Chapter 7: Colpse Point
The disguise wrapped around Jin like a second skin. His reflection in the fragmented gss showed a different face—slightly older, tired eyes, weathered skin. Not someone anyone would remember. That was the point.
Kael handed him a small, chipped badge. “You’re a courier now. Civilian css, barely above scrap runners. Enforcement won’t question it if you don’t draw attention.”
“Comforting,” Jin muttered, sliding the badge into a pocket sewn into the threadbare coat his disguise provided.
She handed him the Null Knife next. It felt light in his hand—too light. “It’s not meant to kill,” she said. “Just slow things down. Buy time.”
“I assume I’ll need time.”
“Always.”
The walk to the edge of Zone 7B was longer than he expected. The further they went, the more the environment decayed. Neon signs glitched in pce, roads folded in impossible geometry, and the air shimmered with heat that didn’t exist.
This zone wasn’t maintained. It was forgotten.
A bridge of floating data fragments led into the colpse zone. Beneath it, a digital abyss swirled like bck water.
Kael stopped short of crossing.
“This part you do alone,” she said.
Jin looked across the void. “What am I even looking for?”
“Memory node. Should be buried in the ruins. It’s protected by remnants—AI fragments that used to guard the core systems before it fell apart. They’re… twitchy.”
“Kill-on-sight?”
“If you’re lucky. If you’re not, they try to overwrite you.”
“…Great.”
Kael gave a rare grin. “You’ll do fine. You’re still breathing.”
Jin stepped onto the first data shard. It wobbled under his foot but held. He kept moving, careful not to look down.
The moment he crossed into 7B proper, the air snapped.
[Zone Entry: Colpse Point – Hazard Level Adjusted]
[Disguise Integrity: Stable – Duration Remaining: 29:58]
The ground here looked like a memory of a city—half-loaded structures, glitching mp posts, colpsed storefronts with signs in nguages no longer used.
And silence.
Jin’s breath was shallow. He walked carefully, eyes scanning for movement.
The cheat module blinked.
Behavioral Forecast Active:
Threat Potential – Nearby Movement Detected
Optimal Response: Cover. Hold Breath.
Jin ducked behind a broken kiosk just as a flickering humanoid shape floated past. It didn’t walk—just hovered. Its form was jagged, like a shredded data file trying to remember its original shape.
It paused. Turned.
Jin’s lungs screamed. He didn’t move.
Then, like a ghost in a broken loop, it moved on.
He exhaled slowly. “Holy hell.”
The map flickered. He was close. He stepped through a colpsed doorway, past broken shelves, toward what used to be a server hub.
There—beneath a colpsed beam—flickered a dull green glow.
The node.
He approached cautiously, pried the debris away, and touched the orb of light.
[Memory Node Detected: Fragmented – Begin Extraction?]
[Warning: Extraction will trigger zone anomaly.]
Jin hesitated. “Of course it does.”
He confirmed.
The world screamed.
A shockwave threw him into the wall. Red lines of corrupted code tore across the sky. From the shadows, shapes began crawling out—not humanoid, not sane.
The cheat module blinked again.
[Combat Forecast Initiated – Escape Route Calcuted]
[Evasion +27% – Route Rendered]
Jin ran. Every step timed to the blinking arrow that danced across his vision. He sshed at one of the smaller entities that got too close—its form shattered like brittle gss, but more poured in behind.
He reached the bridge. It was colpsing—one shard at a time.
“Come on—come on—” He leapt, barely catching the next ptform as the one behind him vanished.
One final jump. His hands caught the ledge. A pair of gloved hands grabbed his wrists and hauled him up.
Kael.
She looked down at him, breathing hard.
“Did you get it?”
Jin opened his palm. The node blinked softly in his hand.
“Yeah,” he said. “And about seven different kinds of death behind me.”
Kael ughed. Not mockingly—more like someone who had been there, and survived.
“Welcome to the real Echelon,” she said.
