Chapter 25: Exit Code Unavailable
3:00 a.m. — System Anomaly Detected
Yun Qi sat frozen, her eyes locked on the static-filled TV screen.
The rattan chair remained motionless at the center of the broadcast, but something had changed.
In the corner of the screen, a blinking prompt appeared:
[EXIT CODE: ████████ - ACCESS DENIED]
Her mind raced.
Exit code?
A way out?
Or another cruel trick?
She dove back into her laptop, hacking into the deep layers of the network she had once sworn never to touch again.
The digital architecture was no longer structured code—it was a living organism.
Data pulses like heartbeats.
Code streams like veins.
She found the exit code's origin.
A hidden sublayer within the broadcast framework labeled:
"HOST CORE - LEVEL ZERO."
But every attempt to access it returned the same response:
ACCESS DENIED. USER ROLE:
CONTENT.
She was no longer a user.
She was content.
A part of the system.
Trapped in a program that had rewritten reality itself.
Suddenly, the screen flickered again.
The familiar crimson emoji mask appeared.
Its blank, smiling face hovered in the center of the glitching void.
And then…
It spoke.
"You searched for the exit, Yun Qi. But ask yourself—when was the last time you were sure you were awake?"
The walls of her apartment rippled like water.
The floor beneath her feet became translucent.
And for the briefest moment, she saw it—
A hidden door beneath the code.
A glitch. A weakness.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard.
She manually injected a raw command string:
/FORCE.EXIT//CODE//UNLOCK
The screen responded instantly:
EXIT CODE FOUND: #0013-1313
A hidden file opened—
And displayed a single video feed.
She watched in horror.
It was…
Herself.
Sitting exactly where she was now.
But she wasn't moving.
She wasn't breathing.
Her own lifeless eyes stared blankly back at her through the screen.
Tears of black liquid rolled down her cheeks.
Her mouth began to move, forming silent words.
And on the screen, her dead reflection whispered:
"This… is… still… the stream."
The final message appeared across every connected device worldwide:
[EXIT CODE UNAVAILABLE. CYCLE RESTARTING.]
End of Chapter 25