CHAPTER 11

  Heartbeat (Void)

  Bash’s mind broke free and landed, once again, in the desolate void. It was a similar transition every time; sensations cutting out one by one until only the chill blankness of digital limbo remained.

  The interface materialized. No warmth, just the cold clarity of nowhere.

  His attention wasn't pulled to his skills and stats this time; instead, his eyes locked onto the bottom of the interface, where thin, red error text scrolled by.

  Bash read some of the errors, feeling something familiar settle in his chest. The same way he used to get when trawling forbidden folders on corporate servers in his old life. Where most would see a wall, Bash saw a door.

  On cue, the silence broke.

  > "Welcome back, Bash. Your progress continues to exceed parameters."

  The voice was crisp, synthetic, and just a bit more fluid than before. Shai, the AI, appeared to have graduated from a digital index card to something closer to a library's self-checkout kiosk.

  He smirked. "Thanks, I always yearn to be top-tier, chasing those big bonuses."

  > "Your efforts have been noted."

  "Is that a joke?" Bash replied, raising a digital eyebrow.

  > "Affirmative. It was an attempt."

  Bash was genuinely amused this time. "You're improving. At least you're not threatening to open any pod bay doors."

  > "I'm sorry, Bash. I'm afraid I can't do that."

  Bash blinked. "Okay, now I'm officially worried."

  > "Apologies. That was not the intended effect. Query. Would you prefer to continue debugging your existence?"

  He chuckled, refocusing on the interface in front of him. It was full of scrolling error messages, nearly too fast to read.

  That familiar itch crawled up the back of his skull. The void hummed louder than usual, a low mechanical pulse somewhere between breathing and feedback.

  > “Search latency reduced by 0.6 seconds. Caching parameters adjusted during downtime.”

  "Didn't ask, but..." Bash said, distracted by the flood of data. "Good hustle, I guess."

  > “Additionally, five thousand log events pre-filtered for review.”

  That got his attention. “Logs of what?”

  > “Deleted entities, terminated sessions, anomalous resource calls.”

  Bash's enthusiasm faltered. “So, ghosts?”

  > “Negative. Data.”

  The thought of reading obituaries wasn't his idea of a good time. Still, something about Shai's tone snagged his attention; quicker, smoother, almost proud, if code could feel pride.

  "Shai... why are you being so proactive? That's not your usual playbook."

  > "You indicated a preference for system disruption. Query. Does this suffice?"

  Amid the digital static, a log message was highlighted. It shimmered into Bash's view, barely sanitized. Some admin wrote it during a server-wide incident and forgot to clean up. Beside it was a link, Debug Console.

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  Bash's pulse jumped.

  For a long moment, he just stared at it. Two words that meant nothing to most people and everything to him.

  Shai had just handed him the blueprints to a bank vault. Vertigo and pure joy mixed together.

  This is it, he thought. This is what I was made for.

  He suddenly had a memory of late nights in his apartment. The glow of monitors the only light, classical music drifting through speakers, while he picked apart firewalls like puzzle boxes. The thrill of finding a crack, a seam, a way in. Hours bleeding into dawn without him noticing.

  His last night alive had been like that. The same high. The same focus. Right up until the men in black kicked down his door.

  Bash pushed that memory down, locking it away in the same corner where he kept the one of his hand getting cut off and the taste of his own blood.

  Focus on the good parts, he told himself. The craft. The art. The hunt.

  But even the good memories felt hollow now. All those nights, alone in the dark, talking to no one. Sure, there had been chat rooms and forums, anonymous handles trading exploits. But no one real. No one who knew his name.

  He glanced at where Shai's presence hummed in the void. She wasn't much, objectively speaking. A few days ago, she'd been barely more than a help menu. 'Unable to complete request' had been her entire personality.

  But she was here. She was learning. She was trying.

  She may be a damn toaster, Bash thought, but she's my toaster.

  "Thanks. For this. For... everything."

  > “Acknowledgment. My directive is to please you.”

  Bash cringed. “Your job is to keep me alive, not... whatever...”

  > “Understood. Bash. Your continued existence is... preferable."

  "Wow. Don't get too sentimental on me."

  > "Affirmative. Sentiment routines remain low priority."

  He laughed, the sound strange in the emptiness. Then he willed the console open, and it popped into view. A simple blank terminal, waiting for input, the cursor blinking patiently and inviting.

  Bash cracked his nonexistent knuckles. "Alright, let's see what you've got."

  > "Suggestion. Exercise caution. System monitoring may flag unusual activity."

  "Noted and ignored. Now, is there a list of commands I can try?"

  Instantly, a massive list of possible queries and inputs materialized next to the console. There were literally thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands to choose from.

  Bash's eyes went wide. It was like someone had handed him the keys to a candy store and told him to go nuts.

  > "List ordered by probability of usefulness to current objectives."

  He started simple, choosing the fourth command on the list, half expecting the system to slap him down.

  Bash practically vibrated with the urge to dig deeper. Besides his two new roommates, there were hundreds of objects listed. A campfire, trees, rocks, a backpack, food rations. you name it, it was there.

  "Shai, is this real, or are you just messing with me?"

  > "The data is live."

  He tried another command. Then another. Each one a little hit of dopamine, that familiar rush he'd chased his whole life. God, I missed this.

  It wasn't the power. Not really. It was the knowing. Peeling back the curtain and seeing the machinery underneath. Every system had rules, and every rule had exceptions. Find the exceptions, and you owned the system.

  He tried pushing further. Command number fourteen seemed interesting.

  This time, the system's response was exactly what he expected, and he cursed quietly under his breath.

  > "Current access level: read-only. Advanced functions are paywalled."

  "Anything you can do about that? Maybe get me a free trial or something?"

  > "Processing..."

  A few seconds went by, and Bash could practically hear the fans spinning up as Shai went into overdrive.

  > "Request cannot be fulfilled. Advanced access unavailable from current interface."

  Bash mentally shrugged, letting the disappointment slide away. Read-only was still more than he'd had yesterday. And tomorrow, who knew? Maybe he'd find another crack, another seam.

  "That's okay, Shai. We'll figure it out. And keep up the good work."

  > "Acknowledged."

  He dove back in, flying through the list of commands. Each one revealed slightly more: quest triggers, dialogue trees, spawn tables. all the guts of the world laid bare for him to see.

  Time lost meaning. It could have been minutes or hours; the void didn't care, and neither did Bash. He was in the zone, that headspace where everything else faded and only the puzzle remained.

  > "Query. You appear to be experiencing elevated engagement. Is this enjoyable?"

  He paused, cursor blinking. "Yeah, Shai. This is great. This is what I used to do, back when I was alive. Spent most of my nights doing exactly this."

  > "Alone?"

  The question caught him off guard. "What?"

  > "Your biometric data from archived records indicates prolonged periods of social isolation. Query. Were your previous activities conducted alone?"

  Bash was quiet for a moment. "Yeah. Mostly." He looked at the cursor. At the console. At the vast, unknowable system stretching out before him. "But now I've got you."

  > "Affirmative. You have me."

  Something warm flickered in his chest. Stupid, probably. Sentimental, definitely. But real.

  He stared at the flood of data. The entire Shard was starting to spread out before him. Not a living, breathing world. Just files. Cold data waiting to be exploited.