Chapter 6: First Descent
Jin didn’t have time to process what was happening. Kael’s grip was firm, her steps confident as she pulled him through narrow alleys lined with digital trash—discarded code, flickering signs, and colpsing memory shards from older builds of the city.
Above them, the sky pulsed red for a moment, a ripple tearing through the clouds. System anomalies, Jin realized. But they didn’t feel like glitches. They felt… intentional.
“Where are we going?” he asked, trying to match her pace.
“Somewhere the system can’t monitor in real time,” Kael said. “You want to live long enough to understand what you’ve just stepped into, right?”
Jin gnced behind him. A shadow darted across a rooftop.
“Is someone following?”
Kael didn’t answer. Instead, she slid her hand along a rusted doorframe embedded in the alley wall. The code shimmered, revealing a staircase beneath the ground.
“Down,” she said.
Jin hesitated. Every instinct told him not to trust this. But something about Kael’s tone, and the strange certainty in her eyes, cut through his fear.
He stepped in. The air changed immediately. Denser. Colder.
They descended three levels before the stairs opened up into a narrow hall filled with faint blue light. On either side, screens buzzed, showing filtered newsfeeds from both the VR world and the real one. Corporations, politics, game events, government enforcement—all overpping like a distorted colge.
Jin slowed, overwhelmed.
“This is insane,” he murmured. “How can anyone keep up with all this?”
“They don’t,” Kael replied. “That’s the point. The deeper you go, the less things make sense unless you have context. Unless you have access.”
She led him into a circur room filled with terminals. A few people lounged around—some masked, others flickering between avatars and something less stable.
One of them—a tall, quiet man with a chrome arm—nodded at Kael. “Fresh blood?”
Kael motioned toward Jin. “Legacy link. Cheat-enabled. No awareness. Yet.”
The man whistled. “You always bring in the dangerous ones.”
“I like underdogs,” she said. “And this one has weight.”
Jin stood still, feeling the way everyone looked at him. Not with malice, but like a variable in an equation they weren’t sure how to solve.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said quietly.
Kael met his gaze. “No one does. But you accepted the contract, didn’t you? Put on the relic. Let the link drill into your brain. This world doesn’t run on innocence—it runs on choice. Even if that choice is desperation.”
Jin lowered his eyes. “…I needed to survive.”
“Then learn how.”
She walked to a nearby terminal and gestured for him to approach. A holographic screen unfolded in front of him, dispying a simplified map of Echelon’s lower yers. Dozens of zones blinked red or yellow. Only a few remained green.
“This is where you are,” she pointed. “District 0, Edge Layer. It’s neutral, mostly ignored. But look here—” her finger moved to Zone 7B, still pulsing from the earlier alert, “—this is where your lesson starts.”
Jin leaned closer. “Why?”
“Because the moment you activated that cheat module, someone noticed. Maybe it was the system. Maybe a human. Maybe something else. But they’ll come looking.”
“What do I do?”
“You do what everyone does when the eyes start watching,” Kael said. “You disappear. You earn a new identity. Prove your worth. And above all—don’t die.”
She tapped a few keys, and a mission prompt blinked into his vision.
Request: Retrieve Fragmented Memory Node (Zone 7B – Colpse Point)
Risk Level: Moderate-High
Reward: Encrypted Data Key + 1800 Echelon Credits
Note: Zone under Enforcement surveilnce. Disguise required.
Kael smiled faintly. “Think of it as a tutorial. A very real, very dangerous one.”
Jin stared at the prompt. The tension in his chest tightened—but he didn’t look away.
He reached out and accepted.
Mission Initiated.
Disguise Tempte: Civilian Runner – Css D
Gear Assigned: Null Knife (Basic), Echo Link (1-use), Stim Patch x2
The terminal dissolved. Kael looked satisfied.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s see what kind of survivor you really are.”
