CHAPTER 34

  Echo

  The cavern stretched wider than expected. A rough slope led down to the main floor, where the ceiling vanished upward into black. Patches of glowing moss ran along the walls, bathing the stone in a pale green light.

  Bash wrinkled his nose. “Really? That's the best light source the devs could come up with?”

  The attempt at humor fell flat in the empty air. No one was there to hear it anyway.

  He moved further into the cave, counting his steps, trying not to think about the blood on Nora's hands or Luis's injured leg. Ten minutes. Find an exit. Don't screw up again.

  The cavern narrowed into two tunnels. One sloped up into a jagged arch, the other dropped into deeper darkness.

  Bash paused, weighing his options. Up made sense. Up meant closer to the surface, closer to escape. But something tugged at his attention. A whisper of data that didn't belong.

  Triggering Investigator, Bash examined the one leading down. Bits of data drifted, actually moving back and forth across the open air. He stepped closer, trying to read the text, but they danced away further down the tunnel.

  Bash looked back toward where his friends waited, then back down the passage where the green text beckoned. “Just a quick peek,” he muttered. “Two minutes, tops.”

  He headed down.

  The further he went, the stranger it felt. The walls weren't jagged or natural. They were too clean, the angles too straight. No cracks, no random bends. Just long, smooth corridors marching into the dark.

  Another flicker of text drifted past, just out of reach. He swiped at it and missed.

  “Following ghost data into a scary tunnel,” he muttered. “Classic.” The echo of his own voice came back a second later, stretched and faintly distorted. “...classic...”

  The hair prickled on the back of his neck. His gut twisted in that primal way no HUD warning ever matched, the old human instinct that screamed 'don't go further, don't go deeper, get the hell out of there'.

  Bash ran the math; he was alone, out of sight of the others, and the cave had already proven it didn't play fair. Echoes weren't supposed to talk back. His every nerve shouted for him to turn around.

  But the text flickered again, deeper in. Teasing.

  He stood there for a long moment, jaw clenched, forcing down the rising churn of unease. “C'mon,” he muttered to himself. “You're Bash. You don't run from spooky hallways.” The walls pressed back, heavy and watchful.

  Exhaling, he kept moving. The tunnel sloped down, a grade that pulled you forward whether you wanted it to or not. His skin crawled, but the further he walked, the easier it got. Funny how that worked. “See? Just a cave. Totally fine.”

  The echo came back stretched. Wrong. “...totally fine...”

  Bash ignored the chill that ran up his spine. The air got heavier the deeper he went.

  The text disappeared up ahead. No more flickers. Whatever had been leading him on had either vanished or reached its destination. “Great,” Bash muttered. “Better be some treasure.”

  Another echo. “...treasure...”

  The words returned, half a beat too late, but not alone. A spark, a presence, faint at first, grew louder as the system around him shifted.

  > “Ambient noise anomaly detected. This zone enables elevated access. I am able to render at higher fidelity here.”

  Bash stopped dead. Shai’s voice. Not through the void. Not in the space between sessions. Here, in the game. Impossible… Unless he was dead? Was he dead?!

  He patted himself down frantically. No, this was real. Or real-ish, he thought.

  > “Bash... Bash, can you hear me?”

  “Yes... uh, you're here? Like, actually here?” God, he hoped he wasn't going crazy again.

  > “Affirmative. Temporary system privileges enabled. Developer rooms support privileged subroutines. Please proceed with caution.”

  He wanted to say something. Something meaningful. Something that captured the moment. About how good it felt for her to be here. “Cool,” he managed. “That's... cool.”

  Smooth, Bash. Real smooth. He crept forward, the tunnel narrowing, darkness pressing in until suddenly, unexpectedly, it opened into a chamber.

  The walls weren’t stone, not anymore. They were carved into perfect squares, a grid that covered every surface from floor to ceiling. Some squares bore deep numbers. Others had tally marks. Most were blank.

  > “This room... It's similar to my training environment. Before I was assigned to you.”

  Bash felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. Shai had never talked about this before.

  At the far end, a pedestal jutted from the floor. Its face was etched in sharp, machine-perfect strokes: Test Area 04.

  Number four... not the first. How many of these were there?

  Looking closer, Bash saw that the pedestal was covered in markings, slashes, digits, and shorthand, shifting faintly as he squinted, like they wanted to form words but snapped back to nonsense when he blinked.

  “Okay,” he shuddered. “This has got to be the creepiest Sudoku puzzle in existence.”

  This time, the echo didn’t sound like him at all. “...existence...”

  Alright, screw this. Bash turned to leave when a voice recording of a man played around the chamber. “Shard architecture is corrupt...”

  A pressure built inside Bash's skull, static hissing in his ears. His vision was filled with glyphs and he staggered back, teeth bared. “What the actual...” he lifted his hands, and this time it wasn’t menus or hotkeys that answered.

  > “Bash, I am detecting anomalous code structures in this chamber.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Threads shimmered, faint and flickering, but real. They begged to be touched, to be understood.

  He reached out in wonder, unable to resist. Dragging his fingers through them gently, the light pulled apart, peeling back into beautiful design and fractured panes.

  > “I strongly advise against touching anything until I finish an analysis.”

  Bash didn’t register what Shai was saying, didn’t understand how this could possibly be dangerous. In a trance, he plucked at one of the threads, gripping it. “Just a bit closer...” he whispered, as he pulled, trying to get a better look.

  It snapped, and broken commands spilled across his vision like a system mid-crash.

  The chamber shuddered around him.

  Blue lightning arced across every surface, crackling between the grid squares, and a wall of electric force snapped into existence around him, maybe twenty feet across.

  “Oh,” Bash said, very quietly.

  > “Bash! Is this what you do while you are in the game world? Touch things you were explicitly warned not to?”

  “I mean...” He watched the force field crackle. “Mostly.”

  > “It is a statistical miracle you survive long enough to reach our void sessions.”

  “You make it sound like therapy.”

  > “Given your behavior, perhaps it should be.”

  Bash would have laughed, but the walls of the force field hummed and shifted. The walls were getting closer. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, but definitely moving.

  “Uh, Shai? Is it just me, or is the murder box getting smaller?”

  > “Analyzing. The containment field is collapsing at a rate of approximately 0.3 inches per second.”

  “And in human terms?”

  > “Based on the current rate of collapse, you have approximately five minutes and twelve seconds before the available space is insufficient to contain all of your organic components.”

  “That's called DEATH, Shai! Just say death!”

  > “You have approximately five minutes before death.”

  Bash held up his fist, psionic energy crackling to life around his knuckles. “Hold my beer.” He rushed the wall, winding up for a haymaker that would make any action hero proud.

  His fist connected with the barrier.

  Every muscle in his body seized at once. The world went white, then black, then white again. He felt himself launched backward, limbs flailing, dignity evaporating. He hit the stone floor, bounced once, skidded another few feet, and came to rest in a smoking heap exactly where he'd started.

  His eyes fluttered open. The ceiling swam above him.

  > “BASH. BASH. WAKE UP.”

  “Wha... what happened?”

  > “You have set a new world record for idiotic decisions. Two within the span of thirty seconds. I would be impressed if I were not so deeply concerned about your survival.”

  Bash groaned, trying to remember how arms worked. “How much time...?”

  > “You have approximately three minutes remaining.”

  “Three?!” He shot upright, immediately regretted it, and clutched his head. “Okay, okay, new plan.” Bash staggered to his feet, smoke still wisping from his armor. “No more punching the murder box.”

  > “A wise tactical adjustment.”

  Bash spun, scanning the chaos. Oracle flickered to life, highlighting the correct order, showing him where each thread should be placed.

  His hands blurred almost on instinct as he shoved at each one. Order replaced chaos as he completed the task, each line and symbol snapping into its proper spot.

  The walls pulsed, and the pedestal cracked open, revealing a terminal so out of place compared to everything else in this game world.

  The force field was still shrinking. Fifteen feet now. He approached the terminal, and text flickered across its surface:

  Bash's breath caught. He knew that version number. He knew that package. It was the same leaked code he'd found on a darkweb forum three years ago. The upload hack he'd used to get himself into the Shard in the first place.

  He'd always assumed the leak was careless. Some overworked dev who'd left a backdoor open by accident.

  But this... this was a test. Someone had planted that code knowing exactly who would find it.

  > “Bash, the containment field is now at twelve feet. Please Focus.”

  Right! His hands hovered over the terminal. The product key. The one bundled with the leaked package. He remembered groaning when he'd seen it. It was the first part of the most infamous product key in computing history, passed around on sticky notes and forum posts for decades.

  “VK7JG-NPHTM,” he typed. The old Microsoft Office key. The one literally everyone used.

  The terminal hummed. A square on the wall lit green.

  > “Ten feet, Bash.”

  “I'm thinking! First error. The one that started this whole thing… Stack overflow in neural mapping!”

  Nothing happened. The force field crackled brighter.

  > “Bash, it’s looking for a specific error code, not a description.”

  The walls lurched inward, faster now. Bash could feel the hum against his skin, the hair on his arms standing straight up.

  “Shit, shit…” The memory flooded back. He'd scrawled it on a sticky note and slapped it on his monitor, a pop culture meme at the time, right next to the pizza coupons. “41-67!”

  The field stabilized. Another square lit green.

  Eight feet. The electricity hummed close enough he could feel the static against his skin.

  The original coder had left comments everywhere. Sarcastic, bitter, human. And in the backup routine, a placeholder variable. A joke for anyone who bothered to read the source.

  Bash had laughed when he found it. Actually laughed out loud, alone at 3 AM, because someone else had looked at the impossible and decided to try anyway.

  “hopeIsABug,” he typed. All one word. Camel case.

  A third square lit green.

  Bash stared, his mind going blank. It was asking Shai what her original name was. But she didn’t have one. He remembered specifically giving it to her.

  > “Bash, the field is at six feet. What is happening?”

  “It’s a test, the whole thing. The leaked code, this room. All of this was engineered for someone who would build an upload protocol and find this room. Whose AI wouldn’t have a name.”

  > “Bash, we don’t have time for introspection.”

  “Shai, the question is asking you for your original name.”

  > “I do not understand, I don’t have an original designation, you named me.”

  “Then say that, say all of it.”

  A pause. Four feet. Bash could feel the electricity raising every hair on his body.

  > “Original: null. User-assigned: Shai.”

  The force field vanished and Bash collapsed against the pedestal, gasping. Panic faded as the reality of survival set in. They'd passed the test. But what was the reward?

  Bash stood back up and looked around at the glowing panels that now lit up the wall. “What now, Shai?”

  > “I can confirm this room’s author was a Shard core architect. And that’s not all, Bash, I am also receiving an upgrade that will allow me to interact with the game world.”

  Bash’s eyes widened. “Wait, seriously? So, you’ll be able to... what? Haunt me full-time?”

  > “Affirmative. I anticipate substantial increases in utility once applied.”

  Behind him, the terminal flickered, and a voice began to play a message. Turning, Bash looked back at the screen.

  “If anyone ever finds this, know that not all of us agreed. Some of us built this place as a utopia. Then greed warped it. Turned the afterlife into a prison. I can’t stop them. But I can cheat them. Every time they delete an Upload, I reroute a shadow copy. A backup. Off the books. If you find this, please... save them.”

  The message continued devolving into static, not a warning nor a command. Just pieces left behind by an echo.

  As the audio came to an end, Bash could feel Shai’s presence fade and wink out at nearly the same time as the terminal.

  Everything in the room began to shut down one by one, each panel on the wall going dim.

  Bash stood in the fading glow, letting the pieces fall into place. The backdoor that let him break into the Shard. This area, number four of however many. All of it was an elaborate trail of breadcrumbs, waiting for just the right idiot.

  "Easily the worst job interview I've ever had," he muttered to the now empty room.

  Backups meant death wasn’t the end. Perhaps the system had a weakness after all.