Cherreads

Chapter 58 - System Crash

The Echo's chorus of stolen voices, a psychic scream of hatred, echoed in my mind. "You... are... not... welcome... here..."

Anya, perched precariously on the creature's thrashing back, did not flinch. Her face was a mask of pure, defiant determination. She held the Prototype Weapon Core high, its clean, stable light a stark contrast to the corrupted, glitching form of the monster beneath her.

"Get out of my head!" she roared, her voice cutting through the creature's psychic static.

She slammed the Core down, plunging the sphere of pure energy directly into the back of the Echo's neck.

The effect was not a simple explosion of fire and shrapnel. It was a complete and total system crash.

The pure, stable energy of the Core hit the creature's chaotic, corrupted code like matter hitting antimatter. A wave of silent, white light erupted from the point of impact. The Echo did not just explode; it imploded. Its black, glitching form convulsed violently. Lines of pure white, clean code began to spread across its body like cracks in obsidian glass. The creature was being forcibly "debugged" from the inside out, its corrupted data being overwritten and deleted by the Core's overwhelming purity.

It let out one final, deafening, soundless scream. It was a wave of pure psychic feedback that washed over the entire cargo bay. My HUD went completely haywire, flickering and dying for a moment. The lights on our armor shorted out. The world went dark and silent, the only light coming from the creature's own self-destruction.

The Echo dissolved. Its form unraveled, breaking apart into a shower of harmless, fading blue particles of light, like digital dust motes in the air. In a few seconds, it was completely gone. The stolen voices were silent. The oppressive psychic pressure that had been crushing my mind vanished.

The final energy pulse from the creature's demise threw Anya clear. She landed hard on the metal deck, her new cybernetic leg sparking from the impact, but she was alive. The Prototype Weapon Core, its light now dimmed and quiet, rolled across the floor and came to a stop near my feet.

We had done it. We had faced the system's newest, most terrifying creation and we had won.

The four of us stood in the silent, dark cargo bay, breathing heavily. The fight was over. Jax was leaning against a container, his hand pressed against a deep gash in his heavy armor. Veda was methodically reloading her silenced pistols, her face grim but satisfied. Anya was pushing herself to her feet, her cybernetic leg holding her steady. We were a team. Battered, exhausted, but victorious.

I walked over and picked up the two quest items from the floor. The [Quantum Crystal Lens], cool and smooth to the touch, and the now-dormant [Prototype Weapon Core]. I now had all three pieces. The key was within our grasp.

A new notification appeared on my HUD. It was not from the system's match interface. It was a private message, its text a calm, steady blue. It was from the Oracle.

[The components are aligned. The energy signature from the Core's discharge was immense. The key can now be forged. Return to the Undercroft. Quickly. The System will have registered that energy signature. It will be sending a cleanup crew.]

Her warning was timely. As if summoned by her words, a new sound reached us. Not from inside the ship, but from outside. It was the low, whining hum of high-powered ship engines, a sound that did not belong in this silent graveyard of space.

Seraph's voice, our unseen fifth team member, suddenly crackled over our comms, her tone urgent and strained. "Leo! We have multiple ships warping into the sector! My sensors are identifying them as System Enforcer vessels! They're locking onto your position! We have to leave now!"

"The pilot is already warming up the engines," Veda said, her hand pressed to her comms earpiece. "We need to go."

We did not need to be told twice. We turned and ran, sprinting back through the dark, silent corridors of The Silent Mary. We moved with a desperate, unified purpose. Behind us, we could feel a new, powerful presence entering the corrupted sector. The System itself was coming to investigate what had happened here.

We scrambled back through the ship, our footsteps echoing in the empty halls. We passed the burst pipe that had almost given us away, the heavy engine block that Jax had lifted, the chasm that Veda had crossed. It felt like a lifetime ago.

We reached the airlock and piled into our Ouroboros stealth ship. "Go!" I yelled to the pilot. "Get us out of here!"

The ship detached from the Silent Mary with a jolt. Through the main viewscreen, I saw them. Three sleek, grey ships, their designs brutally efficient and military. System Enforcer vessels. Their weapon ports were already glowing, charging for an attack.

Our pilot was a genius. He threw the small stealth ship into a sharp dive, weaving through the debris field of destroyed vessels. Plasma bolts from the Enforcer ships screamed past our cockpit, narrowly missing us. An asteroid a few meters from our ship was hit and vaporized into nothingness.

The Enforcers were powerful, but our ship was faster, more agile. The pilot found a weak point in their blockade and pushed the engines to their limit. With a final, stomach-lurching acceleration, we jumped.

The viewscreen dissolved from the sight of the ghost fleet into the swirling, chaotic data of the dark lanes. We had escaped. Just barely.

The journey back was silent. The weight of our victory, and the terror of our escape, settled over us. We had faced down two of the system's most powerful agents—the aimbot Enforcer and the psychic Echo—and we had survived. We had all the pieces of Caden's legacy. We were closer than anyone had ever been to finding a way out.

When we finally docked back in the hidden bay of the Undercroft, the exhaustion hit me like a physical blow. We disembarked, and Jax and Veda gave me a final, respectful nod before heading off to make their report to Seraph. Our alliance was no longer just a deal. It had been forged in the fire of combat.

Anya and I made our way through the Undercroft's quiet tunnels, back to the Oracle's cavern. The old woman was waiting for us, as if she had known the exact moment we would return.

"You have the components," she rasped, her voice a dry whisper. It was not a question.

I nodded. I was too tired to speak. I stepped forward and placed the three items on the strange, arcane-looking device next to her terminal. The [Corrupted Data Fragment] pulsed with a chaotic red light. The [Prototype Weapon Core] glowed with a faint yellow energy. And the [Quantum Crystal Lens] seemed to absorb the light around it, a perfect, dark crystal.

"Good," the Oracle said, her wrinkled face breaking into a rare, toothless smile. "Now... we see if Caden's madness was truly genius."

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