Chapter 16: "Node Overload"
The world dissolved into raw violet.
Jack tumbled through kaleidoscopic code—runic helixes, ghost‑memories, screaming data. One moment he felt skin; the next, he was nothing but sigil vectors unraveling like yarn pulled through a needle's eye.
> ACCEPT IMPRINT – Y/N
A colossal prompt hovered before him. Dr. Valerie Cross's voice echoed, disembodied yet intimate: "Submit, Wilson. Let the node carry your genome—my kill‑switch coded within."
Jack's consciousness flickered. Burned memories spiralled past: a foster‑home bunk bed, the scent of ramen, the laugh of a brother whose name he could no longer grasp. Each fragment tugged at him—offering comfort, demanding surrender.
He clenched the fading memory of Lyra's worried eyes like a lifeline. No.
> REJECT
The prompt shattered into pixel ash. Energy backlash jolted the chamber outside.
---
Outside the Core
Reina staggered as the node's containment ring cracked. Zara's tap‑bomb timers froze, caught in an endless buffering loop.
Lyra slammed the override keyboard. "Jack's fighting the root command—it's shorting everything!"
Dr. Cross, still restrained, smiled despite a bloody lip. "He can't win. The node is pure spirit‑geometry. A human mind can't parse infinite equations."
Patch screeched from atop a console, "You deliberately built it to fry him!"
Cross's smile widened. "Precisely."
---
Jack's Inner Battle
Equations morphed into predators—wolf‑shadows made of fractals, hunger coded in variables. They lunged. Jack's elastic reflex flared but lacked form; he was code. Instinctively he rewrote himself into a liquid string, slipping between fanged parentheses.
Adapt to anything, he reminded himself. That was his gift.
He seized stray bits of Quicksilver code, basalt matrices, carbon‑web subroutines—stitching a New Jack in pure data: flexible but shielded, nimble but anchored by carbon lattice logic.
Wolf fractals swarmed. He divided—detaching micro‑threads of himself as bait, letting data‑predators devour empty husks. As they overloaded, he absorbed the crash energy, growing brighter.
At the core he found a pulsing Root Equation—Cross's embedded kill‑switch signature. He scanned its variables: If WilsonSigil = True → Nullify Life.
Jack smiled. Let's invert that. He flipped boolean states, swapped operands, appended chaotic recursion.
> If WilsonSigil = True → Override Dampeners / Disable Ω Link / Unlock Node Access
He pressed EXECUTE.
---
Core Surge
The subterranean chamber erupted in violet lightning. Glyph pylons overloaded; pods containing proto‑Ω units shattered.
Lyra shielded her face as the main conduit spewed energy upward. Sirens howled: "CRITICAL FEEDBACK—INITIATE EVACUATION."
Cross's eyes widened. "Impossible!"
Zara's taps came back online, now reading ACCESS GRANTED. "Guys, Jack just gave me root privileges!"
Patch flapped victoriously. "He's driving the node!"
---
Re‑manifestation
A figure stepped from the vortex—Jack, but radiant. Veins traced with faint violet glyphs, eyes shimmering binary gold. A loop of crackling energy orbited his left wrist like a halo of broken code.
Reina exhaled, equal parts awe and wariness. "You still humanoid?"
Jack flexed; his arm briefly ghosted into transparent polygons then solidified. "Mostly. Got admin rights."
Lyra embraced him despite the electric tingle. "You scared me half to death."
Jack leaned against her, exhaustion creeping in. "Same."
---
Endgame in the Vault
Red strobes now warned of structural meltdown—Jack's inversion had set the node to self‑destruct in five minutes.
Zara tossed detonator controls to Lyra. "We rig the rest—no coming back for the Guild."
Cross snarled, thrashing. Reina chopped her neck, rendering the scientist limp.
Jack raised his new code‑halo; dampener pods wilted, deactivating. "Remote link to Ω severed. He'll reboot blind."
Patch hooted. "Then we bounce!"
---
Escape
They retraced the tunnel; rune sentries now flickered thanks to Jack's admin override. Elevator offline, they took a maintenance ladder, Lyra guiding freed test subjects up while Jack periodically solidified rung platforms with carbon‑web weaves.
As they reached the surface service corridor, an earth‑rending blast shook the tower foundation. Dust geysered; lights died.
Outside, the night skyline showed the Guild tower's lower floors belching violet fire—yet the superstructure held.
Jack collapsed to one knee. Code‑halo dimmed; oxygen debt and memory drag punched him. He swore softly—another sliver of past slid away, unreachable.
Lyra knelt beside him. "You bought freedom for dozens. We'll find ways to patch your mind."
Jack half‑smiled. "Just remember me if I forget me."
Reina scanned the street. "No sirens yet. We vanish before they regroup."
Zara signaled a getaway van. Patch latched onto the roof antenna as they sped into neon shadows.
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Epilogue: Ω Offline
Deep in a repair bay, Asset Ω's visor flickered erratic amber. Without node guidance, targeting protocols returned null. The hunter stood motionless, then powered down, systems awaiting a new master.
In the darkness, a single line of code scrolled across its HUD—"ADMIN_OVERRIDE_WILSON=True."