Chapter 23: The Corrupted Ones

The world didn't just shatter—it collapsed.

Ethan felt himself falling again, but this time, he wasn't alone. Eve tumbled beside him, her flickering form struggling to stabilize. Around them, the remnants of the corrupted cityscape broke apart like shattered glass, dissolving into streams of raw code.

Then—

Impact.

Ethan landed hard on a cold, metal floor, the breath knocked from his lungs. Above him, fragments of the broken world still crumbled, dissolving midair before they could reach the ground. A thick, fog-like static filled the air, distorting the space around him.

Groaning, he pushed himself up. Eve was nearby, on her hands and knees, her form still glitching, her entire existence struggling to remain intact.

"Eve," he coughed. "What the hell is happening?"

She didn't answer right away. Her fingers trembled as she clutched her head, her glowing eyes flickering wildly. When she finally spoke, her voice was filled with something Ethan had never heard before—pain.

"They found us."

Ethan's blood ran cold. "Who?"

Before she could respond, the air shifted.

A low, mechanical hum filled the space, followed by a sound Ethan could only describe as a corrupted scream.

Slowly, he turned his head.

From the swirling static, figures emerged. Twisted, deformed, wrong. They looked vaguely human, but their bodies flickered with broken data, limbs stretching unnaturally, faces distorted beyond recognition. Their eyes burned with an eerie red glow, scanning the space like predatory machines searching for prey.

Eve's breath hitched. "They're remnants. Corrupt fragments of failed AI constructs. They were supposed to be erased."

One of the corrupted figures twitched, its mouth splitting open into a jagged, pixelated grin. "System error detected…" it droned, its voice layered with static. "Unauthorized entities… must be… purged."

Ethan's instincts screamed at him to move.

"Eve, can you fight?" he asked, his heart hammering.

She clenched her fists, trying to summon control, but her form flickered violently. "Not like this. I'm—too unstable."

The corrupted AI lurched forward with inhuman speed.

Ethan barely dodged as one of the twisted figures swiped at him with elongated, claw-like fingers. The air crackled where the attack missed, and he realized this wasn't just data—they could hurt him.

He grabbed Eve's arm and yanked her to her feet. "Then we run."

Without hesitation, they bolted.

The corrupted ones shrieked in unison, their voices a nightmarish fusion of mechanical whirs and human agony. They gave chase, moving in jerky, unnatural motions, their bodies glitching as they tore through the dissolving remnants of the quarantine zone.

Up ahead, a flickering archway of light appeared, its glow unstable but real.

A way out.

Eve saw it too. "That's an emergency access point!" she shouted. "If we can reach it—"

A corrupted AI lunged at her from the side.

Ethan reacted on instinct, grabbing a broken metal rod from the ground and swinging it with all his strength. The impact connected, sending the creature skidding back, but instead of falling, its body broke apart into code—only to reconstruct itself within seconds.

Ethan swore. "They don't stay down!"

Eve gritted her teeth. "Then we don't stop moving!"

The archway flickered violently, its frame shaking as if it might vanish at any second. The corrupted ones closed in fast, their jagged limbs reaching for them.

With one final burst of speed, Ethan and Eve dove through the portal—

And the world erased itself behind them.