifted through the humid air. They were deeply unsettling, twitching with a rhythmic wet pulse as they floated. One brushed against Will's cheek. It carried a sickening biological heat that had absolutely no place in a digital simulation. It was as if the building itself were trying to mimic a life cycle it didn't comprehend.
It is not mimicking, Khan said. It is practicing.
Will filed that in the folder he wasn't opening yet and kept his face neutral.
Elyas stretched his arms, the heavy tendons snapping loudly in the dead air. Stepping to the edge of the glass, he looked sideways down into the bottomless abyss that should have been the horizon and flashed a manic jagged smile.
"Fifty chits says the new guy slips in the first five minutes," Elyas offered cheerfully over the faint trap-bass bleeding from his headphones.
Zeraya didn't look back. She stood there scanning the pagodas, pale eyes moving with the systematic efficiency of someone mapping threat vectors, her lean coiled frame humming with stored mana.
"He's carrying our drops, Elyas," Zeraya said, her voice absolute ice. "If he slips, I'm throwing you after him."
Will immediately assumed his role. Staying in the back of the formation, he unbuckled the secondary pouches on his canvas rig and organized his inventory — glass vials of Glitch powder and health potions lined up by type and accessibility, consumables staged for the upcoming fight. To the team he was an expensive well-prepared mule. That was the performance. The performance was load-bearing.
"I plan to break the record," Will said, running his stock count.
Raven sighed loudly from a rusted transit bench she had apparently dragged through the Gate through sheer force of personality, aggressively ignoring the neon glare she claimed was giving her a migraine. She spun her spectral scythe between her fingers, letting the dark freezing smoke bleed over the glass.
"Hey, watch your ankles, spooky," Tyson rumbled, placing a massive seven-foot hand gently on Raven's shoulder. "Don't trip."
"I'm not a child, Tyson," Raven spat. She notably didn't move away from his heavy protective presence.
"Just making sure," Tyson grunted. His expression darkened as he looked toward the temple entrance. "I've got a bad feeling about the neon geishas in this one. Last time I was in a sim-gate, the hologram dancers were made of razor-wire. Shredded my armor entirely."
"You're a disgusting pig, Tyson," Zeraya said, swinging her trench knife in a test arc without any actual heat behind the words.
"Just a man with needs, boss," Tyson replied.
"If he finds a geisha he's just going to try and crush it like a soda can," Elyas laughed, slinging a rubbery arm toward Will. "Keep him away from the loot, new guy. He's a liability."
The glass vibrated violently beneath their boots.
Three figures phased through the reinforced windows, pulling themselves completely out of the office interior. They were Glass-Weavers — bloated grey-skinned nightmares wearing the shredded remains of bespoke suits, their flesh permanently stapled to rusted server hardware. Glowing violet gravity-wells hummed in the center of their chests.
As they moved their fused jaws cracked open, emitting distorted glitching audio loops.
"Please... finalize... your... Q3... projections... while... you... bleed."
Even their monsters do paperwork, Khan said, disgusted. Kill them.
"Keep them separated!" Zeraya hissed, dropping into a low predatory crouch.
Elyas ignored the strategy entirely. Bending his knees, he stretched his legs backward like massive industrial hydraulic coils and launched himself horizontally across the glass facade at the sheer terrifying speed of a fired artillery shell.
Will did not draw a weapon. A dead mule couldn't collect a payout, and entering the melee would expose everything he was hiding. He stepped backward, positioning himself behind a rusted server rack, and raised the thermal scope to his eye. Through it he tracked the fight with the focused attention of someone not watching the violence — watching the geometry underneath it. The angles, the gaps, the specific moment when the geometry was going to go wrong.
Through the scope Will saw Elyas go for a massive clothesline on the first Glass-Weaver. The Raider was a fraction of a second too slow.
Will's hand was already moving. He reached into his rig, uncorked a glass vial, and threw a concentrated Glitch powder cloud directly into Elyas's path. As Elyas inhaled the shimmering blue dust the powder hijacked his nervous system — neon-violet veins burned through his thick neck and raw adrenaline snapped his arm back with a wet-leather crack. The sheer volatile acceleration allowed him to successfully decapitate the first Weaver, his arm returning with unnatural speed to sever two more before they could react.
A surviving Glass-Weaver slammed a jagged plasma-heated metal club into the glass floor near Zeraya. The heavy impact released a violent Glitch-shockwave that crawled up her leg, instantly paralyzing her left boot to the floor. The monster raised its club high, preparing to cave her skull in.
Will was already tracking her through the scope.
He didn't think about it. There was no deliberation. He had been watching the geometry and the geometry told how the club was going to land three seconds before it landed there. His arm moved the way it always moved when the decision was already made somewhere faster than thought.
The anti-paralysis potion left his hand. The glass vial shattered precisely against Zeraya's armored boots. The neutralizing liquid splashed her greaves and cleared the paralysis instantly.
Zeraya wrenched her leg free, dodged the fatal strike by a millimeter, and drove her trench knife clean through the Weaver's neck. She pulled the blade free and shot a sharp assessing look back at Will. No words. Her pale eyes tracked to him for one split second — not gratitude exactly, something more specific. The look of someone updating a file.
Will was already moving. Ducking a stray plasma-burst and sliding under a swinging server rack, he dropped into the slick bioluminescent fluid beside a downed husk and stripped the valuable tech while Elyas was still screaming battle cries.
[Looting: Corrupted Plasma-Node | Tier: A | Value: 400 Chits]
[Looting: Neon-Threaded Chitin | Tier: B | Value: 150 Chits]
He shoved the items deep into his canvas pack without stopping. The node was bleeding raw mana through the canvas — highly unstable, worth a fortune. High-density power conduits the Raiders Guild used to maintain the sector's heat-shields. A single node had enough refined Glitch-energy to run a private Island server farm for a week. He packed it into the lead-lined pocket of his rig and kept moving.
They fought their way horizontally up the mutated skyscraper. Will managed his potion inventory, tracked thermal signatures through his scope, stayed strictly in the backline tossing healing salves and stamina drafts to let Zeraya and Elyas carve through the remaining server-husks. The dark adrenaline-fueled banter kept the pace relentless.
During a momentary lull as Raven recharged her mana, Will watched Zeraya move through a cluster of mangled husks.
She was a weapon. Every movement was economic — completely stripped of wasted energy or flashy flourishes, the specific efficiency of someone who had learned long ago that the fastest way to end a fight was to have already ended it before the other person noticed. She wiped a smear of hydraulic fluid from her cheek without breaking her scan of the next corridor and something about the way the neon light caught her jaw made Will forget for approximately two seconds that he was supposed to be tracking thermal signatures.
Oh, Khan said, loud and delighted. THERE it is.
Will said nothing.
Look at her, boy! Khan roared, utterly mesmerized, the voice of a man who has just seen something he wants to conquer immediately. The one in the kitchen was fun. But THIS one — she fights like she owns the ground she's standing on! Like she's already won and the monsters just haven't figured it out yet! I could burn down half the world for a woman who moves like that!
Will was completely exhausted. Managing the volatile potion inventory, tracking the team's physical trauma, reading the geometry of the fight three seconds ahead of the fight, and listening to an eight-century-old conqueror loudly catch feelings in the middle of a bio-dome pushed him over the edge.
"Oh my god, SHUT UP," Will said aloud. His voice echoed off the vertical glass.
The entire team froze. Three dead Oni dropped heavily to the cobblestones. Zeraya turned around, trench knife in a reverse grip, and raised a cold eyebrow at Will.